The City of Minneapolis continues a search for a new chief of police, and questions continue to be raised about staffing numbers, and spiraling overtime budgets for the department.
For his part, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says the department has seen historic interest from individuals wanting to join the police department which has struggled mightily to fill its ranks since COVID, and the George Floyd unrest of 2020.
"Right now applications to become a Minneapolis police officer are up by 200%," Frey said Thursday on the WCCO Morning News. "We are recruiting more officers, at a greater rate, than we probably have in about a decade."
Frey and the city were sued in June by the Upper Midwest Law Center for failing to meet the 731 sworn officer threshold required by the City Charter. A Hennepin County judge ordered Frey must meet that threshold by January 4, 2027. That could mean a jury trial, which would take place next April.
A 2022 Minnesota Supreme Court ruling found Minneapolis wasn't meeting its required police hiring goal.
Even Frey admits that number won't be met until the end of 2027 at the earliest, telling WCCO's Chad Hartman in August that number is still faster than he, and former Police Chief Brian O'Hara, expected.
"We're gonna, I believe, get to the charter minimum of 730 by next year, probably the very end of next year, but by next year," Frey said. "And if we won't get there, we'll be very close. But then thereafter we need to get back to 888, which was approximately the numbers that we had before COVID-19."
As of June, the city had 649 sworn officers according to records. Even with Minneapolis appearing to be gaining ground when it comes to hiring more police officers, Frey says a boost in staffing is much-needed.
"We've got fewer officers per capita than virtually any city in the country," Frey adds. "And yes, that has an impact on their ability to investigate, to respond to 911 calls, to do community engagement, and to build out relationships with the people that they're charged with protecting and serving."
Per capita, Minneapolis is around 14 officers per 10,000 people in the city, an extraordinarily low number compared to the national average of 24 officers. For comparison, the neighboring city of Saint Paul serves about 120,000 fewer residents but maintains a slightly higher per-capita ratio of 20 officers per 10,000 residents. A Star Tribune analysis showed only Portland, Oregon with a lower ratio among major U.S. cities.
Continued tension between MPD and City Council
The conversation comes as Minneapolis City Council members are in the thick of working on a new budget with department heads presenting their own budgets. All except the police department, so far.
On Wednesday, nobody from the Minneapolis Police department showed up at the council committee meeting. Instead, council members were told they had to submit questions via email, according to Councilmember La Trisha Vetaw.
"My office has been working really hard for over a year to get answers," she said Wednesday.
But Frey maintains the council already has all the information they need, and are using it to create political theater.
"Yeah, they already knew, we already presented in front of them," he said on WCCO. "This is a presentation that has already been conducted, and every single question that they had beyond the presentation that was months ago, we answered in writing. So if there's a single question that they've got that we haven't answered yet, we're happy to answer it."
Frey says having MPD staff sit at a City Council meeting is not a good use of their time.
"I'm not gonna have them sit there for hours and hours and hours on end just in case somebody asks them a question about something," Frey adds. "I need our staff to be providing service for the people of Minneapolis. I need them improving recycling pickup. I need them keeping people safe. I need our chief of police spending his time or her time on making sure that we don't have carjackings in the city. I mean, I need them doing the real fundamental stuff, and if they have to spend hours and hours on end just in case there's a question, which at times has been the case, no, that just doesn't work."
It's just another sign of the growing tension between the council and the department which is facing a $20 million budget shortfall due to police overtime. That overtime is due to a shortage of officers, but also a massive increase in calls during Operation Metro Surge, the federal government's immigration crackdown, in January and February.
"There was only $4 million in the budget for overtime, yet we're $20 million over budget," Councilmember Michael Rainville explains.
A recent report from Alpha News claims the city is closer to 400 officers, but Rainville says the current number of officers in the department is 635. He says finalizing a budget before the end of the year could prove to be difficult with the current strained relationships between the council, the mayor, and the MPD.
"My hope is that we all understand the financial crunch that Minneapolis is in, and we all compromise and try to do what's best for the taxpayers," Rainville added. "That is my hope, that is why I get up every day and I see the sun shine."
Meanwhile, Frey is proposing a plan to cut spending and staffing across several city departments, and hike property taxes by 11.3% next year.
It didn't help that Chief O'Hara resigned in late-May after improperly getting involved in an internal investigation into his own behavior. And then, a City Council news conference about O'Hara's resignation quickly turned into an opportunity for the council's resolute progressives to attack Mayor Frey, who fired right back at the City Council saying they didn't act fast enough.
"We do not have enough police," Rainville says. "Any time you look out your window and you see a patrol car going by, half of the patrol cars on that given day have police working on overtime because we're so short."
The hiring of a new chief comes at a crucial time for the city, and for Mayor Frey. He said Thursday on WCCO Radio that he is optimistic about where they stand in the process.
"We have a number of exceptional candidates both within the Minneapolis Police Department and beyond that have applied," Frey said. "We have conducted engagement sessions in all precincts of the city, got some great feedback as to the characteristics that people in Minneapolis are looking for in this new police chief. And then we will have a couple of rounds of interviews, ultimately sending on some finalists to myself that we're going to take a fine tooth comb, we're going to make sure that we're getting somebody really incredible. And as it stands now, I've got to tell you I'm really optimistic as to where this is going."
