What to know about the new police oversight monitor in Minneapolis

The city of Minneapolis and Minnesota Department of Human Rights have chosen a nonprofit group that will evaluate police reform efforts. Effective Law Enforcement For All will oversee the development of new Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) policies after state and federal officials determined the agency engages in systemically discriminatory policing.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the firm’s selection is a “critical stop along the way” in the city’s “roadmap for change.”

Here are five things to know about the organization and how we got here:

Effective Law Enforcement For All is led by David Douglass, deputy monitor for the city of New Orleans. He’s helped oversee that city’s police reform efforts since 2013. Over the course of that work, Douglass said he’s seen how consent decrees “could be used as a model for collaborative, rather than coercive reform.” That didn’t stop the group from calling out the New Orleans PD for “slippage” in its reforms last year.

The firm will be paid up to $1.5 million per year, in what’s expected to be a multiyear process, to aggressively oversee the city’s efforts at establishing and maintaining lawful policing. As long as the state oversight mandate is in place, the firm will review and approve new MPD policies, and provide regular updates to the public on progress. A judge will be responsible for determining when enough progress has been made and sustained to lift the order.

City and state officials narrowed two initial groups of applicants down to three finalists by the end of last year. Council Member Andrea Jenkins said city officials involved with the selection were seeking a monitor that exhibited integrity, honesty and robust community outreach in its work on police reform. ELEFA and the other finalists all met with city residents at two community meetings in early January.

The murder of George Floyd in the custody of four Minneapolis police officers on Memorial Day 2020 set off a cascading series of consequences for the MPD, culminating in the interventions by both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. But Floyd’s death was far from the first transgression in what the Justice Department identified as a pattern of racist and abusive behavior that deprives people of their civil rights.

ELEFA starts it work on March 9. But first, the Minneapolis City Council must vote on the contract. That vote isn’t scheduled yet. Effective Law Enforcement for All will have 90 days to come up with a plan to implement the first four years of reforms.