Freshman Minnesota lawmaker draws on personal experience as key police reform negotiator

Cedrick Frazier's anguish penetrated the grainy Zoom connection during a recent debate on police reform.

After listening to Minnesotans break down as they talked about loved ones killed by police, the freshman DFL House member from New Hope contrasted the urgency he felt with Senate Republicans' slower approach to considering the latest package of police-accountability proposals.

"The reason we're back here is more people have died in our streets in law enforcement interactions," Frazier told colleagues and law enforcement representatives one morning last month. "We're trying to raise the bar for everybody."

Navigating the slog that often meets even their most passionate policy proposals at the State Capitol is a staple of any first-term lawmaker's legislative initiation. Yet barely five months since being sworn in, Frazier has been entrusted to help lead talks on what House Democratic leaders are calling their top priority as they try to wrap up a new two-year budget before July 1.

Frazier often draws on his personal experience bearing witness to inequity while growing up Black on the south side of Chicago. This year, he lent his own story of being stopped by Chicago police for a broken taillight as he introduced a new proposal to end the types of traffic stops that led to Daunte Wright's shooting by Brooklyn Center police. After watching video of George Floyd's killing a year ago, Frazier said he doubled down on the belief that he had a chance to make policy that could save the lives of those who looked like him.

"We're not strangers to this trauma," Frazier said in an interview this week. "It's not uncommon and it is very hard to deal with, but that gives you the ability where you can kind of build up an immunity to it. But what has fueled me is the fact that I want it to be uncommon to my kids and their kids. I want it to stop being a common thing they have to deal with."

Frazier began his term with an already-tough assignment: replacing Lyndon Carlson, whose nearly half century in the Legislature is a state record. Carlson's retirement led Frazier to pivot away from a run for the New Hope City Council seat he had been appointed to in 2018.

"It was obvious he was going to go places," said New Hope Mayor Kathi Hemken.

Frazier lives in New Hope with his wife, Stephanie, three daughters and a dog named Puckett. The couple met while Frazier studied and played football and ran track at the University of Minnesota, Morris, where he earned a psychology degree. He also has a master's degree in urban studies and a law degree. Frazier worked as a public defender in Hennepin County and as part of the Education Minnesota labor union's legal team. He found inspiration from his grandfather, a Freemason and influential union man who once risked his life running into a building to look for fellow members after a pipe burst. When Chicago elected its first Black mayor in the 1980s, Frazier said the idea of representing communities of color in the state and local halls of power started to come into focus. Several of Frazier's proposals to rethink policing in Minnesota — such as the new limits on traffic stops — made it into the final slate of reforms offered by House Democrats. He also wants to expand data sharing between police agencies and the state licensing board in cases of officer misconduct and to ban officers from affiliating with white supremacist extremist groups.

After meeting with representatives from law enforcement, Frazier agreed to broaden that bill to include international extremist groups and domestic groups that the FBI "has determined supports or encourages illegal, violent conduct."

"That's just one example of where he has been willing to meet with us and listen to the feedback before taking it back and adjusting the legislation," said Jeff Potts, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association. "I think that's good government right there. That's good policy­making." Frazier is also behind bills to limit fees, surcharges and fines imposed — often on the poorest — by Minnesota's criminal justice system and the latest attempt to restore voting rights to felons who are no longer incarcerated. House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, singled out Frazier this week in expressing confidence that Democrats could successfully negotiate many of the policing bills offered last month.

"Just a brilliant legislator," Hortman said. "Powerful public speaker and a very nice human being. So I think having him in the mix is certainly helping them plow through a lot of these important issues."

Gov. Tim Walz, in a statement, credited Frazier with helping keep police reform "front and center" this session.

"He cares deeply about the issues of public safety and police accountability, and he has been an incredibly valuable voice in our effort to find a bipartisan solution that moves Minnesota forward," Walz said.

Frazier is also forging unlikely kinships in his first term. He recently huddled with Rep. Tim Miller, a Prinsburg Republican, after Miller gave a speech during the House vote on its public safety spending bill. Weeks later, Miller joined Frazier and other Democrats at a news conference urging a fresh look at policing.

As reporters and lawmakers dispersed, the two chatted for another half-hour outside and later grabbed breakfast. They learned each had ties to the Chicago area — Miller grew up in a suburb outside the city — and that Frazier attended college near the district Miller represents. "We probably don't agree on a lot of things," Miller said, "but I think he is taking this opportunity to be on the public safety conference committee to affect change."

Frazier is part of a freshman class that also includes Rep. John Thompson, DFL-St. Paul, whose pursuit of a House seat grew from his activism after the police killing of his friend Philando Castile in 2016.

Like Frazier, Thompson also grew up in Chicago. Together, Thompson said, he and other members of the DFL's People of Color and Indigenous Caucus can offer direct testimony about what is needed to address disparities in their respective communities.

"We know we wanted to see legislation so we became legislators as opposed to being on the opposite side of the bargaining table," said Thompson, who calls Frazier "a brother, not just my colleague" and a "powerful freshman legislator."

Without specifying, Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka said this week that about four or five police reform bills were nearing agreement. But the topic is widely expected to be among the very last items completed before the special session concludes. Gazelka and GOP leaders are unlikely to agree to all policing bills and have said they will reject anything they think make law enforcement's jobs tougher.

Frazier said he was "hopeful" after his Senate GOP counterparts made another offer heading into the special session but he said it still was not adequate on policing to make meaningful change. "We didn't get to this system overnight and we are not going to change it overnight," Frazier said.

Stephen Montemayor • 612-673-1755