Minneapolis City Council approves police union contract in divided vote

Minneapolis police officers will receive raises, more mental health screenings and faster access to information about people who request their records under a new contract approved Thursday.

For nearly an hour, City Council members debated the merits of heeding activists' demands to reject the deal with the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis against their labor director's advice that disciplinary changes were better addressed in the police policy manual.

They ultimately approved the deal — the first since George Floyd's murder — in an 8-5 vote. Mayor Jacob Frey said he will sign off on it, clearing the way for its implementation.

"Is this contract perfect? No, it's not. That's the nature of any negotiation is that you don't get everything you want," Frey said in a news conference. "We are going to be moving very vigorously forward to negotiate the next contract."

The police contract has gained new scrutiny in recent years following a series of high-profile police killings, including Floyd's murder in 2020, which started a national debate on policing, as well as peaceful protests and riots.

Many of the city's elected leaders repeatedly have pegged the contract as an obstacle to enacting much-needed reforms, and local activists said this vote presented a chance to fix it. In recent weeks, though, some elected leaders have said they believe disciplinary changes are better made through policies that don't have to be negotiated with the union.

Council President Andrea Jenkins said she voted to approve the deal because she felt the city had little to gain by entering into arbitration with the union, whose last contract expired at the end of 2019.

"Voting down the contract, to me, seems like a symbolic gesture, and this is not the moment for that symbolism," Jenkins said. "We must work together to create a process to get community input, to have that level of transparency that people are hoping for into the future on the next union contract, and those negotiations will begin the moment this contract is adopted."

Others, including Council Member Jeremiah Ellison, said they feared approving the deal would send a message to the police union that the city is willing to approve any deal if the threat of arbitration hangs overhead.

"What's to prevent a future council of 2025 or 2026 of being in this exact same scenario where negotiations have stalled, where we've sort of reached an impasse and they are voting for a contract with the promise that the next one will be better, that the next one is where the real work will begin, the substantive work will begin," Ellison said.

The city and the police federation have been in various stages of negotiation for the past 2½ years. In December, some issues were certified for arbitration, and in January the city and the police union both filed their final positions. State and local officials have not released the documents that would provide more detail about which issues were cleared for arbitration and could, therefore, have been revisited.

In a public meeting earlier this week, Holland Atkinson, the city's director of labor relations, told council members that if the contract moved to binding arbitration, the city could risk losing some provisions, such as statements that the union supports efforts to promote race and gender equity and statements that it is committed to providing the highest level of services. He said there was also a chance an arbitrator, citing the hiring market for officers, could order the city to provide larger financial incentives, creating an "extremely dangerous environment for our finance partners."

Approving the deal will cost about $9 million, an amount the city said was included in the department's roughly $191 million budget for this year. It includes raises and "market adjustments" for police officers. By year's end, an officer who has graduated from the academy would be set to make about $74,000 per year, with the ability to earn more if they work certain shifts that come with bonus pay or stay on the force for more than seven years.

The police federation had encouraged council members to vote yes, saying it would help recruitment for a department that is downabout 300 officers since Floyd's murder.

The deal makes two changes to the discipline section. One revision aims to clarify what happens to police supervisors who are demoted, then rejoin the union ranks. Another e-mails officers when someone requests public records about them and tells them who made the request. (Local activists said they feared that provision would make it easier for officers to harass their critics, while some city officials said it merely sped up a process already allowed under state law.)

Another change in the document aims to give the police chief wider latitude to decide where officers should be assigned when they return from a "critical incident" — one in which they are seriously harmed or seriously harm or kill someone else. It also increases the mental health screening requirements for officers involved in such events.

During Thursday's meeting, Council Member Robin Wonsley Worlobah expressed frustration with a "shifting goalpost," noting that Frey and some of her council colleagues had previously described the union contract as an obstacle to reform.

"I'm seeing a lot of deflection," she said, adding that she didn't believe the contract would ensure reforms are enacted.

Frey said he stands by his previous remarks but he believes the contract is one of several tools that can be used to enact meaningful change. "I think a lot of people are looking for an easy or a simplistic answer, one lever we can pull that suddenly makes everything better and perfect," Frey said. "And that lever doesn't exist. I certainly wish it did."

Voting to approve the contract Thursday were Council Members LaTrisha Vetaw, Michael Rainville, Lisa Goodman, Andrew Johnson, Jamal Osman, Emily Koski, Linea Palmisano and Jenkins. Voting against the deal were Council Members Ellison, Wonsley Worlobah, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Elliott Payne.