Minneapolis police looks at new response to neighbor conflicts, as activists keep up call for chief’s resignation

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Tuesday that his department would partner with the Minneapolis NAACP to provide conflict resolution services in disputes between neighbors, as the department looks to quell outrage over reported harassment that ended in violence.

Not long after O’Hara and the local NAACP president talked about planning around their joint effort, activists once again filled a Minneapolis City Council committee meeting with calls for the chief’s resignation.

Controversy has continued to swirl around the police response to the harassment and stalking of a south Minneapolis resident. Last month, Davis Moturi, who is Black, was allegedly shot in the neck by a white neighbor, after repeatedly seeking police help over a series of months. His neighbor, John Sawchak, was arrested days after the shooting and charged with second-degree attempted murder, first-degree assault, stalking and harassment.

Sawchak has a long history of harassing his neighbors, often targeting people of color, according to court records. The Minneapolis Police Department has apologized for its failure to protect Moturi from violence.

So far this year, the department recorded more than 2,000 calls for service in neighbor-to-neighbor or tenant disputes, O’Hara said Tuesday at New Beginnings Baptist Ministries in south Minneapolis. While these incidents have the potential to escalate, they are typically difficult for police address if they deal with civil rather than criminal matters, he said.

“We don’t always have the kind of probable cause that we oftentimes need in order to make an arrest, or if we do take somebody into custody, there oftentimes isn’t sufficient evidence to prove an offense beyond a reasonable doubt,” O’Hara said.

The suspect is then returned to the community where the conflict often escalates, he said.

The mediation partnership would capitalize on existing relationships through the Unity Community Mediation Team, a group of community organizations that work with the Minneapolis police on reform efforts. The team has nine sites in Minneapolis where residents can file complaints or seek solutions for issues before involving police, said Minneapolis NAACP President Cynthia Wilson.

“It is our hope that through this new initiative, we can prevent some of these tragedies from happening again,” Wilson said. “The way that happens is little by little, step by step.”

Mediators function as neutral third parties, helping to structure communication and ultimately resolve issues through dialogue, said AJ Awed, co-executive director of Community Mediation Minnesota, the umbrella organization of state-certified Community Dispute Resolution Programs.

“We as practitioners see this as a strong move, something that could be possibly beneficial,” Awed said of the new partnership. “As long as it’s community-centered [and] it’s localized. That would be the most meaningful.”

Details of the mediation program are still being worked out, but leaders said they hope to launch it in December.

At City Hall, community members gathered to speak out about the Moturi case, after previously interrupting an Oct. 31 council meeting to demand O’Hara’s firing.

They expressed outrage that MPD didn’t arrest Sawchak sooner, despite Moturi’s repeated pleas for help, and questioned why the city still allows Black people to feel unsafe, four years after George Floyd’s police killing.

Jeanelle Austin, who has been a caretaker of memorials at George Floyd Square, said the police system is broken and the city needs to start over and let Black people decide how to fix it. Neighbors expressed fear that Sawchak will be released from jail and return to the neighborhood.

Marcia Howard, a leader of a protest at the site of Floyd’s murder, said her daughter lives across the street from Sawchak and was “army crawling” on the floor out of fear for her safety in the days before his arrest. Howard said the neighborhood has been terrorized by Sawchak for years.

Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network and former president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, called for O’Hara to be fired.

”He knew the job he was signing up for,” she said.

A spokesman for Mayor Jacob Frey said Tuesday that Frey continues to support O’Hara.

Police chaplain Howard Dotson asked people to let O’Hara “stay the course and the truth will prevail.”

Staff writers Paul Walsh and Liz Sawyer contributed to this report.