Minneapolis police chief defends pastor who made threatening remarks to City Council

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara is defending a prominent north Minneapolis pastor who made threatening statements — including some seen by many as homophobic — directed at the Minneapolis City Council last month.

The Rev. Jerry McAfee is pastor of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church and operates nonprofits that for years have done violence prevention work for the city, Downtown Improvement District and state. He’s been under fire for his actions last month during a council meeting, which he interrupted and went on a 5-minute rant that many viewed as threatening and homophobic.

Exacerbating the situation, on Monday two of his 21 Days of Peace workers were charged with multiple felonies in connection with a March 10 shootout in north Minneapolis after a community barbecue. Later Monday, the city’s Neighborhood Safety Department withdrew its recommendation to the council that another one of McAfee’s nonprofits, Salem Inc., get a nearly $650,000 violence prevention contract.

LGBTQ groups, council members and other activists called on Mayor Jacob Frey to condemn McAfee’s comments, but he has remained silent. When asked several times during a Thursday news conference to weigh in on McAfee’s actions, Frey instead focused on the city’s handling of the violence prevention contract, and said he couldn’t comment on McAfee’s remarks. He said Salem Inc. was selected to get a violence prevention contract by largely by “outside people” that reviewed applications “in a blind format ... before any of this” occurred.

“I can’t comment on everything else,” Frey said. “All I can say is that it’s under review.”

The police chief didn’t comment on McAfee’s comments toward council members, but he defended the pastor’s violence prevention work in the community.

“Reverend McAfee has been a valuable partner to the Police Department, and their work is valuable,” O’Hara said. “So I think we need to say that separately, there is a criminal investigation, and obviously we are going to pursue that investigation wherever it legally goes. But that does not mean that Reverend McAfee, that his organization, that this concept in general, is not something that’s useful.”

The mayor then jumped in, saying, “Both of those things can be true at the same time, and they are.”

O’Hara said he believes in community violence prevention programs, especially when the police ranks have become depleted since George Floyd’s 2020 police killing.

“I think it’s unfortunate when things like this happen, because there are people waiting to discredit the very notion of this work being useful in the first place,” he said. “They [violence interrupters] are willing to go to places where we are experiencing problems, and frankly, they have a level of authority and respect in communities, a lot of times because they are people from the street.”

Council Member Jason Chavez, who is gay and whom McAfee accused of acting like a “girl” during his outburst at the council meeting, said he was disappointed the chief and mayor declined to condemn the “homophobic, sexist and threatening comments lobbed at my colleagues and I on the dais.”

“Saying that you will stand up for the LGBTQIA+ community is meaningless if you’re not willing to condemn homophobia when it happens right here in Minneapolis,” Chavez said in a statement. “Minneapolis should be a welcoming and safe city for all. At a time when our federal government is moving backwards, our city should be moving onwards.”