Report on police abuses invalidates mayor's reorganization plan

On Tuesday, Mayor Jacob Frey came before the City Council to present his proposal to reorganize Minneapolis city government, including changes to public safety that utterly failed to address the realities outlined the next day in a Department of Human Rights report.

Frey framed his proposal as part of the implementation of Question 1, the "executive mayor" amendment that voters approved in November. Question 1 has already been fully implemented and there is no additional action required. But the mayor is exploiting this opportunity to propose a series of additional changes.

I was honestly shocked at the degree to which the mayor's proposal was out of touch with the current realities of public safety in our city. The proposal was presented without any data or analysis. It appears to bear no relationship to the work of the mayor's Community Safety Workgroup, which he convened specifically to develop public safety recommendations.

Most troublingly, the mayor's proposal was presented before the publication of two crucial documents: racial bias investigations of the Minneapolis Police Department by both the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and the federal Department of Justice.

For the mayor to propose a systemic overhaul without the findings of these reports in hand is simply poor governance. If his proposal was not influenced by the recommendations of these external audits, recommendations by his own workgroup, or by any other data, one has to wonder what goals and motives informed the proposal. When I asked the mayor about this on Tuesday, he was unable to justify or show his work.

A few weeks ago I brought a proposal to the council for the city's professional staff to evaluate strategies for integrating the city's armed and unarmed public safety services into one department, and to present that research to the council and the people of Minneapolis with a public comment period. I offered that proposal because I believe our job as legislators is to do thorough and transparent research and seek public input to make informed decisions.

I have been clear on the record that I believe it would be unwise to integrate MPD officers with unarmed workers immediately, but my proposal included options beyond my own preferences because I know that at this moment we need all options on the table.

On Tuesday, the mayor e-mailed the entire City Council expressing opposition to my proposal to simply gather information and engage in a public process. Later that day, a majority of my colleagues voted against the proposal, citing a desire to defer to the mayor.

On Wednesday, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights released their report, confirming that the MPD does have practices of race-based discrimination in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, and that the MPD and the city have largely failed to enforce accountability measures. The report states that "without fundamental culture changes, reforming the MPD's policies, procedures, and trainings will be meaningless."

It is exactly this kind of information that I wanted to make space for in our evaluation of possible paths forward for public safety in Minneapolis.

Over the past two years, tens of thousands of Minneapolis residents have marched, rallied, testified and organized, demanding that the city take serious action to address the structural issues with our police department. I try to use my council seat to amplify the voices of working-class people who have consistently raised these issues for decades and have largely been ignored. The Department of Human Rights investigation, along with the city's own After Action Review, validate the demands that social movements have been raising for years.

The now-confirmed fact that the MPD has a toxic culture underscores that we need to be extremely thoughtful with how we integrate the MPD with unarmed public safety services. Over decades, the MPD has shown an incredible ability to resist reforms, accountability and culture shifts. If we integrate them with unarmed public safety services without a highly structured plan, we risk spreading that poisonous culture to other employees, further damaging the public's trust in our public safety system.

Some of my colleagues have expressed concern that waiting to integrate the MPD with unarmed public safety services will leave the MPD "on an island," that is, functioning in isolation and unable to benefit from the positive influence of other departments. Now that the Department of Human Rights report has engaged the city in a consent decree, the MPD will be under a court-enforceable agreement with the state to implement certain changes along specific timelines.

Whether we like it or not, the consent decree puts the MPD on an island, creating a separate track for the department regardless of any other legislative or executive work we do as a city. The mayor, as the sole legislative authority over the MPD, is solely responsible for completing the terms of the consent decree and getting the MPD "off the island."

The City Council, which has no legislative authority over the MPD, now gets to decide what we want to do with our time in office while the mayor completes his responsibility to correct the pattern of racism, misogyny, and violence in our police department. Since the City Council has legislative authority over all departments besides the MPD, I am committed to strengthening and resourcing our unarmed public safety programs through ordinances, the city budget, and any other mechanisms we have available.

I look forward to collaborating with my colleagues to use our full legislative authority to create a new and higher standard of public safety, beyond policing.

Robin Wonsley Worlobah is a member of the Minneapolis City Council.