Minneapolis City Council releases plan for public safety alternatives

[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: In less than an hour from now, members of the Minneapolis City Council will address-- I'll start that again. In less than an hour, members of the Minneapolis City Council will announce the city's first plan for public safety solutions that does not involve armed police officers. The Public Safety Beyond Policing Action Plan is an initiative from the city's Public Health and Safety Committee, which we'll discuss the plan shortly after the news conference.

Joining us to share more about what the action plan entails is Minneapolis Council member Robin Wonsley. She's also the Vice Chair of the Public Health and Safety Committee. Welcome, council member. Thanks for the time.

ROBIN WONSLEY: Thank you. Good afternoon.

CATHY WURZER: Good afternoon. So the draft of this plan is about 200 pages. And while I read through as much as I could in a half hour, you're going to have to help me fill in the blanks. For starters, how would you describe the overall effort? How would this differ from the public safety system currently in place?

ROBIN WONSLEY: So first, just to provide clarity, there is no difference or anything new. In fact, the public or maybe even MPR folks might have recalled that last year, Mayor Frey did a massive press conference, where he introduced the Safe and Thriving Communities Report to both council and the public, saying that this is going to be our blueprint for moving into a comprehensive public safety system that goes beyond policing.

That report included, what you mentioned, in this 200 pages, a 10-year action plan. And unfortunately, like we do with other plans, like our Climate Equity Plan, our Transportation Action Plan, for some reason, the administration did not advance that plan for council to formally adopt and support. And I think, because of that, we've had a lot of confusion and a lot of misalignment around what our public safety goals are.

So in light of the especially the police contract conversations that we just had and even with Mayor Frey proposing to defund many of our comprehensive safety solutions, like e-crime prevention or transit safety coordinators, it's become very clear that we need to have a reset when it comes to our public safety goals and specifically to get alignment around what his administration has done a lot of work to do in crafting a plan that gets us there.

So council is essentially moving forward with Mayor Frey's-- his own administration's commissioned plan around how we actually achieve that comprehensive public safety system that gives our residents a multitude of services, like our Behavior Crisis Response service that tends to our residents when they're in a mental health crisis. We want to continue building upon this. And this gives us that blueprint to do so.

CATHY WURZER: So you got this blueprint using some of what the mayor said last year. And it looks like it emphasizes preventative, responsive, and restorative services. In fact, there's a line in here-- you want to transform services into an ecosystem. What might that look like?

ROBIN WONSLEY: Yes. And actually, we have an opportunity to build that in real time with the South Minneapolis Community Safety Center that's going to be developed in my ward, where we're literally creating physical assets, like a building, to not only just be a fortress for police but to be able to accommodate other public safety services under those three pillars.

So an example of that, as prevention, we already have a number of those services. Many of our residents might recall our violence interrupters. Those are the workers that are working downtown with orange shirts or yellow shirts that are helping troubleshoot and de-escalate conflicts. They're also helping residents with any particular questions that they have. They'll show up for tourists who might be looking lost.

But mostly, they're there to do the proactive de-escalation so that cops don't have to arrive and deal with the aftermath of a conflict. So we already have examples of preventative. Responsive or restorative, for instance, we have a contract with restorative justice organizations, where if you are having a dispute with your neighbor, again, we have a service where you don't have to involve the police. You can involve basically a mediator, who can help you resolve, over the necessary period of time, that conflict.

So essentially, we have the ability to create just additional spectrum of services that many of them have existed and council actually had helped to lead the charge on supporting a number of these initiatives. And we're saying we're aligning that alongside our police, knowing that we're moving into a model of public safety, where it's not just police centric. And that is something that our residents asked us to move into in the wake of George Floyd's murder. So it's basically giving our residents more options. And this blueprint really spells out what that can look like for us.

CATHY WURZER: By the way, where's the money coming from this?

ROBIN WONSLEY: So over the past several-- well, actually, the past two years, Mayor Frey has actually asked council to fund different implementation efforts of this plan. So first, it was hiring the Harvard University Organization Network for Leadership, who helped commission this plan and report under Dr. Oftelie leadership. That was about under, I believe, half a million dollars.

We also funded last budget cycle also continuing working with Dr. Oftelie from Harvard University, as well as the New York University Policing Project, to support implementation. And much of the funding is being basically provided through the Office of Community Safety, which we created also to basically embody the city's infrastructure or city enterprise infrastructure going towards this new model of public safety.

So they have their own budget. And we were able to use part of that budget to fund these initiatives to make sure that we're actually doing them. But again, there's been several moments where there does seem to be some misalignment between the administration, the council, the public around, what are we doing? Is there a plan?

And though we funded these things, we've had presentations on these reports and, basically, plans, we really need to just have a reset and say, this is the vision. This is where we're going. We're already making significant investments in it. Let's actually have official alignment on that. And that's what we're initiating today in our Public Health and Safety Committee.

CATHY WURZER: And it looks like, with the portions of the plan that I've read, you have the blueprint. You're getting everyone together on the same page, it looks like. And there's some metrics to this as well that you're calling for, in terms of goals and how you're going to achieve these goals.

And I'm wondering-- and you brought up the new police contract-- how do you see this going beyond policing as a means to reform? Are there aspects of this plan, in other words, that will offer reform that you felt might be missing in that police contract?

ROBIN WONSLEY: So the police contract in itself is very separate. Or let's just say police is very separate in this conversation, because we already have two consent decrees that's going to have hundreds and hundreds of provisions that MPD and the city will legally be mandated to basically be in compliance with, to get our police department back in compliance with human rights and constitutional law.

That process is being developed and already solidified with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. So what this plan, the Safe and Thriving Communities Report and Plan, does, it says, we acknowledge you have a robust reform process that's going to happen with the police. What you don't have a plan for is all of these nonarmed, these non-MPD safety services that you have now brought under the Office of Community Safety.

Here is a blueprint that basically outlines, how do you build an infrastructure? How are you working with your residents to make sure you're developing programs that meet their broader safety needs? How are you funding them? How are you evaluating them to make sure that they're effective and that they are responsive?

So what the Safe and Thriving Communities Report and Plan does-- and it acknowledges it in the report-- is it does say, you already have an extensive process that's about to be rolled out, as it pertains to reforming the Minneapolis Police Department. What you don't have, and haven't had, is for having a plan that guides how you do the non-MPD work, then, that's not tied to just a police-centered model. And this is what this blueprint and plan gives us the ability to have clarity on and share an alignment on and then share collaboration on.

CATHY WURZER: How long do you think-- there's a lot in this plan. How long do you think it might take to implement the non-MPD parts of this? There's-- because there's so much here.

ROBIN WONSLEY: So we're already behind. And I don't think that would be surprising to anyone at this point. And that's largely why we're bringing this up for a conversation. Dr. Oftelie from Harvard University, who basically wrote this report and plan, came before council and the Mayor Frey administration last year and said, this is a 10-year plan. Here's a launch list of things that you need to do to set yourself up for success. And that was for 2024.

Mayor Frey did not work with the council to actually identify the ways in which we could effectively meet the parameters outlined in that launch list. So a lot of the work that was supposed to happen this year, we're maybe getting started. And we're going to get a presentation from the administration later today, where many of the launch list items, you'll see, it's in progress. It's in progress. We're not clear where we're at in the implementation of this work.

So that's why we're having a legislative process where council can have the administration come before not only us, but the public, and say, here's the blueprint. We've made investments in implementing this plan. And we want you to hold us accountable to actually delivering so 10 years from now, five years from now, or even a year from now, we're not back in this situation, whereas residents or council are asking, what is our plan for comprehensive public safety? We have it.

Now it's time to just get alignment on it and actually do it. And council is here ready to support and commit to working with the administration to do what's necessary to support the implementation of this so that we can get to 2040 and have many of the boxes that's in that 200-page report checked off.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Thank you so much for helping us out with this Council Member Wonsley. And I know you have the meeting later today. Thank you. We appreciate your time.

ROBIN WONSLEY: Thank you so much for having me on.

CATHY WURZER: Council Member Robin Wonsley has been with us. She's the Vice Chair of the Public Health and Safety Committee too.