Minneapolis Police Department welcomes largest class of new hires since George Floyd murder

[UPBEAT MUSIC] NINA MOINI: Our top story this afternoon, the Minneapolis Police Department welcomed the largest and most racially diverse incoming class to its department in more than five years. Last night, 32 cadets and community service officers started on a path to become some of the 580 sworn officers for the city. That number, though, is still far from the roughly 900 who were part of the force before 2020.

The new hires came just a day after the City Council unanimously agreed to sweeping reforms to MPD that came from the US Department of Justice. Here now, to talk about this period of change at the Minneapolis Police Department, is the chief of police, Brian O'Hara. Chief O'Hara, thank you for joining me this afternoon.

BRIAN O'HARA: Thank you for having me.

NINA MOINI: Tell me a little bit about what the feeling was last night at the swearing-in ceremony. We've talked a lot over the years about reforms and improvements that need to be made for the department. But you thought last night was sort of a turning of the page. How did it feel?

BRIAN O'HARA: I mean, I was incredibly excited last night. My excitement has been building for a while. As you know, it takes a long time to get folks hired through the process. So we started to see an uptick in applications last year. And finally, last night is the result of all of the work that's been going into to try and rebuild the police department.

I've been here a little bit over two years now. And I can honestly tell you today is very, very different from when I first got here. For a while when I first got here, I could tell you it was overwhelming, just the sense of hopelessness that there was here in our situation. It was very, very depressed, internally. I think a lot of people were still-- not that everyone today is not still raw from what happened here almost five years ago, but still certainly then, it was very, very difficult.

I think today, and as evidenced last night, we have turned a corner, internally. I think our people are starting to heal. We're in a better place internally. We're seeing sons and daughters of current members become police officers.

And as better as we are getting ourselves, we are better able to serve the community. And I think the results of that were on display last night.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, after 2020, when George Floyd was murdered, many law enforcement agencies have been struggling with recruitment since. But this positive shift-- is there anything policy-wise that has led to that, or why do you think that's starting to evolve?

BRIAN O'HARA: Well, I do think we've been very intentional about trying to reach out to people as best we can. And the mayor has given us more authority to try and cut through the bureaucracy while we're trying to get people hired. We have to recognize that life is different after the pandemic. And we can't go about trying to recruit people in the same ways that we did prior to 2020.

So we have to be a lot more intentional about where we're going and communicating directly to people, letting them know that we want you to be a part of this, especially in communities around our city. And we have to-- as people do apply, we have to be a lot more aggressive at reaching out to them and bringing them in, showing them what policing is-- kind of giving them a look behind the curtain to see who the people that work here, the diversity of experiences you can have, and all of the potential opportunities that a life of service in this police department can provide you.

And I think, because of those intentional efforts, I think-- between, honestly, myself and the mayor himself reaching out, calling people who have applied, telling them that we want you here, encouraging them, showing them that we will support you through this process, that this is an opportunity to get not just a career, but a profession that can be life changing for a lot of young people in the city. And I think that's what we saw last night.

NINA MOINI: OK. As part of the newly agreed-upon consent decree with the Department of Justice, part of that is a promise to improve training for new officers. And to your point about turning a page, this is kind of a blank slate with this incoming class. Can you describe how their training will be different from previous classes?

BRIAN O'HARA: Well, I think that's an excellent point that you make. As you highlighted in the beginning, this was typically a department of about 900 officers. And a little more than 500 have separated from the department since 2020. So that's a huge turnover already.

It's the lowest staffing level the department has seen in at least four decades. And so it provides us an opportunity, as we're bringing these young people in, to bring them in and to train them in a way that is different from what happened here before. And we will have a police force in the next few years that the majority of which will not remember what it was like prior to 2020.

So I think that's great. And as you mentioned, the federal consent decree that we expect to become a court order very soon, as well as the state settlement agreement, provide for additional training for our officers. Typically in police departments around the country, I think the standard is that cops just do not receive enough training for what expectations are in the community. Typically, at best, we provide them about-- provide them with training about 5% of the time while they're employed. And we deploy them to the street about 95% of the time.

And so there's just dozens of additional hours of training that is required to be developed. It's required to be realistic, scenario-based training with proven adult learning methods. It's required to be approved by the independent monitor, the DOJ, to ensure that we really have the best we possibly can to support our officers.

Because I think in a lot of cities that you look at around the country that have either gotten investigated or gotten into a consent decree-- I think it is evidence that there are systemic failures at part. There's systems that have failed, really, the good men and women that get into this profession. So I think they're getting in at an incredibly great time to be a part of something new and different that I think will set a standard for policing around the country.

NINA MOINI: There are a lot of specific reforms that have been now agreed upon. Some of them include tracking police misconduct, police chases, avoiding handcuffing children under 14. We know that some departments have taken 5 to 10 years to implement everything in these agreements. Newark, where you were before here, underwent a consent decree. How long before we'll see some of these mandated changes implemented?

BRIAN O'HARA: Well, the good thing is, unlike every other city that has been in our position before, we have a head start. There's a whole lot within this agreement that mirrors what we're already working on with the state settlement agreement.

Additionally, unlike anyone else, ever, in this, we already have an independent monitor. And our independent monitor is dramatically different from everything that I have been aware of in terms of monitors around federal consent decrees. I think if you talk to people around the country and folks who have studied this, they would tell you probably the most common complaint you will have with consent decrees is that they become, it seems, almost a cottage industry for monitors, that they basically can just sit back and call balls and strikes and not necessarily have to help actually making change real for the community.

And I've been, honestly, very happily surprised at how engaged our monitor has been in terms of helping us trying to figure things out and helping us come up with policies, training, solutions that are practical, that can be implemented, and really helping us get across the goal line, which is ultimately what the community wants.

And the other thing I would mention related to the earlier question that I forgot to mention is a lot of these-- both the federal consent decree here and the state consent decree also provides requirements around officer health and wellness, which is something, unfortunately, that has been overlooked, systemically, in police departments. And I think it's incredibly important that we cannot forget that we need to take care of our officers.

That's why I wanted to have a welcoming ceremony last night in North Minneapolis with members of the community present, so that our new recruits, our new cadets, from day one can see that they are embraced. They are loved by the community. They are supported. And that we can maintain that outlook and that relationship with community throughout their training and then throughout their career, because we need them to be in that mindset as they go out and deal with what, unfortunately, is all too often kind of the worst things in society that they're seeing.

NINA MOINI: Before I let you go, chief, you've been mentioning that Minneapolis is under a state and a federal consent decree. They're going to work in partnership, but they do differ. Have you thought about under the next administration of Donald Trump, who has not always been a fan of these consent decrees-- if the DOJ consent decree went away, what would be your response to that? How would you function and continue to function under the state agreement?

BRIAN O'HARA: Well, just to be clear, I think it is far more likely than not that this will be a court order, and it will be a court order very soon. And once it is a court order, the only person that can lift it is the judge.

But in the event that we were not to have a federal consent decree, we do have this state settlement agreement. And we do have an independent monitor. And the vast majority of what is in the federal agreement is also covered in the state agreement. And we are on track to make very, very significant progress this year as we wrap up our first year of implementation and being monitoring.

That being said, none of these requirements in any kind of state or federal consent decree you could possibly have ultimately result in what the community wants. And we need to go well beyond any kind of checklist of things to accomplish or projects to do to ensure that we are producing the policing that the community wants. The end goal of any consent decree is to create a police department that is self-correcting, that is effective, and that is able to reduce crime while ensuring that we do not damage trust in our community.

NINA MOINI: All right. Chief, thank you for your time this afternoon. Wishing you the best with this incoming class.