MPD still working through monitor’s first year goals to speed up complaint backlog, finalize policies
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It’s been one year since an independent monitor began overseeing the Minneapolis Police Department’s efforts to comply with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights settlement agreement. The police department is on track to meet about half of the policy and training goals set by the monitor for the first year, but both the monitor and head of the state’s human rights department say they are encouraged by some progress.
Court-ordered reforms follow the state’s human rights investigation launched after the 2020 police murder of George Floyd. The investigation released nearly three years ago found the department engaged, for years, in a pattern of racial discrimination — including the disproportionate use of excessive force on Black and Native residents.
The state agreement has been in place since July 2023 and will remain in place until a judge rules the police department has reached full and sustained compliance, releasing the parties from court supervision. The process is expected to take several years.
The city of Minneapolis is paying an independent monitor group, Effective Law Enforcement For All, or ELEFA, up to $1.5 million a year to provide support and ensure the department is sticking to the agreement. ELEFA issued a report on the first six months of evaluation and will follow with an update in May.
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Until then, city officials won’t speak on what was deemed compliant by the end of the first year — but ELEFA and MDHR say the police department has been making progress.
“It’s going to be an ongoing process for a long time,” said Rebecca Lucero, Minnesota Human Rights commissioner, who emphasized the process “is about continuous learning, about humanity, about civil rights,” even as policies continue to evolve.
Lucero said the discriminatory pattern was perpetuated by a culture of flawed training, deficient accountability systems and a lack of collective action from city and police leadership.
“Certainly there is meaningful work that is occurring and has occurred. Certainly there is a lot more work that needs to occur,” Lucero said. “And without fundamental organizational culture changes, policies, procedures and training, reforms to all of that really is meaningless.”
ELEFA monitors said the focus of the first year was to lay a foundation from which to build sustained changes — including tackling many of the policies to then train on and building up the capacity for data systems that will help with tracking compliance — ultimately helping MPD become a “self-monitoring organization that meets Minneapolis’ needs.”
About half of targeted police policies on track
About half of the policy categories that ELEFA had set year one goals to update were on track to be finalized or near finalized at the end of year one, including 14 use-of-force policies and policies related to body worn cameras and non-discriminatory policing. Some other policies — procedural justice and emergency medical response — weren’t targets for year one, but were projected to be finalized soon, by the end of March.
The other half of the year-one policies that had a larger gap to close included policies for field training officers, quarterly review panels and officer misconduct.
Commissioner Lucero said her staff has been there to offer support and help push things along.
“Times where we might have disagreements, points of tension, frustrations around how things are moving, it’s on us to have a better understanding of what the problem is. Is something slower, for instance, because MPD has really taken the time to read through community feedback and implement it?” Lucero said. “That’s a good delay. I really want to encourage that kind of interaction between community members and it’s actually designed that way.”
Under the settlement agreement, the public is given at least 45 days to provide feedback on a number of policy drafts.
One community group that has been particularly involved in that process is Communities United Against Police Brutality, a long-time volunteer police watchdog group. Michelle Gross, the group’s leader, said they have been taking a red pen to every policy brought forward for comment — and sent back 163 pages of recommendations to the department’s proposed use of force policies.
“In many cases, we felt that they gave the police too much room to not follow the policy,” Gross said.
One example of a major revision suggested by CUAPB: MPD had initially codified officers pointing a gun at someone as a level one use of force — the lowest level. Gross said they pushed for that to be kicked up to a level three classification.
“For community members that get a gun pointed at them, it’s utterly frightening,” Gross said. “It’s an example of the disconnect between the police and their day-to-day existence and what the community feels about it.”
At a February update with city officials, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said one of the most significant lifts this year had been work on “dozens and dozens” of policies, including marathon sessions to talk through best practices.
“You got to have the policies right first before you can implement anything, and then still, before you can implement it, you have to have your training developed, and that all has to be approved," he said. "We want to make sure that we get this right, instead of just getting it done."
Complaint backlog continues
The settlement agreement established specific timelines for moving through misconduct investigations. Investigations have to be completed within 180 days of a complaint being filed with the Office of Police Conduct Review – which handles external complaints — or the Internal Affairs Division — which handles complaints made within the department.
A year ago, OPCR had 234 external complaints that needed to be investigated. At the end of March — after hiring more staff, including both a new civil rights and OPCR director — that shrunk to 87 in the backlog, meaning they had yet to be investigated.
In the first six months of evaluation, there had also been a backlog of more than 1,100 use-of-force cases.
At the end of March, 323 cases remained in the backlog awaiting investigation, according to Sgt. Garret Parten, the department’s public information officer.
The cases cleared from the backlog have not all been closed. There’s an additional delay in a third level of review, in which internal affairs checks the work of field training officers and supervisors, said Arlinda Westbrook, a former deputy superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department. Westbrook leads community engagement and accountability efforts for ELEFA.
Westbrook said MPD also recently hired an outside company to assist with that step.
As outlined in the settlement agreement, MPD was to train supervisors on how to conduct use of force reviews by the end of year one. That was delayed and is set to begin in May, which ELEFA said it is keeping an eye on.
The human rights investigation found that supervisors failed to complete a thorough and sufficient review of nearly half of the sample of use-of-force cases from 2010 through 2020.
This year, ELEFA will also begin auditing the police department in areas such as use of force and non-discriminatory policing — using body worn and squad camera footage, public comments, third-party documents and other documents.
Changed training
The MDHR investigation found that deficient training exacerbated a pattern of discriminatory, race-based policing — often reinforcing a culture of “unquestioned compliance” and aggression.
While warrior style training had been banned in 2019, training continued to educate on that mindset at the time of the investigation. Though a judge in 2020 had immediately banned chokehold and neck restraints — of the type used to kill Floyd — the department “provided no substantive training to officers” until more than a year after that new policy was in effect.
There were three training goals, outlined by ELEFA, to carry out by the end of this first year: how to engage with minors, crisis intervention refreshers and supervisor and leadership training.
By the end of year one, MPD showed it had provided the initial training for the first two, but had not trained on the latter. ELEFA training lead Bill Murphy, a retired deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, said that priority will be a “big undertaking” this year.
A training needs assessment released early last year found that the department had no formal supervisory training for officers promoted since 2022. Some reported transitioning to a leadership role without any training at all. That’s expected to change this fall.
A number of trainings in year one were also required by the settlement agreement itself, including for non-discriminatory policing and stops, searches and citations, but many of those policies had not been finalized yet. The latter two trainings are scheduled for 2026.
This spring, MPD is anticipated to roll out training for use of force, based on its new policies. Training related to police misconduct, field training officers and early intervention are also on the horizon this year.
MPD now has a director of training and education. Shawn Williams, a former Minneapolis police officer with a doctorate in education, was brought on, in part, to professionalize the teaching approaches.
All MPD instructors have also received 40 hours of a development course, which included how best to effectively educate new hires in police academies.
How community members can get involved as the process continues
Community members who want to stay up to date on the process can check out the ELEFA website, which includes progress reports and information on upcoming meetings — as well as a means for residents to reach out to the monitors with any questions or concerns.
The next public meeting is scheduled for July in Ward 4 on the city’s north side.
The city website also has a page with its own updates, including a spot to sign up for alerts when policies are open for public feedback.
