Minneapolis police review: “No progress has been made”
Effective Law Enforcement for All releases its fourth review of the Minneapolis Police Department since the 2022 investigation by Minnesota Human Rights Department
Arlinda Westbrook served as Deputy Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department and the Deputy Chief of the Public Integrity Bureau for over 12 years.
The national nonprofit police reform organization Effective Law Enforcement For All (ELEFA), hosted a community discussion on June 24 at the Brian Coyle Neighborhood Center. ELEFA President David Douglass and Director of Community Engagement Arlinda Westbrook faced rows of residents to discuss the publication of their most recent independent evaluation of the Minneapolis Police Department.
ELEFA is a national multi-disciplinary team of recognized community policing experts, civil rights attorneys, community engagement professionals, innovative data managers, and experts in racial disparity, working in partnership. ELEFA was formed to help communities achieve policing that is effective, respectful, restrained, and safe for the public and the police — precipitated from experience and insights gained in helping New Orleans reform its police department as required by a judicially imposed Consent Decree of the U.S. Department of Justice.
ELEFA’s report, published on June 15, covers a review period from October 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026. This is the fourth semi-annual monitoring review of the department’s progress since the MPD’s settlement agreement with the City of Minneapolis and the Minnesota Department for Human Rights following the murder of George Floyd in 2022. The findings, and reception, are the most pessimistic since the first court ordered audit in March 2024.
“The City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department remain far from achieving the transformational change necessary to address the root causes of race-based policing,” the MDHR commented in their letter prequel to the published report.
Douglass put things more bluntly during the discussion: “It was in this report that our reaction, candidly, was that enough is enough. No progress has been made.”
Most glaringly, the MPD’s backlog of cases remains steep, and the Internal Affairs department remains understaffed and under-prioritized. Westbrook clarified that this halting process is not a budget problem. “This is a leadership problem,” she said.
Backdrop
In 2022, the MDHR found the City of Minneapolis had violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act by engaging in a pattern or practice of race discrimination. While neither the City nor the Minneapolis Police Department ever agreed with the MDHR’s findings, the parties entered into a good-faith resolution to resolve the matter without legal negotiations. Known as the Agreement, and overseen by ELEFA, the resulting stipulations outlined the MPD’s mission to rebuild community trust and eliminate racial bias from policing by emphasizing increasing transparency, public input, and accountability systems that meaningfully imposed corrective measures.
“We were impressed that first year… they [the police] were moving,” said Douglass. He mentioned the new use of force policy, which has been trained and implemented across precincts: “That is a big deal.” However, Douglass knows that even “under the best of circumstances, things are just slow.”
Impact of Operation Metro Surge
Operation Metro Surge did nothing to aid progress in the MPD. “The federal Metro Surge enforcement initiative painfully disrupted life in Minneapolis for more than two months, and the City and MPD are still recovering,” ELEFA’s report acknowledges. “City and MPD personnel normally tasked with implementing the Agreement were appropriately drawn away, working long hours, over many days, to address the City’s needs during this time. It was a severe, unanticipated disruption of the implementation process.”
Community members emphasized the intense emotional strain felt during Operation Metro Surge. One resident wondered how the Agreement — as a consent decree which acknowledges and accepts a working relationship between law enforcement and the community — can stand up under the weight of widespread feeling that federal immigration officials enforced “a police state” in Minneapolis.
“The power of this thing is community engagement and oversight,” Douglass reassured attendees. “There are many people working in their implementation units [within the MPD] that are working hard at it. And what is being done here is hard.”
He reminded the community that what occurred in Minneapolis in January and February was unprecedented, and he took a hopeful stance in suggesting that new leadership will renew the MPD’s urgency in following through on the Agreement’s reforms.
But questions about the psychological trauma experienced by community members and police officers were difficult to abate. Thus, participating in the process of selecting a new Chief of Police is a critical goal expressed by Minneapolis residents and one supported by ELEFA.
“Moving forward, we have to be very intentional about what transparency looks like,” said Westbrook. ELEFA had no knowledge about the nature of the investigation into former Chief O’Hara, which exacerbated the leadership problem in the MPD.
“Make no mistake, your police department is traumatized. You are traumatized,” Douglass said.
The overarching message: Minneapolis needs leadership committed to systematic change stemming not from civilian advisory but civilian authority.
In the body of our report, we offer recommendations that we believe would help the City and MPD address the shortcomings we have found, strengthen its processes prospectively, and enhance their ability to meet their goals for years three and four. They are:
- Reassess personnel capacity, roles, and responsibilities.
- Establish clear supervisory authority, responsibility, and reporting.
- Supplement existing communication and coordination channels.
- Ensure that all personnel responsible for Agreement implementation understand how their role and responsibilities relate to Agreement implementation.
- Set and communicate aggressive but realistic deadlines.
- Establish standing meeting times to ensure availability of necessary personnel.
- Keep department personnel informed.
Collectively, these recommendations reflect that implementation must be a higher priority in the coming years than it has been for the last two years. We recognize that the MPD must meet many competing demands, but other cities have demonstrated that implementing reform agreements need not detract from those obligations. On the contrary, it can support them. Other cities have come into compliance under consent decrees while reducing crime, increasing public safety, and building community trust. MPD has the ability to do the same. It is just a matter of commitment.
For 2025 coverage, Minnesota Women’s Press earned a community leadership award, three photography awards, and four editorial awards, including for coverage of social issues and for our Spring 2025 “Know Your Rights” special section supported by Unidos MN. Our publisher was named Journalist of the Year by Violence Free Minnesota for gender-based violence coverage.
