Minneapolis City Council on denial of MPD nominee

Another critical topic today was the nomination of interim chief Peterson that did not prevail today. I think that there's a number of factors to speak to on that. We're inviting up both Vice President Osmond and Council Member Warren for them to share their perspectives. But I will say from my perspective, we shared with the mayor before any finalists were announced that, you know, there was a number of us who signed on to a letter asking for an external candidate. We see that the culture within MPD does need transformation and we saw the pathway for that transformation being an external candidate. I was a little bit surprised that an internal candidate was brought forward, although it is the mayor's prerogative, but I was especially surprised that it ended up being interim chief Peterson because I remembered at the outset of that search he had originally shared his intention to not seek that position and I think that left a lot of open questions for the remainder of the candidates who had sought that out. I will say for my part, one of the things that was challenging for me that I was looking for out of an internal candidate was An ability to have some humility about the history of this department and I'm looking at that expert critically from somebody who who's an internal candidate who has 30 plus years of experience within that department. I don't need to outline every single thing that is listed in the MDHR and DOJ consent decree and those investigations but these are there's a factual basis around A practice of racial discrimination, pattern and practice of racial discrimination, and I want to see ownership of some of the ugly parts of that. Thank you very much, Scott. To see a leader who can speak to that. I don't want just a chief that has deep expertise in police work, which we saw that in spades with Interim Chief Peterson. I want to see a tone at the top that has the humility to recognize the moment that the city is in at this time and the history that the city has been through. And I don't know that he really fit that moment. I'll invite up Council Member Warren to speak to that. Thank you. This was a very hard and difficult decision to make on today, but I had to remain consistent with the statements that I made, even in the Star and Tribune when asked about our former chief and having infractions on your record and especially open infractions and investigations that You know, whether it was an internal candidate or an external candidate, I want to make sure that you are in your most, I want to say, prime position to take on leadership and that you own the things that you have done that may have been, you know, less than mature at the time. But through your maturity and your leadership that you're able to say, yes, I've done some things and these are the things that I'm doing to work on myself, you know. Be honest enough to admit that you have seen or witnessed or experienced racism or discrimination. Make that be the torch and the reason why you are seeking this role and position in leadership that you want to be the instrument of change and bring about a monumental wave of change through our police department is something that we need. That's part of our reform. Both internally and externally and that's important to me. I wanted to see that with our current chief. I was not aware and I did tell him initially in the beginning that he would earn my support and that I learned later about the infractions that he had and that they were open and I don't believe and I'm going to say this that there should not be a candidate that is put before this body and I don't want to speak for everybody but speaking for myself. That has open internal affair investigations, whether they're internal or external candidates. Clean up your old mess before you start something new. The end. Thank you. I'll invite Vice President Osmond up to speak on his vote. I'll be quick. You know, I have a different perspective than my colleagues here. I voted yes on Chief Peterson, and I'm kind of really sad Chief Peterson is not going to be our next chief. 31 years of service in Minneapolis, I think Chief Peterson deserves a fair decision based on his own record. And I will say I did not hear one thing he was personally responsible that will justify voting against him. I hear example of the department failure and the history of department failure, but him 31 years of leadership, I haven't really heard something I can grab on that I would say he doesn't deserve it. I listen to my neighbors and they want someone internal, as they say, and they want someone who can continue the reform that we started 2020. And, you know, I thank his service and for him and the bravery he put out there today, a long meeting. I really want to thank his service for the city of Minneapolis. And hopefully we can find the next chief quickly and make sure that it's a chief that we can all get behind. Thank you. Finally, I'd like to welcome up Councilmember Stevenson as the Vice Chair of Public Health and Safety and Equity. Thank you. I'm Councilmember Stevenson, Ward 8, South Central Minneapolis. First off, I was one of the council members who wrote that open letter to the mayor saying that we needed an external candidate. And I did that because of Minneapolis' history, which we are all very well aware of, as well as its present. And that is a pattern and practice of racial discrimination and violence against black and native residents, as well as against people expressing their First Amendment rights. So given that, I am still looking for a candidate who is going to be very strong on reform, who's going to be able to lead our department in a new direction so that we can have constitutional policing and so that all of our neighbors across the entire city can be protected by the police department. And so as somebody who As a survivor of Minneapolis police violence myself, I have a very high bar, and I'm not going to apologize for that. I think our residents deserve a very high bar for the level of service that they are going to be receiving from our police department. So given that I and others wanted an external candidate, an internal candidate was proposed and so I gave a higher burden of proof to an internal candidate to be able to prove that they would be able to handle the history and present of racism and discrimination and violence in the department and unfortunately we did not see that from interim chief Peterson. And so that explains my vote and I think many of the votes of my colleagues as we are looking for a candidate who can really lead us into a new future. Not the past, not not sustaining of the status quo, but a new future where all of our residents can feel safe and be served to the highest level possible. Thank you. Any questions? A couple of notes and a question. Chief Brian O'Hara was an external candidate. We all know how that goes, including his resignation or his leaving the department and criticism on slow reform efforts. Also, all external candidates pulled their application for this job. So what's your plan? Yeah, well, so first things first. Every individual is an individual. Although I expressed a high preference for an internal candidate, I really, internal candidate, I'm sorry, external candidate, I really engaged with Interim Chief Peterson and I really considered it, right? I'm going to consider every nominee and do due diligence on every nominee, right? It's not a magic bullet solution by any means. The thing that is actually very troubling is that a lot of those external candidates pulled their application because they saw that the fix was in. At least that was their perception, that the interim chief, who was already in the position, seemed like he already had a shoe in. And when that application came in later in the process, I think they saw that as a signal, as the direction that they went in. That's speculation, but that is how it ended up shaking out. So... But you speculate that it was because he was very well- I think anybody who applies to be the chief of police for the city of Minneapolis in this nation sees themselves as a very high qualified individual. This is the hardest policing job in the country. Because right now the mayor doesn't have that answer. Peterson likely is considering even continuing in the interim role. What's your plan? As you move on from this day and tackle tomorrow and next week, who's going to lead that department? Well, it was actually very encouraging to hear from Interim Chief Peterson, his commitment to stay on with the force. He would remain in that interim position until a new nominee was brought forward, and we look forward to working closely with the mayor on his process and how to bring that nominee forward. The mayor seems pretty frustrated, or he and his office talk about that they feel like council members won't say how they're voting. And you, is that true? Like, do you feel like, and how do you feel like, because we were here two weeks ago with another vote where there was sort of council and mayor butting heads. How can this process be improved? But do you feel like that they're doing the work on the sort of legislative side? They're not doing the work on the legislative side. You know... I don't think the mayor actually asked me how I'm voting. I don't think he asked anybody. And actually, if he did ask me, I wasn't sure, to be honest, because I wanted to actually be open to an internal candidate. And I think that question presupposes that we've already gone to these votes, predetermined where we're going to stand on these issues. And even though I signed a letter saying I would really prefer an external candidate, I was really interested in Interim Chief Peterson, who is actually Council Member Wansley's line of questioning in committee. that started to shift me a little bit. It really took me aback that, you know, a veteran of 30 years in the Minneapolis Police Department couldn't recall a moment of somebody doing anything racist. Like, that's a really challenging thing for me. And if I'm looking for a leader that's going to bring this department into the future, to the place where we expect it to be... They shouldn't be embarrassed to be able to say, yeah, I witnessed some racism in this department. I'm an older millennial. I was in high school in the 90s. I can tell you myself, I've said things that are completely inappropriate in today's day and age. And I've grown and matured. This is to Council Member Warren's point. We're not seeking perfection. We're seeking maturity. You need to be able to say in the past, I wasn't this mature person, but I am a more mature person today. We didn't see that characterization. That was the issue. I wanted to be able to see somebody that can actually say, my predecessor did have some failings, and this is how I'm gonna be different. And that culture. And there's some respect embedded in this culture, right. I don't want to bash my predecessor. I personally don't want to bash my predecessor. But I think in a department that is as challenged as MPD, we need a leader who can look to our history and say each of those aspects were wrong and look at their present and say these aspects continue to be wrong and I'm going to be the one that changes it. I'm speaking for me if anybody else would like to speak. I can add something. I mean, I want to just say. This vote was very clear. It was 8-5. Like, it wasn't like a 7-6 vote, right? It was a very... It was like, I would say, a bipartisan vote on this. And that's, you all cover us, you know that's not typical on divided issues. Thank you. For me, the mayor did ask me where I was at. And I told him I was largely undecided for a while, and I told the chief that I made no commitments. And a big part of my decision was going to be the questions in committee. And I don't think committee went that well. Well, um... And the questions today and the few questions that I asked that I was deeply surprised by that if had he answered differently could have could have made it more difficult for me to say no, but it made it clear was the question about the weaknesses in previous police chiefs, primarily Chief O'Hara. There are several weaknesses in his leadership that community members have named over and over again that you all have covered over and over again, whether it's our finances. Whether it's the tampering with an investigation, there have been several officers who have said that they have felt mistreated in the front office by him. And our interim chief said that he was not willing to critique the chief. It wasn't my ask to take a personal attack on it on the chief but an ask to realize where the MPD is today where the problems are and recognize them and show me that you know where they are you're not afraid to say what they are so you can fix them for the future because that's what my community wants to see in our next police chief someone that can transform the police department you can't transform it if you can't name the problem so that was a big one for me and then at the end I did ask do you believe that the police department has a bias and a discrimination built in it towards black, brown, indigenous people and people with disabilities. And I think that's an easy answer because we have documentation of it. It's yes, because you can't undo 150 years of bias in just a few years. It exists. And the answer that he gave is I don't. I don't, I'm not denying our history, but it's not only our history, it's our present, and that was missing, and that needs to be the bare minimum floor for someone stepping into this job. Personally, I like Chief Peterson, but if you can't meet that high watershed mark, but actually it's not a high watershed mark, if you can't meet that mark, that made the vote very clear for me once my questions were done. I mean, some of this is what you were just saying. I think what is very clear, the interpretation about MPD's progress or the lack thereof of progress with... Eliminating this pattern and practice that's been documented within the police department of having engaged in racist violence, unconstitutional policing. That is not subjective opinions. That is documented by our current independent evaluator assigned as a result of our consent decree with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. Their last. Two progress reports have named repeatedly that we are far from progress on meaning the hundreds of provisions within our settlement agreement. And largely that's been tied to mismanagement practices, issues with leadership that falls squarely at the foot of Mayor Fry and his inability to rein in MPD leaders and rein in that culture that we saw continue to be on play or display today. As well as during PHSC last week. So I just want to name, these are things documented by our current independent evaluator. These are not just individual accounts. There is wide documentation that we are not meeting progress and we're not close to it. Last question just to support what she's saying. And if you can't acknowledge that it exists, then we will continue to have a problem that you can't accept and own the fact that it exists, that you have witnessed it, that it's present there. That's the biggest form of racism there is, is to act like it doesn't even exist. And it's not there. We have a lot of balls in the air. We've got OCS as of two weeks ago, BCR, violence interrupters with the budget. We now have the chief issue. I mean, is this sort of like, do we need to have a big sort of mayor council summit to sort of navigate where we go from here? Because there's a lot of public safety stuff currently on the table at the same time. Yeah. So I, yeah. Yeah, so where we're at still aligns with our Constitution, where Mayor Frye still holds the reins of deciding the future of our public safety. And we have all been willing participants to say, join us in that work. Just earlier today or during the council meeting, Council President Payne brought a motion that earned nine votes to make sure that we're continuing services. Sorry, 10 votes for a behavior crisis response so that our residents. Continue to have the right response of having a mental health specialist when they call 9-1-1 should they ever experience that crisis. When it comes to the Office of Community Safety and its dissolution, that still allows all of those departments to exist. Residents, you need to know you still can call 9-1-1 and get a response. Fire will still be present. Neighborhood Safety Department that holds a lot of our safety alternative work, such as violence prevention services, that's still present. The Office of Emergency Management still exists. The only difference that is coming forward is we don't have administrative bloat sucking up $2 million from a budget that largely taxpayers are having to front the bill for because of mismanagement over MPD. So nothing actually changes. Mayor Fry still holds the buck and he gets to work with us to make sure that we're actually doing work that delivers good outcomes for our residents and do so in a way that addresses the problems that's persisted with our public safety systems and actually gets rid of them as opposed to ignoring the problems. That is the work that we get to do. Thanks everyone.