Late last week, MPD Chief Brian O’Hara was quoted in the conservative NY Post for an article whose purpose seemed to be bashing Minneapolis: “Here it’s very, very ideological and a lot of times it’s like reality and facts can’t get through the filter.”
Why is O’Hara so frustrated? An MPD press release clarified his meaning: “policing in the city has become overly politicized, making it difficult to even discuss the need for effective and adequately resourced police…”
Funding the police has been difficult to even discuss?
How does that square with the reality of O’Hara’s time in Minneapolis? The City Council has approved large annual increases to MPD’s budget, which now stands at $229 million. That’s $50 million higher than when O’Hara became chief in 2022. The historic raises approved by the council in 2024 made officers the highest paid big city cops in the country.
MPD is so well-resourced that slashing items like the horse police have had no effect. They found enough money in the couch cushions to keep horses on the street. Another frequent knock against certain council members is that they failed to put more money in MPD’s social media recruitment campaign. What’s not mentioned is the $289,000 in leftover funding from 2024, waiting to be spent.
As I wrote last week, fear and socialist-baiting is being used to prop up candidates who are flat-out opposed to things like renter protections or workers rights. We have two Frey-aligned PACs, funded with unlimited cash from chamber of commerce types, trying to purge even the most mainstream of progressives. In my decade of covering city issues, never have people been more interested in local politics. And yet the public debate and media conversation may be more polluted with garbage than ever.
Like his predecessors, Mayor Frey has always been the singular boss of MPD. But one year after George Floyd’s murder, a campaign funded 100% by the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce successfully and cynically argued that Frey needed total authority over every other executive branch department. Frey called it a “historic” turning point, “in the making for over 100 years.” City government would become “more efficient and effective.”
Four years after the misdirection over “14 bosses,” we don’t talk much about the concept of having just the one boss. Local news coverage regularly does a disservice by leaving the mayor unmentioned in stories about failure and mismanagement in Frey’s executive branch.
After a first term begun with a pledge to end homelessness in five years, Frey spent much of his second term shuffling encampments from one block to the next. By the latter half of 2024 he was regularly holding indignant press conferences pretending the City Council was preventing him from solving the problem.
In the case of Davis Moturi, O’Hara dodged accountability by blaming Moturi for getting shot. Later he joined Frey for a press conference where they accused critics on the council of playing politics.
But because I’m a fan of public works issues, my favorite who’s in charge? misdirect is from Andrea Corbin, chair of the Uptown Association. At an April 7 meeting, as the crowd was getting riled up over parking, Corbin told them, “the City Council appoints people that are on our Minneapolis Transportation Department.” She urged the crowd to consider that fact when deciding who to support this year.
But there is no such entity as the Minneapolis Transportation Department. And if she meant the Public Works Department, well, Jacob Frey is the boss of that. One reason we know Frey is the boss: after he was introduced by Corbin at the very same meeting, Frey announced he’d be restoring free parking at several intersections along Hennepin Avenue in Uptown. It was the eve of the Minneapolis DFL caucuses, and nobody has the power to pander like a strong mayor.
(Important note: Corbin is also a 2024 MN GOP donor who chairs the new PAC “We Love Minneapolis,” managed by Frey’s 2021 campaign manager Joe Radinovich. Their goal is to spend $600,000 to influence the DFL endorsement process by boosting Frey-aligned candidates for City Council.)
I won’t tell you which issue should decide your vote for mayor and city council this year. But four years after government restructuring, this was supposed to be the first election with the mayor on the ballot where we could draw a clear line between the issues we care about and those who are responsible. We should try harder to get it right. Government will function better and be more responsive if we hold our leaders accountable for things they have actually said and done.
Listen to this week’s podcast episode with D.A. Bullock where we discuss fear politics and the tenure of Chief O’Hara.