Budget Committee September 15, 2025   9/15/2025

Good morning.

My name is Aisha Chugtai and I'm the chair of the Budget Committee.

I'm going to call to order our adjourned meeting for Monday, September 15, 2025.

Before we begin the meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all members, staff, and the public.

that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation.

These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community.

Therefore, all speakers need to be mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for the broadcast.

We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments.

Council Member Payne is absent.

Rainville?

Present.

Allison is absent.

Osman is absent.

Jenkins is absent.

Chavez?

Present.

Chaudhry is absent.

Palmisano is absent.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

Colleagues, today we have two presentations related to the mayor's recommended 2026 budget.

One from the Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center, or 911, and one from the police department.

We'll first begin with the presentation from 911, and for that I will now invite Joni Hodney, Emergency Communications Center Director, to begin the first presentation.

Welcome, good morning.

Good morning Chair Chokchai and Councilmembers.

I am Joni Hodney, the Director of Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center.

I'm here to present the proposed budget

for MECC for 2026, and I'm happy to be here to launch our budget presentations.

All right, I'm going to start with describing where MECC falls into the structure of the Office of Community Safety.

We are one of the departments that reports directly to the commissioner,

and of course the commissioner reporting up to the mayor.

We also have engagement with the public and the mayor during the decisions for our budget.

For the MECC organization chart for the department overview, our internal MECC organization chart shows that the radio shop, the training department and data collection fall directly under the director.

The operations and floor staff fall directly under the assistant director.

The rest of the management staff has supervisors and floor staff that report directly up to them.

Starting with our mission goals and priority objectives in MECC,

Our staff of Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center help save lives, protect property, and assist the public in their time of need.

We achieve this by providing the critical link between public safety responders and the communities we serve by being efficient, courteous, and compassionate.

To provide transparency for this mission, we continue to build our Outcomes Minneapolis Framework Database used to demonstrate the work goals and accomplishments in MECC.

Some of our priority objectives are to provide professional customer service to everyone we engage with in the public and those we serve in the community safety responders.

We ensure that we're connecting anyone who lives, works, or visits the city of Minneapolis with services needed through direct engagement or through making sure our radio communications is keeping the city responders in communication.

We work in full support of the City of Minneapolis racial and equity impact analysis, providing caring support during crisis for Minneapolis communities, demonstrating understanding, commitment to equality regardless of age, gender, race, sex or economic status.

This QR code will link you to the Outcomes Minneapolis dashboards that we have set up for the 911 call center.

Using Outcomes Minneapolis dashboards, we track call volumes, call answer times, and quality assurance scores.

So far in 2025, we have processed nearly 400,000 emergency and non-emergency calls.

We strive to meet the National Emergency Number Association, otherwise known as NENA, standard for answering calls 90% of the time within 15 seconds.

These dashboards will demonstrate to you where we fall in the answering times.

As of right now, we are back to showing that we're getting back to that 95%, 90% of the time.

Summer months with the heavier call volume, we tend to dip below that a little bit.

We continue to increase the number of calls reviewed for service, currently scoring 93% of our calls at or above an acceptable 80% for quality assurance.

This scoring not only helps us to ensure people of the City of Minneapolis are getting the best possible services from MECC, but also shows us areas for improvement and for training of staff.

Just a few of our 2025 achievements.

We launched the first embedded social worker in MECC beginning the start of this month.

Currently she's completing her training and will begin taking calls the first of October.

We're excited to provide more services that benefit the residents and the overall ecosystem described in the Safe and Thriving Communities Report.

We've partnered with 311 for many community education

when we used 311 versus 911.

One of the results of this was a significant reduction in calls to 911 over the 4th of July holiday weekend.

We received the fewest number of calls over the 4th of July holiday weekend that we've received in years.

Future goals will be to integrate this education with additional services such as 211 and 911 and continuing to get that out to the public on when each of these services are available.

We have achieved near full staffing for the first time in several years, and the radio shop successfully completed its transition to MECC in 2025.

Some of the risks in the 911 center.

To keep up with the quick changing technology, security to our systems needs to be regularly evaluated and monitored.

We are acutely aware and watching for cybersecurity risks in the 911 system.

We work closely with our IT department to ensure that we have a safe working platform.

We never know what will be on the other end of that line when we answer a call or dispatch for service.

Maintaining well-being and avoiding burnout are key factors to successfully managing the dispatch center staff.

One of the biggest lessons learned for us is as a city we've been striving to provide alternate services for those in the city of Minneapolis.

While MECC is 24-7-365, it often seems to be a good fit for occurrences overnight and on the weekends.

While we approach new projects with enthusiasm, we need to use caution that we don't exceed capacity and stray from the mission of what we are here for, emergencies.

Demonstrated in this slide shows that the majority of our expenses are wages and fringes.

A much smaller portion of our budget goes to maintaining operating correct costs, equipment and contractual services.

Integrated into MECC is the radio shop.

The operating expenses of the radio shop is just over $2 million, a small portion of the overall MECC budget.

MECC is not a revenue generating department, whereas the radio shop does have approximately $400,000 worth of revenue generated from services provided.

Our adopted budget for 2025 had us at 93 full-time employees for the radio shop and 911 combined.

The recommended budget for 2026 reduces that FTE by one vacant position in 911.

While this is not ideal and is uncomfortable, all administration and every department was asked to look for ways to reduce the budget without any layoffs.

Therefore, our attention was directed to vacant positions.

Currently, MECC has five vacancies.

Four of those currently have had background checks and are in the process of background checks and ready to start class in October.

One vacant position is currently not being filled to allow for the proposed reduction in 2026.

Some of our program

updates and the objectives key projects is providing the best service to our stakeholders through training, technology, and compassion.

MECC is continually working to streamline processes

with the department that we dispatch for.

Animal Control, BCR, Traffic Control, MPD, and MFD are all departments that we work with within our center.

Key components to making this successful is aligning with new technology and retaining staff so we can develop growth to new levels.

Not only do our dashboards reflect successful key factors, but our relationships built with other city departments throughout the city of Minneapolis.

The Radio Shop, as I stated earlier, reflects a little over $2 million of our budget.

They provide reliable, secure, and cutting-edge communications.

to ensure that mission-critical radio systems for the safety responders and effectiveness of the safety responder personnel.

Our technicians possess expertise in radio communications technologies, provide timely diagnosis, repairs, and installations.

Clearing tickets for service quickly, ensuring projects adhere to timelines, and upgrading equipment swiftly with no break in communications.

Adjustments done to the proposed 2026 budget include reducing expenses of administrative costs in printing, food and beverage expenses for open houses, outside contractual and professional services, and miscellaneous repairs.

We continue to assess ongoing projects to align with spending and organizational goals.

Using our budget wisely has allowed us to stay within our allotted annual budget over the past several years.

Some of the budget changes and reductions.

While the number of calls has dropped slightly in 2025, the need for staffing numbers remains consistent.

As we continue to grow closer to our allotted FTEs, call processing for our telecommunicators has increased in complexity as it changes what the safety and alternative responses look like.

Investing in tools and technologies that drive efficiency would help to minimize labor and reduce overhead costs.

These tools could help us in streamlining the data collection, increase quality assurance methods, and provide call handling assistance tools.

In turn, this would allow us to shift workloads around, eliminate unnecessary costs of overlapping activities, and prioritize in new areas.

During the next Administration Oversight Committee on September 29th, I'll be presenting to you some software that can add to our ability to enhance quality assurance and assist in call handling automated tools, similar to some of the technology I'm talking about on this slide.

Supplemental information related to budget changes to ensure optimal utilization of the current budget will focus on streamlining expenditures by prioritizing high impact initiatives, eliminating redundancies, and seeking cost-effective alternatives.

By strategically reallocating funds, improving processes, and seeking alternative solutions, we can maximize the impact of our existing budget and ensure long-term financial sustainability.

We've been effectively reducing the overtime costs over the past couple of months.

While MUCC will never completely be without overtime expenses, achieving staffing levels that correspond well throughout our schedule contributes to the reduction.

Thank you for that presentation Director Hodney.

Thank you Madam Chair.

I was curious about the the radio shop.

Oh, you know, that may be just because they just moved under us into MECC.

They've had eight people in the radio shop for some time.

Comparing last year's budget and this year's budget with them has been a little complicated because they haven't been in our department to pull those historical numbers.

Thank you so much, Director, for being here and thank you for all of the work that your team does.

I've had the honor to do a couple sit-alongs with your team and hope to do another one here in the future as well.

It is incredible work of what they do and how quickly they need to think and act and I know that that has a tremendous toll on them and so I'm grateful to hear about the Embedded Social Worker I'm grateful to hear about the other wellness programs as well so it's really great to hear about some of the

work that you're doing and so mostly this is just a kudos to all that you do because you really are our first responder and the rest of our first responders couldn't do the other amazing work without all of you and want you to know that and my deepest gratitude for what you do.

Just I had one question about the role that's being eliminated.

Chair Choctaw, Vice Chair Koski, thank you for those wonderful comments for our department.

It's appreciated.

The attrition rate at MECC kind of revolves around having vacancies pretty regular

mainly because people come in through classroom, they decide that this isn't what they thought it was going to be.

So it's more or less an ongoing vacant position that we try to fill.

We may get up to the full 69 floor staff numbers, but then generally we have a retirement or we have someone that's not making it through classroom successfully.

Okay, thank you.

You know, it's really important that we maintain a schedule that allows for people to have time off, time for well-being.

So as I said in my earlier slide, while this is not ideal circumstances,

We are looking as a community at the Office of Community Safety Community in the ways that we can help better serve the, continue to serve the city without having strong impacts on other departments as well.

Okay, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Hodney for this presentation.

I'm looking forward to hearing about the embedded social worker.

Chair Chuktai, Council Member Palmisano, absolutely we will be continuing to update you.

We're excited about this program and looking forward to seeing what she can bring to helping with the mental health calls specifically that we get down there at 9-1-1 which tie up the call takers for a longer time period and being able to provide some resources.

Thank you.

And then on slide seven, one of your last sentences I thought was interesting.

You said, while we can approach new projects with enthusiasm, we cannot exceed capacity and stray from the mission of what we are here for, emergencies.

Do you feel that you've reached that limit?

I think we are at that limit or very close to that limit.

I think it's difficult for us to continue to add outside services or outside requests.

when we don't have companion partners such as 311 being open only until 7 o'clock at night or some of the other departments that aren't open 24 hours a day.

Thank you.

So as technology has changed, so has our need for, we've had an allotted amount of expense for copying, for printing.

A lot of that can be done through technology now and it's put onto our websites through a home page that we have where we can communicate out information.

Some of the contractual services may be us looking at some different services to help with more of the deep cleaning in the center using

the NBC services a little bit more to help do some of the cleaning.

I see.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you Madam Chair, thank you Director Hodney.

You've done an amazing job this year staffing up and moving into the new office space and I'm really grateful for that.

I'm really grateful for everyone in your department.

Like Vice Chair Koski said, you really are the first responders and it's such a relief to live in a city where we can call 911 and have someone pick up.

so quickly and get our call into the right hands.

I just had a couple questions about slide 14 on investing in tools and technologies that drive efficiency, minimize labor, reduce overhead costs.

Chair Choctaw, Council Member Cashman, thank you.

So I'll start with going back a couple of years when we installed what was known as ASAP2PSAP, which is the alarm companies having the ability to directly

key in their information right into our dispatch center to a dispatcher.

That right there has already eliminated about 25,000 calls a year that call takers have to actually pick up the phone and take because it's a direct input.

Also, our automated abandoned callback system that we installed last year has helped tremendously.

We get a phenomenal amount of pocket dials

and this system will call people back and give them the option to let us know, yes, this is an emergency.

Some of the other tools and some of this I'll be presenting, as I said, at the AEO on the 29th, we have some tools that are available to us to help with translation services, training.

It can help with quality assurance and help to

speed up that process.

Right now every quality assurance piece is done manually and all the pieces are pulled together by one person from different systems.

This system will allow us to be able to do that in a more automated manner.

That's great to hear.

I'm looking forward to hearing more about that in AEO committee.

Thank you.

Last call for any additional questions or comments.

Not seeing any.

Thank you so much for coming in.

You completed, you were our last presentation last year and the first one this year.

Good morning Vice President, thank you.

Good morning.

So we're using obviously the standard format that we have for all of the departments.

The first slide is showing basically that we report through, we're one of the five departments that report through the Office of Community Safety to the mayor and ultimately to the people of the city.

This is the table of organization for the police department.

It was revised August of 23 when the council approved certain structural changes.

The department has two branches.

An assistant chief is in charge of each branch.

The operations branch is commanded by Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell.

The community trust and engagement branch is commanded by Assistant Chief Chris Gaiters.

Underneath each branch are the bureaus.

So three bureaus are overseen by sworn deputy chiefs and two bureaus are overseen by civilian deputy chiefs of the police department.

So the Patrol Bureau, Investigations and Professional Standards Bureau are each overseen by a sworn member and the Constitutional Policing Bureau and the Internal Affairs Bureau are overseen by civilian deputy chiefs.

Within the Constitutional Policing Bureau, that's a new bureau from last year, we have the Implementations Unit, the Inspections Unit, Policy and Research, and U-Visa.

Under the Internal Affairs Bureau, which is also new, having Internal Affairs structured as a bureau, the Candidate Investigations Section, Force Investigations, and the Internal Complaint Investigations.

Under the Professional Standards Bureau, you have the Administrative Services Division, Community Outreach, Procedural Justice, and our Training Division.

Next slide.

So just for purposes of the budget, actually can you go back one please?

For purposes of the budget,

The budget is divided into four budgetary programs.

Investigations is one, public safety which includes patrol and special operations, constitutional policing which includes implementation, procedural justice, and then professional standards which includes IA, training, administration for fleet, IT, and records.

Thank you.

So this is an overview of the mission, vision, values, and goals that was approved by MDHR and ALIFA after some extensive community feedback, essentially breaking down the purpose of the police department to reduce serious crime while earning community trust

and rebuilding the police department.

The goals to deliver excellent services, reduce crime, build trust, provide safe and healthy environment for our employees.

The vision that we're rooted in transparency, accountability, trust and an unwavering commitment to serve all people fairly.

Our values are grounded in the foundational belief in the sanctity of human life, that all human life is inherently sacred, valuable, and must be protected.

So the outcomes Minneapolis objectives, this is a standard kind of format that we had to fit what the police department does into this.

So the objectives that

We chose to fit into this structure as best we could, provide emergency response to criminal activity and 911 calls to create a safe community for everyone, create an environment of trust, provide justice to victims, and hold offenders accountable, process crime scenes and evidence, investigate criminal activity in support of effective prosecutions, and provide outreach to the most vulnerable community members.

Recruit qualified individuals who reflect the makeup of the city, conduct outreach to building trusting relationships with all we serve, and adhere to the settlement agreement and MDHR reform requirements.

Provide public safety without bias, ensure resources are used effectively, and ensure officers are healthy, well trained, accountable, and professional.

Thank you.

So the next slide is, this is the median police response time.

And this is for priority one calls for service.

Priority one is generally a serious crime in progress or a life-threatening emergency.

The goal for priority one calls for service everywhere in the city is to respond at or under seven minutes.

and you can see the median is 8 minutes and 29 seconds, which is the same as it was last year, slightly less than 22 and 23, but still significantly above what had been normal prior to 2020.

It's not on here, but the goal for other calls, Priority 2 calls, which are generally reports

is at or under 20 minutes or less and then the lowest priority that we have is 90 minutes or less.

Next slide.

So the outcomes measures for the investigations and forensics.

This is just listing basically every piece of evidence that our investigators and forensics division process.

You can see it's a lot of cell phones.

DCCs are

Discharged shell casings, ballistics.

E-Traces are traces of either firearms or the shell casings that we recover from scene.

We do that through the ATF.

Firearms processed or recovered, whether it's through an arrest or at a crime scene.

The number of scenes responded to, the number of vehicles processed, and the number of video recoveries conducted.

This is a measure of the number of firearms recovered by the MPD.

As you can see, it's generally hovering around a thousand for the last few years.

And so in relation to the goal of having a healthy workforce, the measurement that we have is a survey from employees that our health and wellness unit conducted.

Health and wellness is staffed by a psychologist and two sworn members currently.

And we had 242 respondents to the survey over a 14-day period, representing a diverse cross-section of sworn and civilian employees within the police department.

and this is just their awareness of the various health and wellness services available.

Next slide is showing the current sworn staffing.

So this is everybody.

This isn't just new hires.

Prior to 2020, the department was 75% white and 25% people of color.

As of 2025, today, it is two-thirds white and a little over a third people of color.

And you'll see that's because of who the people are that we're hiring.

management decisions and equity impacts training so that this is just to maximize the existing budget training.

There's a focus now on trying to stay local, doing things online and in-house with partner agencies, which again is difficult because there's about 152 hours of additional training that's required for personnel under the state settlement agreement as well as the consent decree.

We're using our crime pattern response protocol to try and be as effective as we can with our resources, particularly when we have these crime sprees.

Last year we had difficulties with groups of juveniles committing armed robbery sprees, which were many, several armed robberies being committed around the city in a short period of time.

This year the challenge most recently has been these sprees of property damage, car windows being broken, and some thefts from vehicles.

Those are a little bit more challenging.

Obviously it's less serious of a crime than a person being robbed.

but it's more challenging to respond to because we don't necessarily know when these cars are being damaged.

If a person isn't there, they report it to us several hours later, it's a bit more difficult to use this response.

We have the Public Safety Partnership which is not a grant per se, but it's something we applied to, we were awarded from the Department of Justice where the Department of Justice has a group of folks we meet with

and the City Council are able to provide services for the city whether it's exchange programs with other cities and some technical assistance in terms of experts that can come in and assist the police department.

Utilizing grant funding to purchase forensic lab equipment

We've utilized the JAG Fund for evidence boxes, security cameras, evidence drying chamber, and the Paul Coverdell forensic science grant for equipment to triage discharge cell casings.

We're utilizing virtual reality equipment to reduce the cost of ammunition, taser probes, and training personnel for the new use of force training.

Department-wide race and other equity metrics.

There's approval of a new policy for nondiscriminatory policing and procedural justice that's pursuant to the MDHR settlement agreement.

There's been public listening sessions regarding our policies.

Everything that's covered under the consent decree, those listening sessions continue.

The unity community collaboration, we're still working through the memorandum of agreement with several reforms that are covered within that.

and the DOJ Community Oriented Policing Grant, which is the focus on the recruitment and retention of women officers.

We've just been awarded that, the 30 by 30 initiative.

And we are developing a new recruitment plan focusing on continuing to diversify the police department.

The police department, we've hired over 100 people so far this year for sworn positions.

It's going to take them a variety of time periods to become officers, but the majority of the people that we have hired this year are people of color.

achievements.

There is an overall reduction in overall crime.

Every category of violent crime continues to be down year-to-date compared to last year.

Property crime as well is down year-to-date compared to last year.

The one particular type of crime that is up is destruction of property that's up about 4% year-to-date and that's being driven by these

you know, smash and grab sprees that we've had damaging windows to cars.

It's 145 total new hires in 2025, including all the different pathways to becoming police officers.

We hired two civilian bureau chiefs, as I mentioned.

We have conducted facilities improvements pursuant to the MDHR agreement.

There is a new first precinct.

The second precinct has had considerable work done for upgrades and there's ongoing work to other police facilities.

Internal Affairs and OPCR misconduct SOPs have been approved by the independent monitor and all Internal Affairs backlog cases that resulted in coaching going back several years through the end of March of this year have been audited by the monitor.

The use of force policies have been approved and we are about two-thirds of the way through completing the new three-day use of force training.

Risks and lessons learned.

There obviously continues to be a staffing shortage.

We are today about 600 in sworn, total sworn members.

That includes 32 recruits that are still in the academy that have yet to hit the street.

You know we depend on overtime and critical staffing overtime just to answer 911 calls for minimum staffing as well as to do any of the other crime suppression initiatives that are necessary whether it's late night safety around some of the bars in the city or responses to some of the crime patterns as they pop up.

We're using short-term contracts to address force investigations backlog that's obviously not sustainable.

The long-term goal is to build out the force investigations team, which will require significantly more personnel, both sworn and civilian.

and the City Council.

Any further reductions obviously would have a dramatic impact whether it be on settlement agreement compliance or response and level of service.

Staffing is not keeping pace with the required workload in training caseloads, et cetera.

It's just a matter of math.

There remains a much higher caseload than what was normal prior to 2020 and at the same time there's additional work that was not here in 2020.

It's all work around settlement agreement compliance as well as additional training that's required from those agreements.

The data systems were not conceptualized for the purpose of complying with these agreements.

These data systems are all individually siloed and this is a challenge that's not just unique to Minneapolis.

I think every city that's gone through a consent decree has the same issue and it is a difficult problem to get through and certainly one that's expensive.

Recidivism remains a problem, particularly finding appropriate facilities for young offenders that are kind of on the fringe, the small group that are very, very active.

Reduction in crime obviously requires a greater use of resources, particularly as we have spikes and very, very high frequencies of crime within a short period of time.

And then there's obviously inflation due to contracts and collective bargaining agreements And just like the rest of the city, we're expecting to have less grant funding as we go forward

Lessons learned, the crime pattern response protocol has been effective, as has been I think some of our outreach with juvenile offenders and trying to build relationships with their families and connect them with services.

The dedication to deadline compliance has required staff being repurposed from regular duties and requires both additional time and resources.

Obviously collaboration is key and having all voices at the table as early as possible to solve potential issues arising in the future.

A wellness director obviously is essential to long term where we need to be for our health and wellness, particularly for our officers, and I think we've seen that

It's especially true over the last couple of weeks, and the lack of a communications director within the MPD has definitely hindered our ability both to respond timely, but also to be a bit more strategic.

and there's clearly a lag time between hiring people for sworn positions and when we're able to get them out onto the street.

There's extensive requirements to be licensed within the state and whether that's young people that we're getting, that we're hiring, we're paying for them to go to college and paying them to be community service officers while they do that.

In some cases it's two or three years before we can get them into the academy.

and even with folks who have bachelors degrees and masters degrees, there's still several months of schooling that they have to go through as cadets before we're able to get them into the academy.

Madam Chair, committee members, I'm Vicki Troswick, MPD Finance Director.

This slide shows our 2026 mayor recommended budget $229.3 million 98% of this is considered the general fund the other 2% about 3.7 is grant funded or special revenue funds and those grant funds would be we have CDBG that supports seven crime prevention specialists and

We have a couple people that go out to establishments and audit the gambling establishments.

Then we have an auto theft funded by an auto theft grant and then a data analyst.

So those are kind of our grant funding, just 2% of our total, but this slide represents all funds.

And as you can see, this is by expense type, so almost 80% of our budget is personnel.

There's an additional $36 million that our internal service charges, our allocation charges that are fixed, that's about 16% of our budget.

and you can see contractual service has increased a little bit and that is mainly due to those internal service charges the IT, the rent, the fleet that went up three million and then when you look at the I guess it's yellow the operating that has a reduction and that's related to our liability insurance allocation went down about four million dollars and that's reflected in the operating costs

This is a similar slide.

I should have said the change in our 25 to 26 budget is minimal.

It's about $322,000 reduction.

So we had the increases in the allocation models, then the decrease in the liability.

We have our normal increases for salary and fringe.

And then we had a 2% reduction, about $5 million for our mayor-recommended reductions.

And we'll go through the detail in that on a slide later.

This slide represents the budgets organized by the budgetary program.

So our largest program is our public safety program and that's our patrol and special operations.

This is where you'll see the reduction of that 4.9 liability insurance that will fall under that program as well as some of the CSOT reduction that we proposed.

and then we have our investigations and forensics area.

That had an increase of 1.7 and that's probably mainly the personnel settled contracts.

and then our special services, professional standards, I'm sorry.

That's where internal affairs, training, administration, that's where you're going to see the increase related to those allocation charges for the IT, the rent, the fleet.

And then lastly we have the constitutional policing program.

That includes our implementation unit, our procedural justice, and our community engagement.

And that's been growing since 2023 due to the implementation, the compliance for the settlement agreement.

This slide shows our changes in FTE from 25 to 26.

So we did have an increase of two FTEs for compliance specialists in our implementation unit.

And that was proposed in our 25-26 adopted budget.

And then we took non-personnel and did an administrative addition for one of the bureau chief additions.

So those were increases.

And then the decreases that we proposed are five FTEs.

And that will be in our reductions that we'll discuss later.

Two of them were case investigators that were new in 25.

One was a community navigator, one is a police support technician from the training area, and one was an OSS2 in licensing.

And then we had two transfers, one to the auditor and one to the OCS, so that was a net change of four FTEs.

Our vacancies are 140 total, 119 of that are in sworn, so that's a total vacancy rate of about 14.5%.

We do have 16 civilian vacancies and we are holding the five that we're proposing in our 26th rejection vacant as well.

Thank you Director, Vice President.

So as I mentioned before, the police department is broken down into four, the police department budget is broken down into four budgets.

The first section, the Constitutional Policing Program, this includes community outreach, procedural justice, and the implementation unit.

Obviously the primary goal of the implementation unit is to ensure compliance with both state and federal consent decrees.

Our recruitment and CSO program is to ensure we're able to recruit qualified and diverse candidates.

And community outreach includes the crime prevention specialists, our chaplains, and the embedded social worker program that we have.

Some key projects in the activity of constitutional policing, recruitment efforts that prioritize hiring candidates with diverse backgrounds who reflect the demographic makeup of the city.

People that were hiring last year and this year, the group of people for sworn positions is literally more diverse than the city.

It is more than half people of color.

evaluate existing policy and develop new policy to ensure compliance with reform initiatives.

That's been very, very heavy over the past year.

That's when the bulk of the work of revising policy is done under both the state and federal consent decree, because obviously you cannot hold people accountable for new policies unless you've trained them.

and you cannot train them unless there's a policy in place.

And the way that it's set up under both of these consent decrees is you have to have community input, you have to have input from both the Federal, the Independent Monitor, ELIFA, as well as MDHR.

And so it's been a very

very, very resource intensive and timely process to get policies approved and then from that we move on to getting the training approved, actually training personnel and then having those new requirements go into effect for the entire department.

Officer culture offer culturally competent, language specific, and religion sensitive crime scene assistance.

Organize and facilitate community engagement sessions, represent the department at local community events, build strong relationships with community members to foster trust and mutual understanding, and administer the U visa program to create positive relationships between MPD and our communities while providing support to vulnerable victims of crime.

constitutional policing metrics of success.

Obviously diversity in recruitment and hiring is tracked and reported by human resources and reflecting an increase in diversity to each pathway to policing.

Community perception surveys results from that show a comparative year-over-year feeling of safety by precinct.

settlement agreement compliance is reflected in major policy areas such as the new crisis intervention policy, the new mission, vision, values and goals, the new non-discriminatory and procedural justice policies, our critical decision-making model which is used throughout all of our training sessions with our officers, our new emergency medical response policy,

We've created a policy resource hub that will allow members to easily find policies, definitions, and sign off that they have read the new policies.

The policy resource hub is essentially an app that's specific to pushing out the individual policies.

It's something that's searchable, like a Google search.

You can look things up, as opposed to the current setup, which was basically just a PDF that you could access off of your phone.

We've hosted community engagement sessions as well as internal sessions with our employees to get feedback on all of these policies.

We completed five QRPs.

These are quarterly review panels.

They cover six topics, which are the level one and level two uses of force.

citations, traffic stops, pedestrian stops, discretionary searches, and arrests.

So we've been conducting these panels pursuant to the settlement agreement even prior to the new policies being in place.

And it just helps us to ensure better quality assurance and follow up from a review of what officers are actually doing in the field.

Our compliance team has conducted literally hundreds of hours of reviews on videos of use of force,

from in-car cameras, body-worn cameras, as well as ensuring procedural justice techniques are being used during stops.

And so the picture shown are the top 10 activity types in 2025 for our crime prevention specialist, which is also under this Bureau.

And community contact obviously being the most common, business contact, and then community meeting following that.

Next program is Investigations and Forensics.

This includes our Violent Crimes Investigations Division, Special Crimes Investigations Division, Intelligence Division, and Forensic Services Division.

Objectives include processing crime scenes and evidence and investigate criminal activity in support of effective prosecutions so that offenders can be held accountable, victims can get justice, and outreach services are provided.

ensure children, victims of intimate partner violence, victims of sexual assault, human trafficking, juvenile services and communities disproportionately affected by violence receive the care and support they deserve.

Track crime patterns, direct geographic patrol efforts to reduce violence.

and key projects and activities under this program.

We have our gun investigations unit, the homicide unit, and the juvenile unit which all participate in the group violence intervention program with the neighborhood safety department.

We have a domestic violence pilot project assessing gaps in response to domestic violence.

and assessing the risk of those involved.

That started a couple months ago in North Minneapolis in the 4th Precinct and it's soon going to be expanding to the 3rd Precinct.

That's something that we're working on with a number of groups to basically assess the effectiveness of the risk assessment tool that we're using responding to domestic violence.

Metrics of a success monitor evidence handling and review internal processes track and report evidence process such as cell phones shell casings firearms scene response vehicles processed and video recoveries by year and maintain accreditation for our forensics lab

The next program is our professional standards.

This includes internal affairs, administrative services, as well as training.

The increase in budget is from personnel per contract and contractual increases due to internal charges for IT, rent, and fleet.

Objectives are to provide public safety without bias, ensure resources are used effectively, ensure officers are healthy and well trained, ensure officers are accountable and provide professional services consistent with expectations of the community and the settlement agreement, review and investigate internal affairs complaints, and complete background checks on new employees.

and the City Council.

In addition to the key projects and activity of professional standards, crisis intervention training provides tools to respond safely and effectively during high stress situations.

Implementation of an early intervention system, assist in identifying needs for professional

This continues to be in progress.

The Internal Affairs Division works with the Office of Police Conduct Review to investigate violations of the Department's Policy and Procedural Manual, provides investigative support to critical incidents, maintains the confidentiality of internal affairs investigations and records, and conducts candidate investigations for the hiring process.

metrics of success, conduct wellness survey to track awareness and satisfaction with our wellness services that are offered for our employees, track internal affairs case backlog, and review and revise curriculum.

Public safety program which includes patrol and special operations, budgetary decrease

is mainly a liability insurance of $4.8 million and CSOT of $1.5 million with an offsetting increase in personnel and internal charges such as rent.

The objectives, obviously the 9-1-1 response and specialty response as needed.

Supply patrol personnel, civilian professional staff and investigators to five precincts.

Provide emergency response to criminal activity.

Respond to 9-1-1 calls and community needs for safety and security.

Investigate thefts, burglaries and property crimes.

Provide specialty teams to investigate and protect the safety of the community and respond to significant incidents.

public safety key activities and metrics the community response team which assists with filling the gaps for response related to livability issues that take more time such as street level drug activity loitering and other problems that residents and community are raising to the local precinct inspector

They assist and are available to all precincts to assist with gun investigations, community disputes, and other livability issues.

Community M-STAT meetings within all precincts to keep the community informed and disseminate appropriate information.

It's a great opportunity to work with community and share pertinent information.

Generally happens about every six weeks and we try to rotate it around all the neighborhoods throughout the city.

We are a late night safety plan which originated downtown but also now includes Dinkytown and Uptown.

2025 funding was provided for extra beats on 19th and Nicollet and an officer in Dinkytown as well.

Thank You chair committee members Vicki Troswick MPD finance director again So this these are our proposed reductions Totaling about five million dollars or about two percent of our budget The goals of these changes were not to infect affect city employees.

So no layoffs here We did reduce by five vacant positions the goal was also to minimize the impact to

Both the response to the residents and any impact of victims minimized and as well as consider the settlement agreement compliance needs So this represents five FTE to our case investigators.

We received five in the 2025 budget So we're going to hold two of those five vacant So those were not hired a community navigator position was vacated We currently have nine

community navigators and one manager, so that would be reduced by one.

Then we have a police support tech one.

We had a retirement in the training area, so those duties will be absorbed by other new employees within that area.

And then we have one reduction of an office support specialist two.

Those duties are in the licensing area and they're going to be absorbed by people that help with gambling audits.

So we have absorbed a couple of the longer term vacancies, the support tech one and the support specialist two have been long term vacancies that those duties have been absorbed by other positions.

We also had two transfers during the year.

The other reduction, the largest reduction is going to be the critical staffing overtime, so that pays two times overtime.

So that's about 3.6 million dollars is what we calculated when we use the prior year's CSOT time, reduce it to one and a half times.

and then we have a supplies reduction and that is mainly we have a five-year life on most of our ammunitions and so we're starting to get so we were getting low on stocks or historical purchasing spent a little bit higher than normal so we're trying to reduce it back to that 20% a year and we think that we're able to do that by absorbing the majority of this four hundred and sixty three thousand that would be in supplies and the other areas called operating supplies on our previous chart

and then our training and travel.

Again, the Chief mentioned we're trying to stay local and work with other agencies and so that reduction is $200,000.

We also have $150,000 for the Mounted Patrol that was reduced and reallocated in 25.

We're putting that up again.

We're hoping to find other ways to fund that area and then across the city we were all asked to reduce our food and beverage budget so that was $40,000.

And that concludes our presentation.

Thank you for that presentation.

Colleagues, are there any questions or discussion items?

Thank you Madam Chair, thank you Chief O'Hara and Director Troswick for the presentation.

It was really detailed, I appreciated the analysis of the outcomes on response times and evidence processed by investigators and activities of the crime prevention specialists.

So I just had a few questions to make sure I'm understanding this data correctly.

The first one was about response times.

It said the lowest priority calls have a longer response time of about 90 minutes.

Thank you, Vice President, Council Member.

So the lowest priority is something that's not a crime in progress, it's not a life-threatening incident, it's not anything medical in nature, and it's also not a report of a significant crime.

Okay.

How would trespassing be qualified?

Vice President, Council Member, it's definitely not priority one.

I don't know if it's a priority two.

I don't know if one of the sworn members here would know offhand.

It is two?

Okay, thank you.

Just give me one second to find the slide we're talking about.

Vice President and Council Member, I could go through this but I can tell you offhand just from looking at it knowing what I know, there were definitely less ballistics recovered because there were less shots fired, there were less shootings, there were less rounds being fired in all three of those years, but we'd have to go through it further

because I can see that light blue line that's kind of the biggest.

That says DCC's process.

That's Discharged casings, like it's shell casings, ballistic evidence that's recovered.

And there were definitely a whole lot less rounds being fired ever since 2021.

That's been declining, as well as the number of shooting incidents has been declining each year.

Do we compare year-to-date to year-to-date?

Next is on the recruits, so 145 new recruits this year is really impressive, great work.

Yeah, Vice President, Council Member, we're still having normal attrition and so I think generally the city has about

for sworn positions.

We've lost 35 already this year.

I know there's two separations pending right now.

There's another person that is relatively new that's going to be leaving next month for another city.

So we're at 607.

That includes the 32 recruits that are in the academy that haven't graduated yet.

And there will be some other separations this year.

So

I mean, it's 731 minus 607.

My math isn't that good offhand, but it's still going to fluctuate.

We're going to have at least 20 more recruits go into the academy in October, possibly 22, which is a smaller group than what I had hoped for.

will probably get another two dozen CSOs or so in October and then hire another group of CSOs before the end of the year.

So all that being said, right now there are 32 recruits.

we're including them in the number but they're going to be graduating and going out onto the street before the end of the month there's currently 54 community service officers which is more than the city has ever had and we're probably going to be hiring about two dozen more in October

and a number of cadets that will be coming on as well.

So I think it's possible in a year, two years, for us to get to the charter minimum, but it depends on the rate of attrition.

And there remains

there remains 122 members who are eligible to retire right now.

So that's the trouble.

Okay, that's helpful.

Last couple of questions here is what do you think would be needed to solve more crimes?

Where is capacity limited in investigations?

Council Vice President, Council Member, people.

I mean it's just it's people you know we have the FTEs for sworn we just don't have the people.

We can always use way more civilian investigators we just we don't have the people.

I think I think I think for sure that's the that's the biggest thing and

Whether that comes from FTEs or whether that comes from us being able to get help from other agencies, I would take whatever we could get.

Council Vice President, Council Member, that was just the goal was to try and not have layoffs and to not affect settlement agreement compliance as well as you know the ability to respond and process all of these scenes.

So the decision was made from recommendations that came up individually from each of the components of the department and that's where it landed and I believe

Yes.

I think that's something that I think

Chair, Council Member Cashman, Vicki Troswick, MPD Finance Director.

We have a lot of contractual services, more technology-based, so there's not a lot of room.

You know, when you take out the internal allocation charges, most of those live under that contractual service area, so that's why you see that large group.

But that's 36 million that are internal service charges, so not able to just use that money elsewhere.

And we do have a lot of committed contracts, I think,

Okay, just two more questions, thanks.

Council Vice President, Council Member, every precinct is covered by a CRT team so there's one on the north side that covers the north side and the east side.

Thank you.

And then last question was that part of your reductions was that mounted patrol is reduced.

I have some questions about that given that we did reduce that last year to move it into crime prevention specialists.

Then the mounted patrol remained this year, which I think came from private donations from the downtown council, though I never saw that come through as a gift acceptance in the administration oversight committee.

I know there's still been ongoing work to raise private funds to sustain this into next year.

Thank you.

So, Council Vice President, Councilmember, for clarification, we have not received any donations yet.

At the beginning of the year we I'm sorry chair councilmember cashman at the beginning of the year We had made a decision to reallocate that reduction to other areas.

So we were cutting back on things like improvements to facilities that are required by our

Okay, thanks.

It's in part.

There's officers that work there, so that's excluded.

This amount was simply taken from the 2025 reduction amount.

So I would say there's still some funding.

Could I request a follow up then on the total amount budgeted for amount of patrol and then how much that reduction accounts for?

Thank you and next I will recognize Vice Chair Koski.

Thank you so much Madam Chair.

Thank you so much Chief O'Hara for this presentation.

I appreciate it and appreciate all that your department does every day.

We just heard them probably going to a call right now and just grateful for the work that we see every single day.

I know it's been a tremendous challenge and grateful to see all the achievements and the work that you've been able to do.

support the department.

Just a few questions here.

I saw that one of the community navigators is being eliminated, but I was just curious.

I don't see it anywhere in the police department org chart.

Where do these positions fall within the structure?

Vice President and Vice Chair, the community navigators work with victims of crime, so they're under the investigations

Bureau and specifically under the Violent Crimes Investigations Division.

I'm just not sure if there's a box on the chart for it because we don't have a box for literally everything.

Okay, thank you.

So this might be a similar question then.

Is the Domestic Violence Navigators Program maintained in this budget?

I'm sorry, excuse me, Vice Chair, Vice President.

I'm sorry, could I have the question again?

So there's nine plus one manager, so ten.

Okay, you wanna get that done since you have it?

So community navigators, I believe it's the same as the domestic navigators we have nine plus one manager and we are we did Have a vacancy for that just recently.

So we are going down one navigator.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

So the budget eliminates funding for critical staffing overtime with the expectation that remaining overtime will be covered through sworn vacancies.

Chair Choctaw, Council Member Koski, this is the first year that we're not within budget.

In the past, we've had additional budget for overtime.

And so in 2025, this is the first year we did not receive overtime budget.

And so that is why we are running over.

Unfortunately, it looks like it would be the same experience as next year unless we're able to reduce the number of hours of overtime.

So that would be an operational change.

So this reflects the change in the price of that overtime.

So CSOT is two times.

This reduction reflects we will no longer pay two times.

We have a letter of agreement in place that goes through December 31, 2025.

Okay, that's helpful.

Thank you so much.

I know you went through and listed the positions that were being proposed to be eliminated.

Chair Chug Chai, Council Member Koski.

So as you know, the two new case investigators were never filled.

The community navigator, I believe, has just been vacant for a month or two.

And the police support tech one and specialist two, those have, one of them was a retirement that probably happened in May.

Councilor Cashin asked my questions about the mounted patrol unit.

I guess just another follow-up on that.

Essentially, what is the, what's your expectation for the program?

I'm hearing from you that you would like it to continue and you're going to be figuring out other ways, you're reducing it, but you're figuring out other ways in order to keep it.

Vice President, Vice Chair, yes.

Okay, thank you.

And then another question I have.

Last fall we discussed the overspending in the chief detail line item.

It was budgeted at roughly around $600,000 but had spent over $2 million in the first half of the year and about $4 million by the third quarter.

We were told this was a budget allocation error and that the vast majority was related to expenses for staff that are not budgeted in that division.

Chair Chogtak, Council Member Koski, in the 2026 budget I did do a lot of realignment.

There is still the problem of miscoding and we're going to have that until we can replace Workforce Director.

Just when they bring on new people and the coding that goes in place and how the systems connect is not, it's not working very well.

So we do still have that issue.

That was the majority of that problem.

But I did reallocate budgets.

I know

For instance, the chaplain was in that budget, so that was reallocated to the community engagement area.

So I did do a lot of line item revisions, so realigning the budget across areas.

Chair Choctaw, Council Member Koski, I realigned them to other divisions but we're still going to see that problem depending on what they're using for a default code when they don't know where the position goes or something errors when workforce director talks to comment.

If it errors then there's a default code they use and so unfortunately that's what that was.

I just think, you know, you gave me a 10 year look back and it obviously has been happening for 10 years.

I'm just curious like what would be the best remedy?

Is it technology?

And what is it that we would need to do in order to shift that?

Chair Chai, Council Member Koski, I think with Workforce Director it will be remedied.

So hopefully by the end of 26 that will be on board and Workforce Director and Comet will be able to talk to each other.

And so I don't think we're gonna have that And also just trying to align where people are budgeted.

They do move around in this division and it is heavy in personnel so even when you know our

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thanks Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here, Ms. Troswick and Chief.

A couple questions.

Our response time has stayed the same for five years.

I know Chief O'Hara's goal is seven minutes.

When do you anticipate starting to see the rewards of this additional staffing?

Vice President, Councilmember, hopefully in another year or two we can see a significant decline.

We've been hovering with basically the same number of people total sworn

for the last year

within two years of them being hired, they will be through the academy.

So it's just a matter of increasing the total sworn staffing.

Thank you, I do appreciate that.

I'm also particularly interested in the health and wellness of our officers.

I know that having healthy officers or having safe officers in some of the categories that you shared like confidential counseling, peer support, employee assistance have real good markers of awareness, you called it on your slide, but then others like drug counseling, rehab, stress management seem to be lacking.

Council Vice President, Council Member, yes, they've been

They've been trying to visit the commands at least once a week, the Health and Wellness Unit, to establish relationships with employees.

And I think they've been very successful at trying to normalize this stuff.

And even two weeks ago, when we had that tragedy, we had our health and wellness team respond to the scene.

and I think I've got I know I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from officers who are affected that they just they feel that we've been more intentional about ensuring health and wellness so I think it's just a matter of continuing what we're doing what we're doing to establish relationships around the commands have the folks present in training

and have training that explains everything that is available.

Thank you.

I will also note that you had mounted patrol there at Harper Moesky's memorial service yesterday at the Bandshell and it was lovely.

They were not there as security or they weren't actually mounted.

They were truly there for visitors, for healing, for petting, for just general interaction with the public and it was a real positive point of a really sad day.

In your Risks and Lessons Learned slide, you had also mentioned the importance of a wellness director.

Can you remind me, is that a new director that was named?

Council, Vice President, Council Member, that is something that is required for Consent Decree compliance.

That would be a new position.

It's not something that we currently have.

I see.

The other pieces of that risks and lessons slide just real quickly The force investigations relying on contractors and an internal affairs backlog.

Council Vice President, Council Member

This is a new component, was not required by the settlement agreement, but I do believe it's a best practice.

We currently have one commander, a lieutenant, two sergeants, a case investigator that's a police officer, and two civilian case investigators there.

The contracted service that we have assists with the administrative backlog.

but the problem is the volume is still too great that once we cease having that service we will begin to create another backlog so eventually it will take additional civilian investigators as well as some additional sworn personnel because I think the goal is

or at least my goal would be to have sufficient investigative staff including sworn staff that they would be able to respond to the scene of serious use of force incidents.

Yeah, thank you.

That's informative and it's also instructive of kind of how we build future budgets.

My last question is just simply more external facing and you mentioned youth recidivism in that slide of risks and lessons learned and I'm just curious, have we seen any improvement at this point in youth recidivism?

Council Vice President, Council Member, yes.

but it just remains that we have a very small percentage of kids that are the tough kids.

They're tough, you know, they're hard.

They're hard to deal with and the system just isn't prepared to deal with them appropriately.

There aren't existing, you know, places for them and I think that remains a struggle for everybody but I think

the investigators and the police officers that have been doing outreach have established genuine relationships with a lot of family members and some of these kids that they wind up getting information, better information to try and prevent things from happening and we've seen over the last year that we've been doing this

at least, if nothing else, a decline in the seriousness of the crimes that a lot of these kids have been involved in.

Thank you.

I think that's good overall to hear.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Chiu-Kai.

Thank you, Chief, for the presentation.

I just have two quick questions.

The first one is, one of the things I hear the most about from people is related to the Justice Department saying that the Department unlawfully discriminates against black and

Native Americans and so what I hear from people a lot is what is the department doing to recruit in those populations of people specifically and not like you know the whole recruitment package but are there any specific actions that are being taken and and I just want to preference that preference that questions by saying I think people think a way to give back or like fix some of the harms is by

Council Vice President, Council Member, I know at least for the share of African Americans being recruited in the police department has increased over the last year and I know our team has been doing a lot

to try and be as intentional as possible and be present at community events and whatever other spaces we can be in.

I think one pathway, and we're open to going anywhere people will invite us to be to do that, but I think one pathway that I just wish more people knew about, because it could be really

So Chief, I think we have to do a better job at promoting that because I was at, I think it was the mayor's budget presentation and I walked out of the building and there was a young woman, she's black, she's working here at the city and she wants to come up through the department and the first thing she said was, I don't have money, like I can't afford it.

And so we talked to her.

about like some of the programs and things that are available here to her at the city.

But what you just said is a really good example.

This happened the day of the mayor's budget, and she just so happened to be standing outside the building, and she's looking for resources.

And it is a career path that, I mean, I want her to take too, if that's what she wants, right?

But I don't know how we, I'm happy to

talk to you or your staff or whomever and community to figure out how we do that.

But I really do think it's important to community that we target specific communities on this recruitment piece.

I mean, I just hear it a lot.

I hear it a lot from the native and the black community.

So

I'd love to figure out how we work on that.

And I do think one of the pathways to that is you reinstating the PAL program, you know, getting kids at a younger age and having those positive interactions.

I know that works, but we just kind of, I feel like we kind of got to beef it up a little bit and really invest in how we reach out to these, like, true partnerships and reaching out to these communities and letting those communities know, like, we want you, like, we're

here to work with you.

You tell us how we can get you to see this as a career pathway.

And then my second question is, I went to a super cool presentation at the SOC over the last work week with drones as a first responder.

And it was spectacular.

I really liked it.

I liked it for a couple reasons.

The one is, I have a really bad dumping problem.

in North Minneapolis where people just dump 200, some people, I've gotten calls on a Monday or whatever day and there are 200 tires blocking someone from coming out of their alley or just massive amounts of trash and people use the area for a dumping ground and it's not okay and I've tried to figure out

how to rectify it.

We haven't come up with any solutions yet, but I talked to these folks at this presentation about the activity that we have and how these could be used.

So I'm wondering, are you having conversations about these drones as a first responder?

Or is this something for a 2027 budget, maybe not this upcoming budget?

And the other piece to that is,

you know they were talking about we were talking about what was currently in the news and it was those car smashing grabs like those hundreds of cars and what they said to me was the drone could have been there in less than two minutes like being at the scene got photos got like a clear um look at who was there and where they went to and really helped as that first responder so i you know if technology is our friend in

Vice President, Council Member, yes, that was the purpose of having the presentation for everyone to see it.

You know, we haven't had any further conversations after the demonstration, but that's definitely a goal is to try and have

some even a further pilot program to start in the city to try and do something because definitely if we had gotten a call which is that's the biggest if with these smash and grabs somebody's got to call us if people didn't know they're you know these cars got broken into till hours later it's no good but if and it does happen when somebody does call if we are able to put a drone out there yeah I mean it's not not only is it faster but it gives us the evidence then that we need

I do appreciate that we may have to start out with the pilot program because of what we're faced with in this upcoming budget season, but I don't want that to

just kind of go away because I think it would be really good for the city to see like how I mean so many low-level crimes they gave us stats on some cities that use these and and the level of low-level crimes just have significantly changed 43% I think in San Francisco

for like car thefts and they showed us a video of some kids who had got a hold of their parents' guns and were out shooting them and the calls came in and because they had the drone they could see that it was kids outside playing and not like an active shooting happening

Vice President, Council Member, there's no question and I mean you could think of any

serious incident that's happened here outside You know whether recently last few years or what-have-you Anything that's happened outside for sure having a drone as a first responder.

It could have made a difference.

We've got three more speakers left in queue so far.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm just going to go in order of slides.

Starting with slide number eight, regarding outcomes Minneapolis, I would like to see if, Chief, you could share more about MPD's correlation or how they see the correlation between the recovery of guns to homicides and non-fatal shootings.

For example, I see that in 2024 MPD had recovered less guns than the previous year.

and are you on the, sorry, maybe it's, I'm on the revised one so it shows up as slide eight, that one, there we go.

Council President, Council Member, thank you.

I think if you look deeper into what happened, talking about last year with the increase in homicides, it's driven by an increase in fatal shootings.

So while the number of shootings decreased, we had more fatal shootings.

So I don't think there's a correlation with the high numbers of guns that are recovered in that.

We just simply had more shootings that resulted in fatalities.

Fewer shootings overall, just more shootings that resulted in fatalities.

And there's a number of reasons

I'm just thinking for instance two of 2017 if there were similar trends that play out, but we don't have that data so I will ask the clerks if we could get a follow-up of the rates of homicides and non-fatal shootings and

related to also 2017-2018.

I'm just seeing if those trends kind of continue on with what we see what you just pointed out of lower numbers of guns recover but how that relates to fatal and non-fatal shootings.

Moving on to slide 11, which I'll just name the title, Management Decisions, I believe that's what it was, and Equity Impacts.

So I know you discussed a lot of the ways in which MPD is engaging the public around

policy changes and deliberations.

But I know amongst this body in my office, we've received repeated feedback from or by the CCPO that MPD's engagement on policy has been difficult for them in providing meaningful feedback on policy.

So I know the

Well, outside of the policy changes required by the MDHR settlement agreement, MPD does not have an actual policy in which they have to give a certain period of time to the CCPO to give them that space to provide feedback.

So just wanted to see if that's something you all are going to address.

Yes.

What is MPD doing outside, well settlement agreement doesn't manage, requires this, but to address the time that you give the CCPO to provide feedback on policy changes?

Or will you be addressing that?

So what we've been doing lately, our community engagement unit has been dismantled in some sort so we are starting from scratch, we're rebuilding our community engagement so essentially we were interacting with CCPO, attending the community engagement meetings

But when our community manager transitioned, we had to rebuild and start from scratch.

So now that we have a new manager in, we just connected with CCPO again just to get this guy integrated into CCPO meetings.

The policies we give CCPO and other community members the same amount of time

to provide feedback.

I think what we're running into or the issue that we're running into is that it takes so long to get a policy up to the place where we can give it out to the community so that they can provide feedback.

Around, I'd say two to three months ago.

So, Vice President, Council Member, I'll just follow up and ensure that that is included in the process.

I know they've worked very hard to do a number of policies, but the problem we ran into with this is there were deadlines that were all coming up at the same time, and all of these revised policies were going through this

process that's defined by the court documents and it wound up all going into the same funnel at the same time.

And there wound up being difficulties because, you know, it's not just the police department, but MDHR only has a certain number of people that can go through all this stuff as well as a LEFA.

And I suspect that CCPO had

I think CCBO members would or commissioners would love to hear that.

I don't think there's been again feedback provided around the MDHR piece.

That's why I exempted that.

I think you all are moving through.

It's just where CCBO is being overlooked or neglecting.

You just highlighted that piece.

Going to slide 12, really, of course, I think all of us are happy to see a reduction in overall crime.

Also know, and you mentioned this throughout the presentations, that

those efforts can't happen through just sworn officers alone and you talked about some of the partnerships you've utilized to maximize your existing budget and also other programs that you're working through with key external agencies but I did want to know if

you could share a little bit more of other external partnerships or city programs you're utilizing to supplement MPD's traditional policing efforts especially seeing the reduction in carjackings and auto thefts and I know auto thefts for instance there has been and we had Hennepin County Attorney's Office come present to PHS around their auto theft program and the success it was having and MPD then enrolling so seeing is that a partnership that has led to

Thank you, Vice President, Councilmember.

Yes, I just think it's

I think it's difficult to say, you know, it's one thing in particular led to an outcome.

I think it's all important.

I don't have data, I don't have any data specific to things that are, interventions that are hospital-based, but I do know that there's been a whole lot of community-based organizations, even ones that we

when we engage with people, we have relationships and we can make informal, you know, referrals to just making people aware of services that exist in the community.

And I definitely think just establishing better communication and relationships, particularly with some of the guardians and juvenile of some of these kids that are kind of on the extreme.

They're not

They're not the kids that we're talking about in the bulk that can be sort of diverted.

I'm talking about the kids that are very, very active and just in need of

more intense intervention than a lot of times what's available and a lot of times we can be aware even through stuff that we're being told from family that someone is a juvenile is particularly active but we're not able to build a specific case so I think

Yeah, no, and that's why I asked for metrics are being attached to those partnerships.

Just referencing the hospital based again, next step program that's been here for or been a part of the city for more than seven years.

I don't think we've ever seen really concrete metrics of like the correlation of referrals between MPD.

and again outcomes like this if there's leading to a reduction of gunshot wound victims and if there's that data collection happening in place same with the auto thefts of what percentage which I think with the Hennepin County Attorney's Office when they present to us they name a decent percentage of folks enrolled in that program do come from Minneapolis like you're saying the

Okay, sounds, if there's, from my understanding, it must exist, but yes, I don't think they're holding it hostage, but yes, if there's a way again, if you're moving to outcomes Minneapolis and just tracking those things.

Another thing around this is just, and we just approved a legislative directive that Councilmember Cashman brought forward related to this, but an ongoing area of concern has always been around

of the city of Minneapolis.

And this also gives some context of the conversation around investigators, but knowing that the last public data show that about 63% of violent crimes in Minneapolis remain resolved a couple years ago, which is below the national

I just wanted to get a sense of what is our current clearance right now to really give some context to the backlog and the usage of civilian investigators.

Council vice president council member I know as of the end of last week there were 43 homicides and 21 remained open so whatever the math is on that roughly half 21 of the homicides 21 of 43 homicides that's roughly half

but the trouble even with that is again as you have a number of these cases in such a short period of time they're they're not necessarily going to be closed out because we've had a spike recently obviously so and I know the even when these cases are closed

there's additional work that has to be done to close them in the data system, the records management system.

And so I don't have the other clearance rates offhand.

They're typically reported at the end of the year.

Assistant Chief Blackwell is with me.

She can offer more information.

Chair, Council Member AC Blackwell.

Okay, so almost still on track around the same percentage.

And then do you have a, actually this might be because

I believe this is in your wheelhouse too update on our current backlog overall I think last year when you all reported to us and why council made the appropriations of five civilian FTEs and also you all I believe articulated needing at minimum ten at that time

It was around 5,000 cases that were backlogged.

Do you know what the figure amount is for 2025?

Chair, Councilmember, it was around that.

I know this year, because Councilmember Cashman just recently sent up a request for those case, open cases right now, and we're working on that.

Deputy Chief Olson with investigations is currently compiling, or helping compile.

Right, but as an estimate, do you know, just like you shared around the clearance rate, are we hovering around the same?

Has it increased?

Chief mentioned there was a spike.

Council Vice President, Council Member, yes.

I expect it is the same.

And again, just the trouble is with the data reporting is the case can be closed, submitted, and charged, but it's not reflected as being charged in the records management system until additional work is done.

And then going to slide 23, going to professional standards.

So there's a point right here around making sure you're ensuring that officers are meeting and consistent with expectations of community.

I did want to ask just reflection points from MPD in regards to the promotion of MPD trainers who don't meet that.

Council President, Council Member.

So yes, in the particular case you referenced,

that individual was assigned to that position prior to me becoming the police chief.

And so in all of these cases now, when people are reassigned, we pull their disciplinary record to do a quick review to ensure that obviously there's not anything open and pending that's a concern, but to take a look at people's previous disciplinary histories.

And this is in regard like a process from the summer I'm referencing I believe Officer

I think there was not a conduct issue in that case.

I think you've referenced other conduct issues maybe being overlooked before with the promotion but that did not seem to be the case with Henneman.

So Council Vice President, Council Member, this is something that I instituted when I was the police chief since I've been the police chief here.

And the promotion of the use of force trainer too?

Okay, I think that's new.

Had not heard that before.

Interesting.

But going on to the next slide, 2027 budget reductions.

There was a conversation or a couple points that highlighted to the critical staffing over time and I know Mayor Frey mentioned in his budget address that that would be eliminated but I think there might be confusion around

That was in executive order, but just clarifying, this was part of a letter of agreement that's attached to the 2023-2025 police contract.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

And then also for the Mountain Patrol, I don't see FTEs allocated here.

And then also related to this, I know I believe it was shared that there were no donations made externally around the mountain patrol.

We're almost I'm slightly confused about that is on June.

18th of this year, so just a couple months ago, there was an event called Hooves and Heroes that was held by the partners that we work with very frequently, like the Downtown Council, and they did note the MPD Mountain Patrol would be there.

And they also had it very clear that proceeds would go to benefit the Mountain Patrol.

So are you all certain that there hasn't been any donation made?

It's just interesting that they held a pretty

Council Vice President, Council Member, that's correct.

What we're specifically saying is we have not received a check or a donation.

Okay, great.

And then, what is missing, which I will note for clerk follow-up or staff follow-up.

In this budget and in Mayor Frey's budget breakdown, while there is a section that vaguely or broadly alludes to the appropriations set aside for the settlement agreement,

it doesn't show overall what specific positions are being funded and I know Alifa's second year progress report was very explicit in positions needed for this second phase so just to break down on what of those positions or recommendations are actually being funded with those appropriations because right now it just says 3 million or 5 million and it's unclear

Council Vice President, Council Member, yes that would have to be a follow-up and I think it's pretty extensive too because you're going to have

you know full-time positions you know like Commander Wilkes and her team doing implementation but then there's also a number of other positions throughout the agency that are required under the agreement as well as other expenses so

And what wasn't spent, because I believe also in the progress report, there was five years appropriated for 2025, but some of those positions, recommendations, at least in the progress report, seem to not be fulfilled, so if there's

unspent dollars of that, then there's $3 million that's going to be allocated ongoing.

Chair Chai, Councilmember Wonsley, so the settlement agreement, the $3 million that you refer to is a separate bucket from the personnel that we've received for the implementation unit.

So that would be one-time contractual expenses and available to

Yeah, as for the follow-up, because of that $3 million, that's what I'm saying, it's very broad in the mayor's budget book.

It says $5 million for 2025, that's why I'm asking.

Usually we see changed items around, oh, or what's even being proposed to fulfill.

And then for 2026, the progress report from ALIFA was very explicit of the technological needs and FTEs needed.

Do any of those go under the $3 million?

Is there remaining left from the $5 million, which could be used to fulfill positions that did not move forward?

So that's why I'm asking.

Chair Chogtai, Councilmember Wonsley, I would have to follow up in a memo.

Thank you.

All right, all the questions I have.

Thank you.

I think the rest of my colleagues spoke to the

The case close rate is something that I really want us to be paying really deep attention to.

I'm grateful to Councilmember Cashman for bringing forward the legislative directive on that.

Council Vice President, Council President, thank you.

You know, I would say it's not just

the case closure rate, it's our ability to service victims in a timely manner.

And the rate is something that's eventually going to be handled, but being able to be responsive enough is important, particularly when there's a volume.

The federal partnerships are great and they're helpful.

but I would say those are largely proactive.

It is not dealing with the bulk of what we're talking about here, crime that's reported to us after the fact.

And so I think the partner that's most appropriate is the County Attorney's Office in terms of trying to get those cases charged.

Wonderful, thank you.

And then I'm last in queue, but someone else may jump in.

So just want to note that for you.

Just as a follow-up on this discussion around civilian investigations or civilian investigators and investigations more broadly, I understand that you will be pulling us some numbers around

the current backlog and what that looks like.

But something that really caught my attention was that two of these positions of civilian investigators were proposed to be eliminated, are proposed to be eliminated in your 2026 budget because they are vacant right now and it was a priority to ensure that there were no layoffs as a result of

as a result of budgetary cuts this year.

Something I recall from previous discussions and presentations is the department maintains that it is a lot easier to fill civilian positions than sworn personnel.

and I think you brought that up even today if I'm not mistaken.

So just help me understand, in September two of these positions are vacant and in the past we've heard that these are some of the easiest positions to hire.

I feel like it was a miscommunication with HR.

We had the wrong reports too when they got the data, so they were looking at the wrong division, then we had to realign to do the correct division, so it was a different type of investigator position.

Gotcha.

And then the end impact though of that miscommunication is the loss of civilian investigators at a time when we really need them to clear our backlogs.

Understood.

Thank you so much.

And then just kind of working through just a few outstanding things from the presentation.

You know, on slide 11 you talk about 145 new hires this year and then you, you know, you mentioned that it's an accumulation of lateral hires, CSOs, and other buckets.

I'm pretty sure you don't have these numbers off the top of your head right now so perhaps we'll note this for administrative follow-up.

If we can just get a breakdown of those 145 new hires by the type.

So what of those are lateral hires versus the other buckets?

Lateral is the first thing that's just coming to my head.

Vice President, I can give you that.

Okay, wonderful, thank you.

If I have further follow-ups on those, I'll be sure to reach out.

Okay, so my next question is around liability insurance.

I believe you made mention in your presentation around finding a reduction to the tune of $4.8 million.

Did I catch that correctly?

So this is an allocation of liability insurance that goes from the risk management department.

There's an actuarial study done and it sets the level, I mean finance can probably speak to this better, but it sets the level of what the fund balance needs to be given our liability structure.

So that did increase over the past couple years as we've had significant payouts of that fund so the fund had to rebuild and so our allocation was simply decreased from a prior year.

Gotcha.

So and then perhaps this can just be a follow-up for finance or I can touch base with them afterwards But I just want to understand what what happened here and in just some more details So perhaps not appropriate here, but I saw director descends his head nodding.

Okay, awesome.

And then just two more questions.

In the list of reductions in your budget, you know, you talk about the community navigator, the investigators, and then an office support specialist to an office technician one position.

Am I correct in remembering these positions were eliminated from your 2025 budget earlier this year?

It's a little bit confusing because there is an auditor transfer and an OCS transfer and I believe the office support tech 2 position

was part of that transfer.

I think one of these positions was a 2025 transfer.

I'm going to ask the budget team to be able to speak to that because I had submitted this before that happened.

And so we already had our list of positions that if we were required to make a reduction we had.

So I do think one of the positions is part of the ones that were transferred earlier.

But they weren't asking me to revise my budget submission.

Gotcha.

Chair Choctaw, if I can, the original budget book came out and it was a 5.1 million dollar reduction and then when I worked with the budget analyst to identify that position it was reduced to this 5.0.

Gotcha, sounds good.

and then I'm wondering you know I think it was maybe in the earlier section of your slides but you talk about you were identifying you know risks and some you know structural deficiencies things like that and one of the one of the things I noticed in that was you know the lack of a communications director within the Minneapolis Police Department and I guess I'm confused because like

Did there used to be a communications director in the police department?

Yes, Council Vice President.

Gotcha.

I see Vice Chair Koski in queue.

Thank you Madam Chair.

I just had one follow up on one of the questions that you asked.

It was about the

the additional hires this

Council Vice President, Council Member.

HR would have that.

And these are just the

Great.

And then I'll just do an administrative follow-up for HR, is what I'm understanding.

Okay, if we can get a five-year look back on those hiring breakdowns.

Thank you.

Clerk, should we catch that?

If the vice chair could repeat that Sure, so I think was there a hundred and forty two is that 145 Additional hires this year and so they gave us that breakdown of You know, what were they laterals?

Recruits cadets CSOs if we could get a five-year look back year to year of what those Hires were.

Amazing.

All right, so with that we have exhausted discussion and questions for you chief.

Thank you for coming in for this presentation.

Thank you all for for this presentation.

I was trying to get in queue here, and I don't really have a specific question for the Chief.

I know that we have been very thoroughly talking through some of the budget presentation.

But I just wanted to offer a congratulations on your award of International Citizens Award.

Thank you.

Okay, I believe now we have concluded discussion.

The report has been received and filed.

Thank you for coming in today.

And with that, we have concluded all business to come before the committee this morning and without objection, we stand adjourned until our next meeting, which is tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday, September 16 at 10am.

Again, in these chambers, where we will receive presentations prepared by the Office of Public Service.

the Assessing Department and the Arts and Cultural Affairs Department.