The city of Minneapolis has failed to maintain a police force large enough to meet employment requirements laid out in the city’s charter, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Monday.
According to the nine-page ruling by Chief Justice Lorie S. Gildea, Mayor Jacob Frey has failed to “meet his clear legal duty” to maintain a police force with at least 1.7 officers per 1,000 residents – at least 731 sworn officers based on the 2020 U.S. Census.
Gildea’s ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in August 2020 by eight city residents who were concerned about soaring crime and lawlessness in the city. The lawsuit was filed at a time when other community activists, as well as some prominent city leaders, were calling for eliminating the department in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin.
The city argued it was abiding by the charter by meeting police funding requirements.
A Hennepin County district judge initially ruled in the residents’ favor, but that decision was overruled by the Court of Appeals. While Gildea ruled Monday that Frey had failed to maintain a department with at least 731 officers, she also found that the Minneapolis City Council had fulfilled its funding duty, providing enough money in the 2021 budget for 770 officers.
The Minneapolis Police Department reported that it began 2020 with 817 officers. Those numbers dropped precipitously after the city was engulfed in riots after Floyd’s killing, and after city leaders began openly calling for defunding the department. City data showed the police department had 621 officers on its payroll in late May, including 39 who are on a “continuous leave” of two weeks or longer, the Star Tribune reported.
“To us, it doesn’t matter who’s at fault here for the lack of police,” James Dickey, an attorney for the eight plaintiffs, told the paper on Monday. “The problem is just that there need to be more police based on the city charter.”
The portion of the charter dictating police staffing levels dates back to an early 1960s crime wave. In 1961, a ballot measure asked voters whether the charter should be amended “to increase the Police Force by establishing at ratio of 1.7 employees per 1,000 residents.” This was clearly understood as an employment requirement, not just a funding requirement, according to Gildea’s ruling.
The Minneapolis Police Department has been the focus of sometimes intense national focus particularly after Floyd’s killing in May 2020. Last November, voters rejected a progressive plan to replace the department with a vaguely defined “Department of Public Safety,” which would not have been required to employ any actual police officers.
In April, a scathing report by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights found that probable cause that Minneapolis officers “engage in a pattern or practice of race discrimination.” They disproportionately use severe force against blacks and other minorities, stop their vehicles more often, and are more likely to arrest them and track them covertly online, according to the report.