ST. PAUL, Minn. (CN) — Minneapolis residents seeking to expand the city’s police department brought their case before the Minnesota Supreme Court on Thursday, arguing that Mayor Jacob Frey and the City Council have not met charter requirements for employing officers.
Despite calls from activists and then-City Council members to defund, restructure or replace the embattled department, Minneapolis’ current police budget currently stands near its 2020 levels, despite taking an $8 million dip in 2021. Restored funding in 2022 has not brought police staffing levels up to a 731-employee minimum imposed by a 1961 amendment to the city’s charter, let alone the 888 Frey has named as his target. For eight residents of Minneapolis' North Side, that represented a failure by the city to protect them.
Assistant City Attorney Gregory Sautter argued Thursday that the charter amendment required only that the city fund appropriate staffing levels, and that the mayor could manage the department otherwise at his discretion. He said a writ of mandamus sought by eight north Minneapolis residents and their attorney, James Dickey of the Upper Midwest Law Center, would improperly infringe on the mayor’s authority.
“While mandamus can be used to compel the exercise of discretion, it cannot be used to compel the results of that discretion,” Sautter said. Granting such a writ, he said, would place the court in the middle of a cascade of small decisions. “That’s not what mandamus is for.”
“I don’t believe there is any dispute that… the police department is still operating, even at a diminished capacity,” he later added.
The number of active-duty officers started dipping in May 2020, after a week of civil unrest over the murder of George Floyd led hundreds of officers to resign or take leave. City data showed that it had 621 police officers on payroll in May, with 39 of those on “continuous leave” lasting two weeks or longer. The plaintiffs filed their suit later that year.
Dickey argued that the city had options – and a duty – to reverse that attrition.
“When you’re ‘maintaining’ something, you are keeping it, right? You are keeping it up to a certain standard,” he said in answer to a question from Justice Natalie Hudson about language giving the mayor power to “establish and maintain” the department.
He noted that the city had itself predicted continued decline in the number of officers, and that it had revoked job offers after it cut funding for its police academy in 2020. Funding was restored in 2021.
“There are things that the mayor can do, in his discretion, to take actions so that more people want to become police officers,” Dickey said. Speaking after the hearing, he said he didn’t wish to prescribe recruitment methods, but that hiring incentives, pay increases or better working conditions were all good options. “We want the mayor to be creative, we want City Council to be creative,” he said. More funding, too, would not hurt the cause.
Dickey said that Frey, in testimony, had been “pretty clear that he’s tried to get as much money as possible for the police force compared to what the City Council will actually give him.”
Elections in 2021 purged several City Council members who opposed increased funding for MPD, but that lame-duck council crafted the 2022 budget. In the same election, Minneapolis voters also turned down an effort to remove the charter’s minimum police staffing requirements and create a Department of Public Safety to take over some police functions.
Thursday’s hearing saw somewhat more back-and-forth than usual at the Minnesota Supreme Court, with almost every justice peppering both sides with questions. Particularly involved were Hudson and Justice Paul Thissen, who both quizzed the attorneys on whether, and how, the charter language was ambiguous.
“It seems to me that both sides are claiming that the language is not ambiguous,” Hudson said.
“I could see your reading that ‘establishing and maintaining a police department means the mayor has to keep the department in existence,” she added, but questioned whether that meant he had a duty to have 730 officers on payroll.
Justice Margaret Chutich chimed in on a similar tack: “If we need to find that the charter language is ambiguous in order to say that the duty exists, I don’t know that we can say that the mayor has a clear duty.”
After the hearing, Dickey said he thought arguments had gone well, and that the justices appeared to be “right over the target, in terms of understanding both sides.” He also took a shot at the idea that Frey had total discretionary authority over the police department.
“If the mayor had truly ‘unlimited power’— like Emperor Palpatine— then he could just hire 800 officers. But he clearly didn’t," the attorney said.
He also praised his clients, “activists who stood up for this issue” in light of violent crime in their neighborhood. “We just really are big fans of theirs.”
A spokesperson for the city declined to comment.
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