City Council should use its leverage on police contract to end MPD ‘coaching’ secrecy

Minneapolis City Hall. Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer.

As reported by the Reformer’s Deena Winter, the proposed MPD contract would make Minneapolis law enforcement among the highest paid in the country. On its own, however, the pay increases won’t address a major challenge to adding to the ranks of MPD.

Recruitment and retention of police officers will require turning the page on a legacy of a failed police discipline system. As a career prosecutor, I have worked with many suburban officers and supervisors. They have told me that the tarnished image of the MPD was a key factor in their decision to work elsewhere. 

Minneapolis citizens and critics are frequently cynical about the department. In truth, a relatively small number of officers are besmirching the reputation of their colleagues. No public relations campaign or expensive police monitors can fix this. Minneapolis residents must know that serious misconduct will be exposed to the public and that consequences will result. 

Voters should know that they can hold their mayor and City Council accountable for the actions of the MPD. Currently the system allows police misconduct to be concealed from the voters — as well as elected officials.  I’m referring to the use of “coaching.” This is when MPD makes a “just cause” finding of misconduct but purports to deal with the misconduct with extra training or meeting with a supervisor. The city claims that this doesn’t amount to discipline, so no publicly available records are kept.  

In other words, we’re all kept in the dark. You can imagine the problem here. 

This obsession with protecting officers with multiple serious violations from exposure has resulted in a culture that forces good officers to work with and be tarnished by bad cops. Who wants to be forced to work with or be trained by Derek Chauvin?

Chief Brian O’Hara told WCCO he’s responsible for reforming the department. 

“It is my job to reform the Minneapolis Police Department, and the mayor, the council and the residents can hold me accountable for that,” he said.

The problem is that the voters cannot vote him out of office. Total reliance on the chief — any chief, no matter how reform-minded — will fail. 

When it comes to the coaching debacle, neither the chief nor rank-and-file officers can be expected to reform this system. The mayor and City Council must demand it.

And there’s good reason to demand it. 

As part of a lawsuit brought by the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information, vast troves of documents were released recently showing that “coaching” was routinely used as a method to hide serious misconduct despite repeated claims to the contrary. 

As former Police Conduct Oversight Commission Chair Abigail Cerra and I have previously written and as previously reported by the Reformer, this should have come as no surprise. During the debate over the last police contract, we unsuccessfully lobbied the mayor and council to address this issue in the contract. The response at the time was that it was too late in the process and “maybe next time.”  

Remarkably, the proposed contract does address coaching — by cementing the City Council and mayor’s approval of the practice as a method to hide misconduct from the public. The existing contract states that officers will be disciplined only for “just cause” and does not limit the definition of discipline. New language in Section 12.01 — now re-named ”Discipline, Personnel Records and Investigations” — excludes verbal warnings, i.e. coaching, from the list of disciplinary actions. If the contract is approved as proposed, publicly available discipline records will be expressly limited to misconduct resulting in “written reprimands, suspensions, demotions or discharges.”  

This sleight of hand mirrors the change made in the MPD Policy and Procedure manual in December 2021 after the rampant use of coaching was first exposed. The manual was quietly changed to conform to the city’s position in the MNCOGI coaching lawsuit by deleting language that previously required discipline for any sustained violation and adding language defining coaching as “non-disciplinary.” Even the consent decree with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights dropped the ball by facilitating the continued use of coaching to avoid the very transparency the decree claimed to promote.  

The mayor and the police chief claim that the union contract is not the place to implement reforms to the discipline process. If so, why was there a need to change the definition of discipline in the proposed agreement? 

It sure looks like the city’s negotiating team sought embeded language in the union contract consistent with the city’s legal position in MNCOGI coaching lawsuit.  The continuation of coaching as an end run around transparency and accountability, however, is not at its core a legal issue — it is a policy issue that goes to the root causes of the murder of George Floyd.  The public deserves to know whether the mayor or select council members directed the negotiating team to legally protect this indefensible system.

The City Council would send a powerful message by demanding the deletion of the proposed changes to Section 12.01 of the contract, and by conditioning any approval of the police contract by ending the abuse of coaching. 

It is an easy fix. 

First, the contract should provide that “to the extent the MPD or the police chief imposes coaching for a B-level or higher level of misconduct, coaching shall be considered discipline for purposes of the Data Practices Act.” 

Second, evidence uncovered in the MNCOGI litigation established that MPD officers were allowed to challenge coaching through the formal grievance process. This is an unnecessary and excessive limitation on the right of a supervisor or the chief to issue a verbal warning and goes beyond the requirements of the Public Employee Labor Relations Act. The contract should expressly state that “whether a disciplinary action is subject to the grievance procedure is subject solely by PELRA.”

The City Council is being urged to rubber stamp this agreement. O’Hara, however well-intentioned, believes that reform can occur by giving him more authority, but without fixing the broken systems that brought us here. Mayor Jacob Frey says that this is a good contract. He is wrong. 

 The City Council should refuse to ratify any contract that contains the poison pill ruse of coaching as non-disciplinary and non-public.  

The Washington Post famously proclaims that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” 

Alas, police reform also dies in darkness.  

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