Soucheray: Jacob Frey has to fix the Minneapolis PD. No more looking the other way. Call our guy for help.

Joe Soucheray, Pioneer Press
·3 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

The death of George Floyd, not yet two years ago, was so riveting and so visceral and so immediately present due to elevated photographic and video technology — everybody has a camera — that the Minneapolis Police Department would be inevitably examined under klieg lights. And so, we have the newly released 72-page report from the Minnesota Department of Human Rights that finds “there is probable cause that the city and the MPD engage in a pattern of race discrimination in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act.”

In one of the key findings in the report, most significantly, is the damning of the department’s culture. For example, the report said the department maintains a culture where police officers “consistently use racist, misogynistic and disrespectful language and are rarely held accountable for it.”

“Without fundamental organizational cultural changes, reforming MPD’s policies, procedures, and trainings will be meaningless,” it adds.

This is called being taken to a woodshed the likes of which we have never seen. Jacob Frey, the current mayor, has to fix this and presumably will. There is no more looking the other way. The city must ultimately adhere to a consent decree, essentially a contract issued by the Department of Human Rights spelling out the steps to reform.

The report, by the way, does not single out any officers or city leaders and it goes without saying that the MPD has among its legion professional, competent and understanding officers.

It’s Frey’s problem to solve because he happened to be the mayor during the George Floyd spring. But a suspect culture didn’t just materialize in May 2020. More accurately, we were made privy to it in a way that cannot be unseen. Go back five mayors, or 10 or 20, but let’s use five: Betsy Hodges, R.T. Rybak, Sharon Sayles Belton, Don Fraser and Al Hofstede, all progressives, as you would find in any city closest to the county’s tallest buildings. It’s not plausible that those five didn’t know the police culture was foul and too accepting of racism and undue force and lousy language and too protected by such a strong union. Those five could get you a new bicycle path or a new outdoor drinking fountain, but they couldn’t husband a police department. Those five have nothing to be proud of.

Now go back five police chiefs: Medaria Arradondo, Janeé Harteau, Tim Dolan, William McManus and Robert Olson. Maybe they tried, but they didn’t accomplish anything.

Sorry Frey, but if Floyd had died in an alley and nobody got it on tape, you would be just as ineffective as your predecessors. You much prefer the boilerplate nonsense of progressive ideology than wrestling with a real problem, in this case a dysfunctional police department. But now you have to solve the problem because we have been made privy to that culture in a way that cannot be unseen.

You need a police chief, Frey, and your answer is right here close to home. You don’t need a committee of 2,000 experts to guide your decision.

You need Todd Axtell.

St. Paul is losing Axtell as police chief in June, a tremendous loss for St. Paul, but he has grown weary of shallow support from his superiors in City Hall. Jane Prince of the St. Paul City Council, not exactly a conservative voice, said of Axtell, “if we didn’t have him, we’d have to invent him.” He’s that good. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He runs a tight ship. The way his department handles just the John Thompson traffic stops alone should get Axtell and his officers the Nobel Peace Prize.

I don’t know if Axtell is amenable to my lobbying nor is it my business to presume that he would even be interested. But you have a big problem to solve, Mayor Frey, and Todd Axtell becomes a free agent in June.

You’re welcome.

Related Articles