The City of Minneapolis and its police department are once again facing criticism about contract negotiations with the police union, and a lack of progress on its settlement agreement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.
Criticism from government officials and community members came to head in July 2026 after the failure to reappoint the director of the Office of Community Safety Toddrick Barnette in April, and the resignation of former Chief Brian O’Hara in May.
A quarterly review from the firm hired to evaluate progress on the settlement agreement came out in June. The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis union contract is currently being negotiated in closed door meetings.
The most recent report from ELEFA on the City and Minneapolis Police Department’s shows slow progress on its settlement agreement.
“The City and MPD have flawed accountability systems,” wrote Minnesota Department of Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero. “The City and MPD’s systems are inconsistent, delayed, or opaque."
This semi-annual review again affirms what MDHR documented in its April 2022 investigative findings:
It has been over six years since MDHR’s investigation into the city’s polices and practices after the murder of George Floyd. Lucero said, “The City of Minneapolis and Minneapolis Police Department remain far from achieving the transformational change necessary to address the root causes of race-based policing.”
‘Worse than last negotiations’
The City Council held a closed meeting on July 6 to discuss labor negotiations with the Police Officers Federation. As a closed meeting, the public could not attend and those there were restricted in what they may share about the meeting.
About the police contract, Stacey Gurian-Sherman said, “It is worse than the last negotiations, far worse.”
Gurian-Sherman is a lawyer with the group, Mpls For A Better Police Contract (MFBPC). They sued the City over the process in 2022 and secured a settlement agreement that was intended to make negotiations more transparent, with public access to bargaining sessions and advance online notice of meeting schedules.
The group also promoted a list of recommended contract changes including weekly work-hour limits, and mandatory mental health checks every three years.
Mostly secret contract negotiations
The City’s contract with the Minneapolis Police Officers Federation expired at the end of 2025.
This round of negotiations started in September, but all public access to meetings and documentation ended on Nov. 10, 2025, when the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis filed for mediation with the Bureau of Mediation Services (BMS).
BMS is the state agency responsible for administering the Public Employment Labor Relations Act. State law allows mediation to be closed to the public, although the BMS commissioner may require it to be open if they determine that closing the meetings will not facilitate a resolution.
The issues shared publicly last fall focused on wages and other pay adjustments, creating a new detective rank, and the City getting more scheduling control to a implement a new “platoon scheduling” model.
In a July 10 newsletter Ward 2 Council Member Robin Wonsley said, “The police contract is a crucial place to codify reforms in line with the settlement agreement, and to prevent MPD from continuing to do financial harm to the City and taxpayers.” She pointed to “massive financial bonuses to MPD without any meaningful reforms” in the last two contracts.
Wonsley’s priorities for the new contract include adding the detective rank, better management of off-duty work, elimination of the 70/30 rule that requires 70% of officers to be patrol officers, clarification that coaching is discipline, and a prohibition on officers with sustained misconduct records being field training officers.
The last contract that was approved in 2024 by the previous council with what Gurian-Sherman called “historic wages, but no transformational reforms” was opposed by Council Members Jason Chavez, Wonsley, Aisha Chughtai, and Jeremiah Ellison.
This year, Gurian-Sherman said, “MFBPC is pulling the threads on the police sontract, and the more we pull, the more disturbing it gets.”
“Last time,” recalled Gurian-Sherman, City staff “acted once again as the junior partners and devotees of the Police Federation by agreeing to closed-door mediation to prevent public access, which is a right guaranteed under state law.
“This time, the City acted as the junior partners with even more zeal. They agreed to mediation after four measly sessions, then refused to update the dedicated website page that was mandated in the legal settlement with MFBPC over lack of access.”
Gurian-Sherman said that a tentative agreement was then “sent for a pro forma vote for the Police Federation to turn down to get to arbitration.”
In arbitration, the City and federation select a neutral third party arbitrator who then holds a private hearings and then drafts a new contract that both parties are required to follow.
Once in arbitration, it is less likely that new issues will be introduced. So, the decisions will likely focus on those areas of disagreement highlighted by the two sides prior to it going to mediation.
Gurian-Sherman is convinced that the City did not bargain in good faith and that the City, essentially “allowed the contract to be set by only one party, the Police Federation.
“It cries out for a City audit, and for legal and ethical investigations,” added Gurian-Sherman.
Progress stalled on settlement agreement
Unlike previous reviews, the latest semiannual ELEFA report of the City’s compliance with the state MDHR settlement agreement was presented and discussed publicly at a City Council meeting.
Ward 11 Council Member Jamison Whiting, chair of the Settlement Agreement and Consent Decree Subcommittee, summarized the council discussions by saying, “Many of my colleagues and myself have serious concerns about the questions and findings in ELEFA‘s most recent report.”
Primary concerns raised by council members included a lack of progress reducing MPD’s Internal Affairs backlog of misconduct complaints, and the failure to implement an Early Intervention System that the report said “has also stalled due to management weaknesses and personnel turnover.”
“The report notes internal conflict, lack of experienced investigators, and continued turnover as reasons for very limited progress. It is imperative that MPD IA has the resources. They need to clear the backlog and build community trust. I am encouraged that officers are holding each other accountable, but it also means that those same officers need to have meaningful resolutions to their cases,” said Minneapolis Community Commission on Police Oversight Chair LaTonya Reeves.
The report found, “The problems we have documented across prior Progress Reviews…persisted or worsened.”
Most of the progress so far have been drafting new policies and training programs, including in those covering the use of force and deescalation. David Douglass, from ELEFA, told council members at his July 14 presentation that these are “meaningful improvements” that “will make a difference, but that accountability is required.”
Douglass said that some internal affairs complaints have been “hanging for years.”
“Whatever changes had been promised,” he said, “were making no difference and, in fact, it did not even seem like they were really designed or intended to make a difference.
Policies and training really don’t make a difference if it doesn’t translate to change on the street.”
He also noted that the current training facilities and health and wellness efforts are inadequate.
Ward 9 Council Member Jason Chavez, who chairs the council’s Public Health, Safety & Equity committee shared his frustration with the lack of progress on internal affairs and the Early Intervention System.
“We are paying a lot of money to hear some words on police reform and nothing is happening,” Chavez said. “Victims of police violence and neighbors deserve a lot better.”
Referring to the lack of accountability in internal affairs and the police conduct review process, Chavez added that “a lack of progress in this is a lack of justice.”
When asked who is to blame for the stall in developing a Early Intervention System that would help identify officers likely to violate policy and best practices, Douglass said it was the police chief. Chavez added, “There is one boss of the chief,” almost certainly referring to the mayor.
When asked about the accountability system, Douglass said, “The system is broken, it remains broken.”
Both Chavez and Ward 8 Council Member Soren Stevenson, who is vice chair of the Public Health, Safety and Equity Committee, expressed concerns about the absence of mayoral, Office of Community Safety and MPD staff at the committee meeting.
“The absence of certain folks is screaming loudly,” said Sorenson, after noting the absence of police department leadership. Sorenson lost his eye due to police violence. “The message I am receiving from nobody being in this room is that this doesn’t matter to them.”
The state settlement agreement and police contract have been noted by many as two tools to improve policing. Neither appear to be doing that this summer.
“Looking forward, true accountability needs a holistic approach,” according to the ELEFA report. “As Minneapolis recruits and hires a new Chief of Police, the City has an opportunity to embed lasting practices rather than rely on aspirational commitments.”
Regarding the police contract, it is not clear there will be a City Council vote, or if one is required.
“The contract that appears to have moved from closed door mediation to closed door arbitration without the City Council having had any chance to vote or otherwise weigh in on the tentative agreement that the Police Federation membership did vote against,” said Gurian-Sherman. “That means the arbitration will decide the contract with no City Council whatsoever and none from the public either.”
Lucero believes that race-based policing will not be eliminated until the City and MPD address the systemic conditions driving it.
“Without intentional work to correct root causes,” she said, “the same patterns of resistance, misalignment, and lack of accountability will endure.”
Editor's note: A previous headline "Race-based policing persist" was changed because it was not accurate. We apologize for this error. -Melody Hoffmann
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