Rybak's response

TO: Council Members Hodges, Glidden and Gordon

FR: Mayor R.T. Rybak

CC: Council Members

RE: Police Chief Appointment

With this memo, I would like to take the opportunity to respond in detail to your memo from earlier this week, and to summarize what we discussed in person on Tuesday.

The detailed thinking and attention you brought to your memo is appreciated. I have fought hard to lead reforms in the police department and I welcome your help. As we discussed, I strongly reject the premise that I have not been working on reforms, especially when many of the actions your agenda calls for either I or the MPD have already initiated and led. I believe we adequately addressed this in our conversation.

I’ve provided here a response to your proposed reform agenda, and also addressed some of the broader concerns you have raised. Before I go into details, I want to focus for a moment on the biggest public safety issue facing our citizens, the Mayor’s office, the City Council, and the Police Department: the rise in violent crime. I hope we can agree that the most important challenge facing the Minneapolis Police Department is to stop the increase in violent crime, and that this work must be undertaken with respect for human dignity and in collaboration with the communities that the MPD serves.

Under Chief Dolan’s leadership, we are beginning to reverse the tide of violent crime in Minneapolis.

In May of 2006, year to date violent crime was up 19% across the city. This number was driven by increases of 22% in the 3rd precinct, 57% in the 4th precinct, and 40% in the 5th precinct.

During August and September (through 9/25), citywide violent crime is up only about 2% compared to last year. Most significantly, from August to September violent crime is up less than 2% in the 3rd and 4th precincts and down almost 20% in the 5th precinct compared to last year. This is not enough, and we all know that crime in 2005 was up significantly, but it is a start. Credit goes to many, including the leadership of Tim.

In May we reinstituted the juvenile unit and put a strong focus on juvenile violent crime, especially focusing on enforcing curfew. As a result, curfew arrests and juvenile arrests are both up significantly. We know we cannot arrest ourselves out of the problem with violent crime, but getting violent youth off the street and into some kind of intervention effort is an important step in the right direction. The juvenile units advances this goal

As we discussed on Tuesday, these are important achievements. Chief Dolan would also be the first to say that we cannot stop working to continuously improve, and we have a long way to go.

The first part of your memo focused on a handful of administrative “missteps” as you called them over the last six months. I believe that Chief Dolan has already dealt with these individually. His willingness to take personal responsibility for the performance of the over 800 members of the police department is exactly what I would look for in a leader. His capacity to learn from these incidents and immediately put in place process improvements also demonstrates strong, accountable leadership.

Your memo raised the question of whether or not Chief Dolan can be an agent for change given his years of experience within the department. Again, I must challenge the premise that experience and relationships prohibit anyone, and especially Chief Dolan, from leading change. In fact, I believe the opposite is often true. Chief Dolan’s experience with the department gives him a deep understanding of the strengths and weaknesses both of the organization and its individual players. His decades of experience in the community have earned him widespread respect. He is known within the department as an independent player. Chief Dolan’s steady, unassuming leadership style combined with his detailed focus on results make him the kind of change leader the MPD needs right now.

In your memo you raised several specific policy ideas for discussion. I’d like to reinforce that many of these policy issues are the responsibility of the City Council or Mayor, not the Police Chief, nor do they bear directly on whether Chief Dolan will make an excellent Police Chief. In fact, Chief Dolan was very clear yesterday before the Executive Committee that he understands his responsibility as Chief is to implement the policies advanced by the Mayor and City Council.

Having said that, here are my thoughts on the issues you raised.

1. Separate managers from rank-and-file employees in the Minneapolis Police Federation.

I support this idea, and I would support the City Council if this were included in the 2007 legislative agenda. Making this reform could help to improve accountability within the department. But we need to recognize that this is a long term and difficult to achieve strategy. Not only would Minneapolis need to get legislative approval for this strategy, but the employees of the department would also need to agree to it in the next collective bargaining, which won’t happen until 2008.

2. Support for the CRA

The City Council will be discussing the recommendations of the CRA Working Group in the coming weeks, and I look forward to that discussion. As we move forward, I will bring some clear values to the discussion.

1. Citizens must have a credible place to raise concerns about police conduct, and they also should have the opportunity for either an internal or external review.

2. The Police Chief must retain final discipline authority, and I will not support any changes to the CRA ordinance that puts that authority in question. Police officers need to work for a single person and operate with a single set of rules.

3. Our goal should be a CRA process that is trusted by both citizens and police officers, and that we have room for improvement there. For the first time the MPD has a command staff liaison to the CRA, Assistant Chief Sharon Lubinski.

4. The MPD process for reviewing sustained complaints from the CRA must be transparent and timely. The changes Interim Chief Dolan and Assistant Chief Lubinski have made to ensure a one month turnaround will accomplish this, and should limit future backlogs. This is a good reform.

As we discussed earlier this week, I will convene a meeting with the MPD, the Civil Rights Department, and City Council members before the joint PSRS and HEE meeting on October 12 to review these recommendations in detail. I look forward to this discussion.

3. Support new policies regarding discipline of officers, including graduated discipline that considers complaints reported to Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights, Minnesota Department of Human Rights, and cases in civil courts. Keep officers on administrative leave until investigations are complete and the community has been informed.

As you know, the MPD has a graduated discipline process in place, including a disciplinary matrix that defines specific consequences for specific policy and procedure violations. I support Chief Dolan’s work to institute an early warning system, and believe that this early warning system should include verified complaints not just from Internal Affairs but also from other jurisdictions.

I also strongly support maintaining accountability for officers’ behavior throughout the chain of command. Supervisors should answer for the performance of those they supervise. Chief Dolan is instituting a new performance appraisal system that will also help to improve accountability for results within the Department.   With regard to keeping an officer on administrative leave until an investigation is complete, I believe the Chief of Police must retain discretion to make decisions on all discipline issues. I firmly believe it is a mistake for either the Mayor or the Council to mandate disciplinary decisions with a one size fits all approach. In my time as Mayor I’ve learned not to pre-judge critical incidents. I also have not found any fault with Chief Dolan’s judgments on these extremely difficult issues.

4. Diversity at all levels of the MPD, including hiring and promotion.

We are making a significant commitment to increasing the diversity of the MPD, and this commitment is getting results. In 2006, the new classes recruited through the Cadet Officer Program and the Community Service Officer Program (70 new officers in all) have included over 55% people of color (40 individuals). While the MPD is careful to acknowledge that they will be unlikely to duplicate this record all the time, it is a major accomplishment, dramatically outpacing Saint Paul and other Minnesota cities. While this is a significant accomplishment, we have a long way to go. Do not doubt either my or Chief Dolan’s commitment to a police force that fully reflects the diversity of our city.

5. Commitment to address and end racial profiling, including data collection, explicit policy, and anti-racism training for officers.

We know that racial profiling exists in Minneapolis, and that this city grapples with deep-rooted issues around race and class. Minneapolis’ commitment to end racial profiling is made explicit in the Federal Mediation Agreement, and Interim Chief Dolan is working closely with the PCRC to meet this commitment. The strong commitment to diversifying the force will help. In addition, the MPD has been deeply involved in several studies by the Council on Crime and Justice to research racial disparities in traffic stops and low level crimes. Thanks to our participation in these studies, Minneapolis received a state grant to fund in-squad cameras, which gives the public an eye on what officers are doing on the job. These are important reforms, but there is much, much more to do, and Interim Chief Dolan and I are fully committed to advancing this work.

6. Support for a competent and proactive finance administrator position within the department who is charged with making all financial, technological, and budgetary decisions for the Department, who reports directly to the Chief, and who is empowered to set fiscal policy guidelines for the Department.

I welcome your support for this idea, which is included in my 2007 budget. We see this position more broadly than financial administration only. It also should include overall administration and management, as well as overseeing special projects for the Chief that do not require a sworn officer. I also must point out that Chief Dolan’s record on fiscal management during several very tough budget years has been exemplary.

7. Commitment to community policing, including funding for the plan and long-term policy and practice changes that would support the new paradigm.

As you know, this spring the Strategic Policy Partnership consulted with the MPD to create a strategy for taking community policing to the next level in Minneapolis. There is clear consensus among the MPD, the Police Federation, policy makers and the community that we should continue to advance this work. The work done by Betsy Watson et al actually pointed out that Minneapolis has already done the most important foundation work for community policing by creating a geographic or sector policing. As the Department looks toward 2007, they are fully committed to working directly with neighborhood groups to help develop community-based plans. The MPD will be presenting its action plan to the City Council at the next PSRS committee meeting (10/11), but they are already moving forward.

8. Complete the audit of the Internal Affairs Unit in 2007, with a commitment to implementing its recommendations including those regarding discipline practices.

The City Council has approved an Internal Audit, and I support it and the RFP process. It is essential that the Auditor organization bring unbiased expertise to this project.

9. Actively support overturning ordinances regarding selective-enforcement crimes like lurking.

I am happy to discuss what we can do to end selective enforcement, but I cannot support such a broad action item. For example, I am very interested in finding better solutions to the panhandling problem we have in downtown and uptown, and this statement is too broad to tell whether these goals would be in conflict.

10. A commitment to performance measures and outcomes that aren’t solely about crime or arrest rates, including city liability and supervisor accountability for employee performance.

As Chief Dolan said on Wednesday at the Executive Committee, we are already moving forward on identifying a small number of indicators that the MPD can track on a regular basis to assess results. This work is also happening across the city with Results Minneapolis under the leadership of Steven Bosacker. As I mentioned above, Interim Chief Dolan is already initiating a new performance appraisal system that will support our common goals for increased accountability.

11. Complete all items in the Federal Mediation Agreement.

Chief Dolan has taken personal responsibility for completing the tasks outlined in the Federal Mediation Agreement. Relationships with the PCRC can be rocky, and sometimes there is disagreement about whether or not a task is actually complete. When this cannot be resolved between MPD and PCRC, I support taking those items to the Public Safety and Regulatory Services Committee to be resolved.

12. A long-term vision and strategic plan for public safety throughout the entire city that includes all relevant stakeholders

I believe this has been addressed already. I would like to emphasize that I fully support Interim Chief Dolan’s dual focus in his strategy and plan on preventing crime and engaging the community.