Who wants to be a Minneapolis cop?

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

On Halloween night, in south Uptown, the highlight of my 2-year-old grandson's evening was a Minneapolis policewoman, who learned that this pint-sized bumblebee was fascinated by first responder vehicles. She had a surprise for him.

The officer walked to the back of her cruiser and pulled out a police-car keychain and handed it to him.

Charming parents and their children is a good example of community policing. When my grandson returned home and dumped his Halloween haul on the table, the cop keychain was the lone item amid the sweets that he couldn't wait to show me.

When I looked closer, I noticed painted on the hood of the rubber car: "Minneapolis Police Recruitment 1-866-553-COPS."

Minneapolis, like many big-city police departments, has been hemorrhaging cops. Last month, Minneapolis police were among those from around the nation at a standing-room-only conference in Washington, D.C., on the workforce crisis in policing. Conference host Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), says "the single most daunting challenge that policing has faced in decades is finding the next generation of cops."

Pushed without any concrete plan as an alternative to the police department, the defund referendum was defeated last year. But the status quo — a depleted police department — is no answer either.

There's no way to put lipstick on this statistic: As of mid-November, the number of sworn officers in Minneapolis — those who wear a badge, carry a gun and are responsible for public safety — had plummeted by a full third in three years (from 910 sworn officers at the beginning of 2019 to 603 sworn officers in mid-November 2022).

As the new Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara gets up to speed, let's hope he has better answers to some of the questions that I posed to Christopher Gaiters, who was named chief of staff in January to head up the department's recruiting effort.

When an officer leaves the department, I asked, is an exit interview done and, if so, are there any common threads you've found about why so many officers have left?

"I was literally just talking about this a few weeks ago," he told me. "I know that through [the city's] Human Resources there may be an exit interview, but I have been looking along with our executive staff at the best way to implement that within the department itself because that's how you learn to grow. As they [officers] leave, whether it be on a high note or low note, I think we can get better by implementing a process of an exit interview."

With public safety on the line and a multitude of other responsibilities, it seems unfathomable that the MPD, which has been under the national microscope since Memorial Day 2020 and may soon be operating under a consent decree, hasn't done a detailed survey to determine why a third of its officers have turned in their badges over the past three years.

For Kathleen O'Toole, former Boston police commissioner and former Seattle police chief, recruiting new police officers must begin with communicating what police work is all about and how it's a far cry from how TV cop shows and movies portray the profession.

"We as the police do a terrible job of telling our story," she says.

Crime analysts Jeff Asher and Benjamin Horowitz looked at data posted online from a handful of cities (not including Minneapolis) showing how police spend their time. Less than 4% of an officer's time is occupied by handling violent crime. Most of it is spent responding to routine calls, property crimes, traffic issues and medical problems.

O'Toole, co-author of "Seven Ways to Fix Policing Now," never uses the word "force" to describe the police, she says, because "force is used in less than 1 percent of encounters between police and the community." Recruit training, O'Toole says, "needs to be updated, much more relevant to what police actually do."

O'Toole says all police departments must talk about recruiting the right people who "understand policing is a service." She adds: "Nobody despises a bad cop more than a good cop."

Gaiters says the best way for a prospective officer to understand what police do is to participate in the various internship programs — the paid city step-up program where those interested in law enforcement are exposed to how investigations work. "The great thing about the Minneapolis Police Department is that we give you an opportunity to see that policing is giving people a voice, has a mind-set of neutrality, earning the respect and trustworthiness of the community."

But David Schultz, University of Minnesota law professor and political science professor at Hamline University, who's been following the MPD for years, is worried that "they're just trying to figure out how to recruit officers, essentially under a court order to do it." And he says "any new recruiting effort will be hampered by reform that's only taking place around the edges. I would describe what they're doing now — a new position of commissioner of Public Safety above the police chief — as rearranging the chairs on a deck. When all else fails, rearrange the bureaucracy and make it look like you're doing something. They're so short-staffed that they are in crisis mode to respond to crime."

Underscoring Schultz's point, one consequence of the thinned ranks at police departments is a limited array of tools to ensure the full spectrum of work gets done. Mandatory overtime is too often used as a default, despite the risk of burnout and regardless of whether officers want to give up their free time for some extra cash. Chief of Staff Gaiters didn't want to talk about it, but did concede that Minneapolis uses mandatory overtime, though he says "wellness is of utmost priority."

Chief O'Hara told City Council members before he was recently sworn in that those officers who remain with the department "are more likely to be committed to reform" and that recruitment might improve if candidates believe working for the Minneapolis police is "a chance to be part of the solution right now."