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Mayor Jacob Frey signed an executive order Tuesday directing the city to move forward with police reforms that would have been required under the federal consent decree that never came to be, after the 171-page agreement was abandoned by the Trump Administration and laid to rest by a judge.
In 2023, a federal investigation slammed the police department for a pattern of unchecked discriminatory policing and unjustifiable use of excessive force — and for culture and practices that made possible the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.
The city and Biden’s Department of Justice reached a settlement agreement weeks before President Donald Trump returned to office publicly opposing consent decrees. Repeat motions from the Trump administration to delay the agreement ultimately concluded with a motion to dismiss it entirely — and a judge agreeing.
“We are committed to police reform, even if the Trump administration is not,” said Frey in a statement. “Our residents demanded meaningful change, and we’re delivering on that promise with this executive order, ensuring the work outlasts politics and any one administration.”
The executive order directs the City Attorney’s Office to document — within 90 days — provisions of the federal consent decree that aren’t already addressed in, or conflict with, the city’s existing agreement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.
Frey’s order states that city leaders and employees who do not make “good faith efforts to cooperate with and participate” in implementing the changes into policy and practice could be subject to disciplinary action and that the order will remain in place unless undone by a future mayor.
However, Council member Robin Wonsley said that she does not see the action as meaningfully different from Frey’s repeated verbal promises to go forward with the consent decree anyway. She said those promises — and this executive order — are encouraging, but not enough.
“The executive order that was approved and signed by him today does not articulate how we get to a pathway of a legally binding agreement that codifies those federal terms that can help our police department get back in compliance with constitutional law and ultimately keep our residents safe,” she said, adding she wants to find a way to ensure both current and future mayoral administrations have an “actual permanent basis” of accountability.
Wonsley, along with Council member Aurin Chowdhury, authored a legislative directive that urges the City Attorney’s Office to work with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights to adapt the existing agreement to include provisions unique to the dismissed federal consent decree. It will be up for discussion at a meeting later this month.
City Attorney Kristyn Anderson had discouraged the city council from continuing down that path.
“The City Attorney’s Office has spent months exploring whether this was a viable option,” she wrote in a statement Tuesday. “But this is not something that we can do on our own; it would require a legal basis to request and receive Court approval. At this point, we have not found a legal pathway forward.”
When council members raised the idea, Minnesota Department of Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero had not shut down that path. She said in a statement that the federal agreement included “some unique terms” that were not in the state agreement.
“The Minnesota Department of Human Rights has expressed to the City its openness to incorporate those unique terms into the state court enforceable agreement,” she said.
For more than a year, the city has been under court supervision to comply with the MDHR agreement. An independent monitoring group called Effective Law Enforcement for All, or ELEFA, oversees the process.
The executive order also directs the city attorney’s office to help find a path for ELEFA to oversee the additional terms identified by the City Attorney’s Office.
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