Restoring the Police Recruitment Budget

Prior to enrolling in an MBA program many years ago, I needed to take the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT). Here’s a question which was not in the GMAT but maybe could have been:

You are a senior executive in a company that has been struggling but is now working to get stronger. Department A is beginning to show good results for investments the company has made. Department B continues to struggle, is not yet showing results – in fact, some things are getting worse – and doesn’t show much of a plan. Which department do you favor for continued investment?

Almost any executive would say, invest in Department A, and push Department B for a better plan.

So….let’s talk about the Minneapolis Police Department.

As is well known, the MPD head count dropped precipitously after the George Floyd murder and the pandemic: from a high of 877 officers to 585. That resulted in a ratio of 1.4 officers for every 1,000 population, compared to the national average for comparable cities of 2.4 per 1,000. Crime rates were rising sharply, and capacity to respond to crime was shrinking sharply.

MPD set out to hire more cops, and not just anyone off the street. We wanted officers who would act professionally, partner well with communities and treat everyone with respect. No thumpers or bullies need apply. Recruitment efforts initially bore little fruit, especially since until recently cops could get easier and less dangerous jobs and better pay in most suburban departments.

In 2024 and early 2025, we are seeing results. We ended 2024 with more police officers than the year before, for the first time since 2019. We recently graduated the largest cadet class in that same period. We have 133 applications in the pipeline. We are on our way to getting back, if not to the 877 high, at least to the charter-required number in the high 700s.

Sounds a lot like Department A. We are getting the high-level, strategic results we’ve been looking for.

Meanwhile, when police officer headcounts were dangerously low, an alternative strategy to safer communities emerged: Violence Interrupters. We would hire people from the local communities, who (according to the city website) have relationships in their neighborhood, who could detect potentially violent conflicts and events. They could de-escalate matters before they got violent. They could interrupt the cycle of violence.

Violence interrupters received 20 hours of leadership training, and 40 hours of violence interruption and reduction training. If that strategy proved to be successful, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad that we don’t have enough cops. (Well, except there’s still that pesky charter requirement.)

So how are we doing with our alternative strategy? We’ve been at it for a few years now, so we must have interrupted a lot of violence by now, correct?

Well….compared to pre-George Floyd murder, and pandemic, murder rate is up 58%. Aggravated assault is up 30%. Robbery is up 21%. The violence prevention office itself is beset with controversies about its management and accountability, and has been pressured by some city council members to make payments on violence interrupter contracts even in the absence of invoices that properly document their work.

Looks like our alternative strategy is not yet achieving very much.

Sounds like Department B. No progress on the high-level strategic results we are looking for, in fact things have gotten worse.

And what did our “senior executives” on the city council do in response to these very different sets of outcomes? They eliminated the $500,000 police recruitment budget. They did the opposite of what an experienced executive would do.

That’s pretty shameful, but there is now an opportunity to restore the police recruitment budget. Previously the council, with little thought or analysis, grabbed $1.5 million from this department and that, to try to rescue the Agate downtown homeless shelter. The shelter failed to survive anyway. So those funds can be reclaimed. The council could take just one-third of the reclaimed funds and fully restore the police recruitment budget. The other two-thirds they could give back to the various departments they raided initially.

Will the council do this? It’s hard to be optimistic. While the DSA-affiliated majority has been smart enough to no longer use the “defund the police” phrase, it’s still prominent in the DSA platform. Having taken away $500,000, from an area of MPD management that is clearly achieving success, it’s not likely the council majority will give it back. I’m pretty sure none of them have taken the GMAT.

David Therkelsen has been a homeowner in Minneapolis for 50 years, and attentive to city and school affairs for all of that time. Professionally, he headed two American Red Cross field units, and at one time was co-chief of staff to the President of American Red Cross. Later he was executive director of Crisis Connection, a state-wide mental health counseling agency. Dave held faculty appointments at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and recently co-authored a book about the history of transfusion medicine and blood banking.