Holding Mayor Frey solely liable for a staffing crisis engineered by the City Council’s anti-police wing is an administrative farce. It’s time to expand the guest list at the defense table.
If you want to understand the sheer absurdity of Twin Cities governance, look no further than the Hennepin County District Court.
Recently, Judge Laura Thomas handed down a searing ultimatum to Mayor Jacob Frey: bring the Minneapolis Police Department up to its legally mandated charter minimum of 731 officers by January 2027, or face a contempt of court trial in April. The lawsuit, brought forward by a group of fed-up residents represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center, points out a hard, undeniable fact—with roughly 649 active officers, our city is violating its own constitution.
I understand the frustration of the petitioners, and I share it. But by directing this legal enforcement exclusively at the Mayor, the courts are operating in a dangerous institutional blind spot. They are treating the executive branch as if it operates in a vacuum.
It is an administrative farce to hold the Mayor solely liable for a staffing crisis while letting the true architects of this deficit escape scot-free. If the courts want to enforce the City Charter, the Upper Midwest Law Center needs to amend its petition.
It’s time to co-name the Minneapolis City Council in this lawsuit.
The Institutional Paradox: Commanding the Driver, Starving the Engine
The fundamental flaw in the current legal proceeding is a failure to recognize the separation of powers within City Hall. Under our current governance structure, the Mayor may command the police department, but the City Council controls the purse strings.
You cannot command a driver to accelerate while letting the passengers rip out the engine block.
By targeting only the Mayor, the legal system assumes that recruitment and retention are purely executive failures. They aren’t. Rebuilding a depleted police force requires massive capital, structural infrastructure, and competitive benefits—all of which require legislative approval.
When a judge threatens a mayor with contempt for failing to hire, she is punishing the department head while ignoring the committee that refuses to pay for the desks, the cruisers, and the uniforms. True accountability requires looking at the entire pipeline, and that pipeline is currently blocked by a legislative branch that acts as a structural bottleneck.
“Abolition Through Attrition”: The Legislative Sabotage
Let’s drop the polite political euphemisms: the current staffing deficit of nearly 100 officers is not a tragic accident. It is a systematically engineered crisis driven by the City Council’s dominant, anti-police wing.
Unable to pass defunding at the ballot box in 2021, the progressive vanguard has spent the last few years practicing abolition through attrition. They are starving the department of the resources necessary to survive, let alone grow.
The receipts are public, and it’s time to name the actors.
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The Bonus Blockade: In November 2023, when the city desperately needed to stop the hemorrhage of retiring and transferring officers, an 8-5 council block led by Council President Elliott Payne, Majority Leader Aisha Chughtai, Robin Wonsley, and Jason Chavez voted down $15.3 million in state-funded recruitment and retention bonuses.
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The Infrastructure Veto: More recently, that same ideological bloc—now fortified by Soren Stevenson and Aurin Chowdhury—has repeatedly sabotaged critical public safety infrastructure, including the proposed $38 million training and wellness center.
When Council Member Wonsley routinely dismisses public safety investments as giving MPD money to “get their act together,” she isn’t just engaging in rhetoric; she is actively ensuring Minneapolis remains structurally uncompetitive against neighboring suburbs.
They deny the funding, they block the bonuses, they derail the training facilities, and then they stand on the steps of City Hall demanding to know why the Mayor hasn’t met his hiring quotas. It is a masterful game of political gaslighting, and the courts should no longer allow them to play it.
Toxic Rhetoric, Toxic Workplace
Recruitment is not just a math problem calculated in line-item budgets; it is an exercise in workplace culture.
Who in their right mind would apply to wear a Minneapolis Police badge today?
It is a grueling, high-stress job under the best of circumstances. But when the dominant political leadership of the city treats the entire force not as a necessary public utility, but as an inherently predatory occupying force, recruitment becomes impossible.
When Council Members like Chavez and Stevenson treat every professional deployment as a constitutional crisis and use their platforms to signal perpetual hostility toward rank-and-file officers, they create a toxic workforce environment.
Experienced officers leave for departments where they are respected, and qualified new recruits choose to take their talents to communities that don’t vilify them before they even punch the clock. The anti-police wing of the council has systematically poisoned the well, and now they are grandstanding about the drought.
The Regressive Impact on Real Neighborhoods
The ultimate irony of this ideological purity testing is who actually pays the price. The council members leading this charge represent a progressive vanguard that claims to protect the vulnerable. In reality, their legislative sabotage has a deeply regressive impact.
The professional activist class can afford to sit on social media debating abstract sociological theories and “root causes.” But the transit-dependent parent waiting at a bus stop on Lake Street, the immigrant small business owner in Cedar-Riverside, and the working-class families in North Minneapolis don’t have the luxury of waiting for a decade-long cultural shift. They need a functional public safety system today.
When staffing shortages cause 911 response times to skyrocket and force the MPD to suspend proactive neighborhood patrols, the wealthy neighborhoods remain relatively insulated. It is our city’s most vulnerable populations who bear the literal brunt of unchecked property crime and violent offenses.
By starving the MPD of officers, the council’s activist wing is directly eroding the quality of life for the very residents they claim to defend.
Conclusion: Share the Defense Table
Minneapolis cannot afford to keep playing these cynical political games—especially not now. With Chief Brian O’Hara’s recent resignation, City Hall announced a nationwide search this week for a replacement to steer our fragile, court-mandated reform process. But let’s be honest: what top-tier law enforcement executive in America would willingly walk into this meat grinder?
If Judge Thomas forces Mayor Frey to stand trial for contempt in April 2027, he shouldn’t be sitting at that defense table alone.
Council President Payne, Majority Leader Chughtai, and Council Members Wonsley, Chavez, Stevenson, and Chowdhury should be forced to sit right next to him. Let them explain to a judge, under oath, why they voted to block the bonuses. Let them defend their record of structural sabotage to the taxpayers.
True solidarity means living with the consequences of your legislative choices. If the City Council wants to vote like abolitionists, it’s time for the courts to make them answer like defendants.
Related: Court Order Ultimatum: Minneapolis Mayor Faces Contempt Trial Over Police Staffing Deficit
This piece covers it all..but this is so true. Excerpt below..
“It is our city’s most vulnerable populations who bear the literal brunt of unchecked property crime and violent offenses.
By starving the MPD of officers, the council’s activist wing is directly eroding the quality of life for the very residents they claim to defend.”
Just one of so, so many examples of the impact. A post on Next Door from this week. The name of the author has been removed….
Marcy-Holmes·
To whoever broke into my car: I’m poor. I have never been rich. I do not come from a family with financial resources. In fact, I have just barely been “making ends meet” if you can even call it that. I am solely responsible for every cost in my life. I do instacart and DoorDash to make money. I just graduated college and am still unemployed. When I walked out and found this I was on my way to clean someone’s apartment, trying to earn money to cover rent. I cried, sucked it up, and still went to clean the unit. To make things even better, my car was towed the morning after. I cried, sucked it up, somehow found someone who could spot me the money, and did DoorDash with my broken window to start paying that person back the $200. My deductible is $500. I’m already behind on my student loans that are higher than my rent. I’m already behind on Xcel. I’m already maxed out on credit cards. My lease ends soon, and I have to somehow handle all of this and afford to move? A vehicle is a way of surviving. This act is something that can directly force people to be on the streets. I just want whoever did this to know that they chose someone who is doing everything in their power to claw their way out of poverty. It’s extremely hard to not h8 you right now.
Great truth telling article: I wonder if we should have a part-time City Council, they don’t seem to be able to focus on constituency. They have lost their way. Downtown is dying, uptown is all but gone. I have watched them use their words to belittle and berate department staff without reprisal. If Frey gets sued then Council should be alongside them, they offer no alternative that will be for the greater good. move the encampments to their neighborhoods, watch kids have to walk through that to get to school. some areas look like an unsafe war zone, and the Minneapolis city council is to blame. Hold them accountable. and does Choudary live in Minneapolis anymore, isn’t that a requirement.
Wonderful story. I thought it was bizarre to not put the DSA activists and leaners also on trial from the get-go. Let’s hope the Upper Midwest Law Center adds them to the suit. I have wondered for some time if we could sue our wayward city council members for gross mismanagement. Certainly this lawsuit applies to them! Why should they get a break?
When your platform is about abolishing the police and eliminating prisons (even for violent offenders?), it’s really hard to support funding a police force that meets the Charter minimums much less a force that meets the current city needs. There are issues with police misconduct that are sadly systemic and need to be dealt with. An adequately staffed and well managed police force doesn’t make the misconduct problem any worse and probably makes it better.
This DSA aligned/ Wonsley voting block on the City Council would do the SAME thing that they have been vigorously trying to do here in Mpls, in any and EVERY city that they landed. So ALL that they do, their goals, strategies, and tactics, have little to do with Mpls, Mayor Frey, the MPD, Hennepin County, or Sheriff Witt,…etc. ( Witt now being their latest target.)
Thankfully in NYC, the new mayor, at least in responding to the public safety needs of that city, is taking the lead from MORE than just the anti/ defund/ abolish the police DSA’ers.
*NYC was crawling with law enforcement resources during the Knicks’ NBA Final Celebrations, through out the City. For the millions of people out in the streets in NYC, this HUGE law enforcement presence, MET the need and was very much appreciated..👏
The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America criticized the mayor over his support for increasing the Police Department’s head count.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/12/nyregion/dsa-mamdani-pushback.html?unlocked_article_code=1.p1A.g2V8.Qjy9BIUdR7a_&smid=url-share
This voting block on the City Council would like people to either not know or NOT pay attention to this, hoping that may help to shield them by obscuring their many anti police activities. Keep THAT in mind with every meeting you WATCH and every VOTE they take.
That this…is what it is all about..
https://www.dsausa.org/working-groups/abolition-working-group/
We are committed to the horizon of abolition and the path leading us there. Our demands:
Defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets or scope of enforcement while cutting budgets annually towards zero
End the criminalization of working-class survival
Freedom for all incarcerated people
Demilitarize the police and end colonial policing of our cities and neighborhood
You ignore all the funding the city council has approved. And, obviously, the city council doesn’t control MPD. The mayor does. We had an entire election fight over where power should reside and how policing should be structured. Voters preserved the charter requirement and kept the mayor in control, and then gave the mayor even more power. By all accounts, progress is being made. We are doing better and recruitment and hiring. To think we could have actually made a material difference had a couple votes gone different ways is foolish speculation. The lawsuit is another silly and costly distraction, and using it as another prompt to bash progressives doesn’t get us anywhere either.
Um….okay, but the council majority has even blocked this progress. When they saw that, at last, MPD was having recruiting success – we had built new classes, with the very people we wanted to represent us in the streets, people of color, people who live or will live in the city. Well, they said, this is not acceptable, we can’t actually hire more cops and the kind of cops we want to hire. And so they eliminated the recruitment budget.