Police chief takes on union, promises change
The Minneapolis Police Department will withdraw from police union contract negotiations, Chief Medaria Arradondo said Wednesday, as he announced initial steps in what he said would be transformational reforms to the agency in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Faced with calls from activists and a majority of City Council members to dismantle or defund the department, Arradondo also said he would use a new system to identify problem officers early and intervene.
“We will have a police department that our communities view as legitimate, trusting and working with their best interests at heart,” he said at a news conference more than two weeks after Floyd died after a white officer pressed his knee into the handcuffed black man’s neck even after he pleaded for air and stopped moving.
Activists have pointed to racial inequities and brutality, as well as a system that rarely disciplines problem officers. The officer who had his knee on Floyd’s neck, Derek Chauvin, had 17 complaints against him and had been disciplined only once.
Arradondo said “taking a deliberate pause” to review the union contract is the first step toward change. He said it’s debilitating for a chief when an officer does something that calls for termination, but the union works to keep that person on the job.
Advisers will look for ways to restructure the contract to provide more transparency and flexibility, he said. The review will look at critical incident protocols, use of force, and disciplinary protocols, including grievances and arbitration, among other things.
“This work must be transformational, but I must do it right,” Arradondo said.
The union’s contract expired on Dec. 31 but remains in effect until there is a new one. Talks began in October and eventually included a state mediator; the last discussion was in early March, when the coronavirus led to talks breaking off.
Union President Bob Kroll didn’t immediately return messages. Arradondo sidestepped a question about whether he thought Kroll, often seen as an obstacle to changes, should step down. He also didn’t directly answer a question about whether residents should worry about a slowdown in police response time as a pushback against attempts to transform the department. Some City Council members have said in the past that their wards saw such slowdowns when they complained about police action.
In an interview later, Arradondo said it’s up to the union’s members to decide whether Kroll should resign. But he said he hopes the union leadership takes to heart “the fierce urgency of now.”