Welcome to the regular meeting of the Public Health Safety and Equity Committee for July 22nd, 2026.

I am Jason Chavez, the chair of this committee.

Before we begin the meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all member staff and the public that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation.

These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community.

Therefore, all speakers need to be mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for the broadcast.

We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments.

I also want to talk about this weekend.

And another on Nicola Avenue in Ward 6 that took the life of a 28-year-old person and wounded four others.

Additionally, on Sunday night, two houses were struck by gunfire in Potterhorn Park.

On Monday near 12th Avenue in Oliver North in Ward 5, someone was shot and suffered non-life threatening injuries.

On Monday night, additionally, another shooting happened on Nicola Avenue in Ward 6.

Again, near the mass shooting where someone suffered non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.

And once again, yesterday, another shooting occurred in the same area.

My heart is with the victims, their families, and everyone across our city who was impacted by gun violence in Minneapolis.

In today's committee, we will also be hearing about the city's non-fatal shooting task force that was funded by the city council as a way to address gun violence.

And our Office of Community Safety quarterly reports.

It will be important for the public and for us as elected officials as a body to look at these reports and work to address the missing gaps, including the plans for MPD, improving cross-jurisdictional coordination, deploying violence interrupters in areas impacted by gun violence, including outside their usual zones, when and where the violence shows up, not just where it's been before.

Investing in third spaces for our youth so our kids and teens have somewhere to go and something to belong to that isn't the street.

And rapid response community funding, a mechanism to get funds to affected neighborhoods and blocks that are impacted by these incidents.

At this time, I will ask the clerk to call a roll so we can verify a quorum for this meeting.

Councilmember Payne.

Present.

After our consent agenda, we will move on to the public hearing.

If you would like to speak during the public hearing and have not signed up to speak, please see the clerk so that you may register to speak before the council.

On our consent agenda, item number two authorizes a contract with Hennepin Technical College for the police cadet program.

Item three authorizes contract amendment with GovWorks Inc.

to provide quality assurance software for 911.

Item four authorizes a contract amendment with the Center for Multicultural Mediation for Community Trauma Response Services.

Item five authorizes a contract amendment with the Mother's Love Initiative for Community Trauma Response Services.

Item six accepts a grant for the Minnesota Department of Health to provide family home visiting services and authorizes an agreement with the state of Minnesota for the grant.

Item seven approves the legislative directive related to neighborhood safety contract management audits.

Colleagues, is there any discussion or are there any items that anybody would like to pull for further discussion?

Councilmember Wandsley.

Thank you, Chair Chavez.

I did want to see if we had uh representatives from NSD here.

I did have a question regarding item number five, the contract amendment with the mother's love.

Is anybody here from NSD?

Or I also see Commissioner Barnett here too.

Commissioner Barnett.

Yeah.

So just the questions that I had raised was um I know Director Amanda Harrison earlier this year did mention that um she would be um sunsetting this program and restructuring it and doing a pilot phase, but we're being asked to extend this contract.

So I just wanted to get a little bit more information about what's the restructuring process looking like for this program and a timeline on when you believe that restructuring will be fully fleshed out.

Oh, your mic.

Oh, thank you.

Um Councilmember Wandsley, I don't remember all the details.

I know that there's several contracts that expire, and that there was I believe some funds left over to extend this contract.

If you don't mind waiting for the quarterly report when Amanda Harrington will be here, I think she can answer that question for you.

Okay, and I'll also note it for our staff uh follow-up as well.

All right, we'll get staff follow up on that.

I'll move approval of all these items.

Uh and see no one else on queue on that motion.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed say nay.

Any abstention that carries.

Next, we're going to take up our public hearing, which is consideration of the mayor's nomination of Dr.

Freeman to the appointed position of fire chief.

Anyone who signed up for this item will be given two minutes each to testify.

For everyone in attendance, and especially those who may participate in our hearings or comment period, let me offer this notice.

These hearings are being recorded and broadcast.

Both the recording and the broadcast are classified as public data under the Minnesota Government Practices Act.

By attending and participating in these proceedings, your image and any testimony or information that you provide will be also subject to disclosure under that law that includes but is not limited to your attendance, your name, and other personal details you provide, as well as any testimony or comments you provide, which includes any written submissions you make, which are included in the record of this meeting.

To introduce the mayor's nomination for fire chief, we have been joined by Commissioner Barnett, who I'll now invite to speak on this nomination.

Thank you.

Um good afternoon.

Thank you, Chair Chavez and members of the City Council, and also members of the Minneapolis community that are present here today.

It is my privilege and honor uh to be before you today to present Mayor Fry's nominee for chief of Minneapolis Fire Department, Dr.

Reginald Freeman.

When searching for the next leader of our fire department, the objective was clear.

We wanted a forward thinking, battled, tested administrator who understands modern emergency response, prioritizes the health and safety of our firefighters, and builds genuine trust relationships with every neighborhood in our city.

And Dr.

Freeman, we found that leader.

A distinguished career defined by public service and many years of extraordinary executive leadership in fire and emergency management.

He has served as a fire chief in Oakland, California in Hartford, Connecticut, as well as a fire chief for Lockheed Martin.

He brings deep expertise in managing complex high-stakes municipal operations.

We we truly um what truly has set Dr.

Freeman apart is his vision for modern community-centered public safety approach.

He has continuously demonstrated a commitment to firefighters' health and wellness, advocating for cutting-edge physical safety gear, mental health resources, and cancer prevention protocols to protect those who protect us.

He has extended he has expanded pipeline programs so that the fire department reflects a diverse community, just like the ones we have here in Minneapolis.

He has leveraged modern emergency management metrics to optimize response times and resource deployment across fire departments.

You don't have to take my word for it.

Over the past several weeks, our office has received letters of support for Dr.

Freeman from fire chiefs, firefighters, labor leaders, elected official, clergy, civil rights organization, national fire service organization, educators, and community leaders across the United States.

What has struck me is how consistent they describe Dr.

Freeman.

They describe him as someone who listens before acting, who values firefighters, who respects labor, who builds partnerships with neighborhood, faith communities, elected officials, and community organizations.

But more importantly, he is someone who understands that public trust is earned every day.

Again and again, people wrote that he develops people, not just organizations.

They described him as a mentor who invests in future leaders and creates opportunities for others.

Under his leadership, fire departments achieve national accreditation, strengthen accountability, improve operational performance, secured significant grant funding, expanded professional development, improved morale, and enhance community engagement.

After reviewing Dr.

Freeman's resume and record, after meeting with him and considering the overwhelming support from those who have served alongside him, I believe he's a compassionate leader, a disciplined administrator, and a collaborative partner who respects the rich history of the Minneapolis Fire Department.

And he is well equipped to lead our fire department for many years to come.

With that, members of the city council, I ask that you move Dr.

Freeman's nomination forward for consideration and strongly urge you to confirm Dr.

Freeman as the chief of the Minneapolis Fire Department.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner.

I would like to acknowledge that we have been joined by Vice Chair Stevenson and Council Vice President Osman and colleagues without objection.

I'd like to mark down Vice Chair Stevenson as an eye on the consent agenda.

All right.

At this time, colleagues, I'm going to proceed to open the public hearing for the appointment, and then we can proceed on to questions or comments from uh the council members here today.

Uh but before that, we will also hear from the nominee.

So at this time, I'm going to proceed to open the public hearing for this appointment.

The first person to sign up to speak is Mark number one.

Good afternoon through the chair, Chavez.

Uh, don't start my clock yet.

If you knew me, if you knew me, two minutes is pretty tough.

So I'll use some of my buddies' time if I could.

But first and foremost, the fact that I'm up here today and not having to speak in front of the council in years is is pretty poignant relative to the importance of this position and um what I've been told from our members.

Um I guess just to build on top of what the commissioner said as you know, we've had a lengthy process.

You guys went outside, you spent some money, and you entrusted a firm to bring the best candidates.

That process went through through numerous interviews, and Dr.

Freeman obviously separated himself amongst those people in those interviews.

Um the commissioner gave you the admin side and their goals on their side.

Well, I'm here to tell you on the labor side.

Everybody I spoke to from the international president, international secretary, former state California president, 28-year Connecticut president, um, firefighters from Oakland, firefighters from Hartford.

I I can't even tell you how many people I spoke throughout the state, plus an overwhelming support, phone calls, phone calls today on internal membership in support of this.

And what's driving this is I just think we've come to a place where it in short, it's just time for fresh eyes.

It's time to bring some people, it's time to bring leadership back to this department.

I've been here 26 years.

It's time to bring development back.

It's trying, it's time to get firm, fair, consistent.

It's time to bring um people treated equally on all fronts.

It's time to bring opportunity for roles offered to everybody.

If there ever was a time, and me being up here, not going internal, is huge if you know me.

I've sat in on a few interviews.

If you didn't know, uh uh the doc was the first choice last time, and they chose to stay internal.

Um if you guys were I'm sure you all read the resume, but if you wrote the script, if you guys can find anybody on paper more qualified in the country, because I've looked in the country, PhD, NFPA member, multiple fire departments, uh, author uh for the National Fire Academy for the curriculum on DEI.

That obviously got the first class.

Uh Trump took care of that program.

Uh please let me know if you can find a better candidate.

Thank you, Mark.

Well, that was it.

Well, yeah, we only get some.

Full support on the direction.

Thank you, Mark.

Uh next up, number two will be Joseph.

And if you have not signed up to speak and wish to speak, Joseph is the last person to sign up, so please do so with our clerks.

Welcome.

Thank you, Chair Chavez.

Um, most of you who I've met before.

My name is Joseph Madison.

I'm a retired firefighter, Minneapolis resident.

I um retired as deputy chief of training.

I was part of the TMT for four years.

Have a lot of experience with what's been what we've been through and where what we're uh where we need to go.

I'm excited that we're going to another direction.

I've been in those rooms.

I've seen everything being retread over and over for many, many years.

I think it's time for Minneapolis to have a new voice from the outside.

And I'm looking forward.

I looked at uh his nomination response, the candidate response.

And the one thing that I really liked was he said that paraphrasing, he's not just coming in here to make change.

He's just not gonna come in here and say you're here, I'm gonna put these people in these places.

He came in here and said, I'm gonna listen.

And I thought that was great.

The firefighter stuff I won't bore you with.

But he does have the credentials.

But I would really like for us to move forward.

Last time we went through nomination process, it went on for months and months and months, and we got behind, behind, behind.

And Brian ended up having maybe three years where he could have had four.

I don't want us to go through this again.

I want us to get it get going, get Dr.

Freeman out there working so we can move forward and bring back morale to this fire department.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Um I'm gonna ask the public um three times if you wish to testify or sign up.

Going once, going twice, going three times.

Seeing no one else wishing to speak, I will now close the hearing and invite the nominee to provide his statement.

Welcome, Doctor.

Thank you so much.

Chair, members of the committee, members of city council, Mayor Fry, firefighters of the Minneapolis Fire Department, distinguished guests and the residents and community members of Minneapolis.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

I am deeply honored to be considered for confirmation as the next fire chief for the Minneapolis Fire Department.

I want to begin by expressing my sincere gratitude to Mayor Fry for his confidence in me, to the City Council for your thoughtful consideration, and to the dedicated members of the Minneapolis Fire Department whose unwavering commitment to protecting this great city has earned the respect of communities across our great nation.

I also want to thank Interim Chief Rucker who stepped up to lead the department while the city searched for a permanent chief.

Today is not simply about confirming a fire chief.

It is about affirming a shared commitment to public service, to excellence, to accountability, and most importantly, to the people who call Minneapolis home.

Now, throughout my entire career, I have had the extraordinary privilege of leading firefighters and emergency responders in communities facing complex challenges.

I have led organizations through natural disasters, public health emergencies, organizational transformation, international accreditation, and periods of significant change.

Those experiences have taught me something that has shaped my leadership philosophy.

Leadership is never about the position that you hold, it is about the people that you serve.

If confirmed, I will approach this role first as a servant, serving the firefighters who risk their lives every day, serving our civilian team members whose work strengthens this department, serving our elected officials and trusted by the public, and above all, serving every resident and community member, including our visitors and businesses in Minneapolis.

My vision for the Minneapolis Fire Department is straightforward and very intentional.

I want us to become the nation's benchmark for Metropolitan Fire Service excellence, not simply because of what we accomplish operationally, but because of how we accomplish it.

A department where firefighters know they are valued, developed, and empowered.

A department where leadership is visible, approachable, and accountable.

A department that embraces innovation while honoring its proud historic traditions.

A department where diversity is recognized as one of our greatest strengths because our workforce should understand and reflect the communities that we proudly serve on a daily basis.

A department that builds trust before the emergency happens through meaningful relationships with neighborhoods, communities, businesses, schools, faith leaders, and community organizations.

And a department that never stops asking how we can improve tomorrow beyond what we achieved today.

None of these imperatives are easy.

However, my prior success with infusing these intentional relationships has been orchestrated by consistent and steadfast collaboration with both internal and external stakeholders.

There is a stark difference between fire stations and firehouses.

Now, fire stations, they have equipment, they have tools and people there to do a job.

Firehouses, on the other hand, they have dedicated professionals who care about one another and respect the neighborhood and city that they serve.

They are an integral part of the community, contributing to the vitality and quality of life for all.

As the city of Minneapolis Fire Chief, I will lead our department in adopting the this firehouse approach.

We will not just support the community, we will be part of it.

Public safety has evolved dramatically.

Today's fire chief must be more than an incident commander.

Throughout my career, I have adapted my leadership to reflect the specific needs of the fire departments and communities that I serve while incorporating a modern and inclusive approach.

Furthermore, I have learned that today's fire chief must also be a strategist along with a collaborator, a fiscal steward, a mentor, a listener, a problem solver, and last but not least, a trusted partner.

Someone capable of leading through complexity while never losing sight of the humanity behind every single decision.

This is who I am.

I am passionate about serving and being of service, but most importantly, I am someone who makes a difference.

If confirmed, my priorities will be clear.

Protect our firefighters by making safety, wellness, and professional development foundational, not optional.

Strengthen operational readiness through training, technology, data-informed decision making, and continuous improvement.

Build relationships rooted in transparency, trust, and mutual respect with labor, elected officials, neighboring agencies, and every community that we serve.

Develop future leaders who will leave this department stronger than they found it, and ensure every decision reflects responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources while delivering exceptional emergency services.

Now, I recognize that Minneapolis has experienced moments that have challenged public confidence in institutions.

Those moments also present extraordinary opportunities.

Opportunities to listen more than we speak, to engage before problems emerge, to lead with empathy, to earn trust through consistent action, and to demonstrate every single day that public service remains one of the noblest professions.

Trust is not built through speeches.

It is built through presence, through integrity, through accountability, through keeping promises.

If given the privilege of serving as your fire chief, I intend to earn that trust every single day.

To the firefighters of Minneapolis, know this.

To the residents and community members of Minneapolis.

You deserve a fire department that is prepared before the emergency, exceptional during the emergency, and engage long after the emergency has ended.

You deserve leaders who listen, who are visible, who are accountable, who understand that every interaction is an opportunity to strengthen public trust.

I promise to lead with integrity, with humility, and with courage.

And with an unwavering commitment to this great city.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Erin, and our daughters Harmony and Joy for their constant encouragement and sacrifices throughout my entire career.

Their love, their support have made this journey possible, and I am grateful to have them in my life.

Members of the committee, I understand the significance of this responsibility.

I do not view this opportunity as the culmination of my career.

I view it as the beginning of my most important chapter of public service.

Should you entrust me with this responsibility, I pledge to devote my experience, my energy, and my heart to ensuring that the Minneapolis Fire Department continues to protect lives, strengthen communities, and serve as a model of excellence for generations to come.

Thank you for your time, your consideration, and your commitment to the people of Minneapolis.

I yield and welcome any questions.

Thank you, Dr.

Freeman.

I'm now going up to open up any questions or discussion from committee members, and we'll start off by with Councilmember Vita.

Thank you, Chair Chavez.

Thank you so much, Dr.

Freeman.

Um, you know, you and I met on Friday, and I told you that sometimes I'm a little delayed in processing.

We had a couple hour conversation.

A lot of questions came out of uh not only the discussion I had with you, but I also talked to you about um reaching out to some of the folks who participated in your interview process, and you sent I think maybe 20 letters of reference and some other things.

So just I have a lot of questions, Dr.

Freeman.

So buckle up.

This is and I and I warned the chair in advance that I was gonna have a lot of questions.

Um my first question though is um I think one of the parts of the conversation we talked about uh for me was just like why Minneapolis.

And so uh my first question is that you shared that you've been a change agent, uh change agent uh and that I want to know what do you see that in the Minneapolis Fire Department?

Like what are you gonna change or what do you think needs to happen in the Minneapolis Fire Department?

Yes, madam Councilmember, thank you so much for that question.

And my previous roles specifically went to Hartford to fix issues, specifically went to Oakland to fix issues.

I'm not coming to Minneapolis to fix any specific issues.

Uh I'm beyond that in my career.

I see Minneapolis as a beautiful, diverse community with an exceptional fire department, which I hope to have the opportunity and the pleasure to lead.

Okay, so you don't see change.

I I'm trying to get to like what do you think needs to be changed or what is there that you need to change and how are you going to do that and like what is implementation look like?

Sure.

So there was crisis in Hartford and Oakland.

We don't have crisis in the Minneapolis Fire Department, but as a professional, uh I have not had an opportunity to do a deep dive or look behind the curtain at the organization.

But walking into the door, making sure that our firefighter health and well-being program is in place and well intact, funded, available, accessible to the membership, ensuring that we have a robust professional development program, which includes not only uh IFSAC and Pro Board certification programs, but then also access to higher higher learning and higher education at no cost to the membership.

Those are just a few examples of the things that I would be looking at.

Okay.

Um, I don't know if this number is true, but I it but Google said it was that you currently oversee a 2.2 billion dollar operation in Saudi Arabia.

Can you describe the scope of that operation and how managing an organization that size has prepared you to lead the Minneapolis Fire Department?

I do have a signed non-disclosure agreement with the city of Neum, so I cannot go into specifics.

However, NEAM is the size of Belgium, and my responsibility is to ensure that fire and emergency services throughout all of Nehem is intact, efficient, and professional.

Okay.

And what's motivating you to leave that position now and come to Minneapolis?

Minneapolis, this opportunity has came up again.

Uh, this is the second time I have applied for the position.

I applied the first time which when Chief Tiner was appointed.

Uh so for me, this is an exceptional opportunity to lead a great fire department.

Uh, one of the things that kind of shocked me a little bit when we met, I was talking to you about budget, and you had told me that no one had even brought budget up, and it was a little alarming for you throughout multiple uh interviews and conversations.

And so um, as I said to you then, like budget is certainly gonna be an issue.

And just tell me a little bit about your experience in Oakland, Hartford, and Saudi Arabia, managing departmental budgets, particularly when you face reductions or significant financial constraints.

Sure.

So uh both in Hartford and in Oakland, you know, there's two types of budgets generally in local government you look to develop performance-based budget, and then zero-based budget.

So, in both instances, I took the approach of developing a zero-based budget that allows us to uh to get everything that we need and hopefully get a few things that we want with a zero-based budget.

In some instances, it may be appropriate appropriate to review and pursue a performance-based budget to where, regardless whether zero-based or performance-based, I'm gonna pull minimum five years of our budget of the Minneapolis Fire Department from the city to look at what was funded and what was actual.

And that gives us an idea of where we need to pivot.

So that's my experiences with budgets, and not only that, depending on uh the municipality, sometimes the capital improvement uh budget is included in your operating funds.

I'm not sure how we do it here in Minneapolis, but also have experience with managing uh our capital budgets for the fire department.

So that that leads me into my next question.

The fire department has exceeded its budget by approximately five to seven million dollars in the last five years.

What strategies are you planning to implement to bring that back into alignment with the budget?

Sure, uh going back to zero base.

That's why that zero base concept is so critically important.

I'm not sure how the budget was developed uh prior to 2026 or prior to me assuming command of the organization, if fortunate enough.

However, looking at the past five years of the performance of it, that will allow me to go back to my leadership and to give recommendations on any changes and also justification why I'm requesting those changes, which would be to bring in the budget to be more reflective of our expenditures.

Okay, maybe I need to understand a little bit more about this zero-based strategy, but I yeah, I'm not catching like the actual strategies to get us back to back down, I mean five to seven million within the budget.

Sure.

So in most instances, madam council member, that overage for the budget is related to overtime.

So we will look at our allocated numbers for staffing within the organization.

Let's just say we have an allocated number within the fire department of 474 team members.

Most people would say employees.

I don't use the term employee because if you treat someone like an employee, they're gonna act like it.

In the fire department, we have team members and family members.

So let's just say you have 474 team members that's budgeted for, but you only have 440 on the books that are actually employed within the organization.

That's going to increase and drive your overtime.

That's where my recommendation would be to the leadership to see if we can go ahead and fill those other vacant positions to bring down the predicated on staffing.

So my job would be to come in, look at the staffing on the personnel side, on the non-personnel, see if we gone over budget on non-personnel, make the immediate corrective actions to ensure that doesn't happen again.

Okay.

I think I'm gonna have some more questions about that, but I'll just get to the next one.

Um outside of the city of Minneapolis do you anticipate bringing into leadership or other positions in the fire department?

Uh not certain on that number just yet.

Okay.

Um so if you were to hire external external personnel without an increase in the department's budget, how would you avoid, like how can you avoid impacting the current employees and would layoffs, would there be layoffs possibly?

Layoffs if I were to bring external team members in?

Right.

No, no, I wouldn't do that.

No, ma'am.

Okay.

Because I mean you told me you were bringing in external.

That could have changed.

Right.

I yeah, I told you possibly I would be.

You asked how many people if I would bring in, then I would be considering, and I believe I said two.

At least two, right.

Okay.

Um what experience do you have working within civil service systems and um administering departments governed by collective bargaining agreements?

Yes, ma'am.

Both Hartford and Oakland were civil service and work closely hand in hand with both civil service commissions and Hartford and in Oakland.

Okay, so you like you're familiar with the policies and practices, especially in like hiring and who has to stay and like Absolutely.

Okay.

Um for leadership transitions, can you create leadership uh transitions can create uncertainty within organizations?

This is something we talked about too.

Um, how would you build trust across the department and what steps would you take to ensure personnel are treated fairly regardless of whether they supported your candidacy or not?

Sure, my oath of office always dictates my actions.

I never violate my oath of office.

Being a public servant means that you have to put your personal feelings aside.

And for 20 my 25-year career, roughly 20 serving as a fire chief, uh, my oath has always superseded anything that I've done in regards to actions as a sworn member of society.

So treating people with dignity and respect is the expectation, uh, not the exception.

Um going back to your original question, I have made it my duty as the fire chief, as the new fire chief, whether it be Hartford or to Oakland, to visit with all of our members on all three shifts.

And in Hartford, it was four shifts.

We had 2472 schedule to visit all the firefighters on all shifts and the firehouses.

And no matter how long it takes me to accomplish that goal, I do that because it's important for them to see me in person.

Important for me to talk about expectations that I have of them, but most importantly, to hear what expectations they have of me.

And that's why I do that.

I also created something called Chiefs Memorandums.

They're numbered memorandum, so not necessarily something informal enough to be sent by email, but something that is coming directly from me that I want all members of the organization to have.

So I'll draft the email, number it, and send that out to the entire department.

Those are just examples of the communications uh that I would implement in the path that I've done before in the past and what I would do if appointed as a fire chief here in Minneapolis.

Um Dr.

Freeman, I really do appreciate this answer today because you certainly had we had a different conversation about some very specific things on Friday that were extremely alarming to me.

And so I don't know what's happened between now and Friday, but that yeah, there's just the completely different tone about um the current personnel and um how folks should be treated as personnel or like your approach to you know who's in the fire department right now.

Um I'm getting to the end of my questions.

The behavioral crisis response team is currently housed within the fire department.

What is your vision for that program and how do you see it fitting into the department's mission going forward?

We had an identical program in Oakland.

It was called Macro, Mobile Assistance Community Response Organizers, and we based this program off of the CAHOOTS program in Oregon.

Uh it started off as a pilot program, which was funded with 10 million dollars of federal money after 12 months after the pilot.

We brought it in-house underneath the fire department, still civilian personnel that uh were members of this team, but we manage it within Oakland Fire.

So uh have that experience, very much believe uh in every aspect of this program and its importance to the city.

And and my last question um in our conversation, completely uh like I don't even know where this came from, but you started talking to me about the police chief salary and how there was a difference, a hundred thousand dollar gap in the police chief's salary versus the Minneapolis fire chief salary, and I looked right at you and said, Do you think the police chief should make a hundred thousand dollars less?

Because I can't see how the budget crisis were in how your salary would go up, and especially because uh we just did uh um we just did a salary change for the fire chief.

So I'm just wondering what are your expectations for your salary as the fire chief.

Exactly what's been offered to me.

I'm totally fine uh with the salary that has been proposed.

Uh I I I thought you and I were having a lighthearted conversation.

I said that in jest in regards to the salary.

It's a non-issue as far as what the police chief makes versus what I make.

What was what I was offered and what I have accepted is a hundred percent fine with me, madam council member.

I I don't think that first of all, that comment wasn't there was nothing lighthearted when that conversation was starting to happen about the salary, and you brought it up and said specifically that you've never seen anything like this before.

So that observation is way off of what was happening in that meeting.

I I wouldn't have never even thought about the police chief salary, and I don't I don't think that that was a moment of like joking or lightheartedness or anything in that conversation.

I I was still trying to figure out why that even came up at all because we weren't talking about salary, and so I'm I'm sorry that that was your interpretation of it.

It really felt like to me as a council member who just voted for this salary to be uh adjusted, that you really thought we were underpaying a fire chief and was fishing to see if there was a possibility for the salary to change, or also to let me know that it's something that you are gonna be working towards.

And as I said there, and I'll say here on the diets, that's not something I'm looking forward to do.

So I'm happy to hear that you're satisfied with the salary that if you receive this job, you'll be getting.

If may I may I respond to that?

So if if I were to pursue uh a salary change, I would go to my supervisors.

I would not come to any council member and talk to them about my salary.

The salary that was proposed, I've accepted gladly, and it's a non-issue for me.

Uh next up we have Vice Chair Stevenson.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh thank you for coming here, Doctor.

Um we had a great conversation the other day, asked a lot of questions of you, uh, perhaps too many.

And um yeah, there were some things about uh your answers and about your past that I thought was really impressive.

I'm I I really like uh what you've said about working with the mental health response in Oakland.

Um I I really appreciated what you said about moving to Hartford to address behavioral issues uh in the department there.

Um and then there were other things that gave me a little bit of yellow flags, let's say, not red flags.

Um, but something that's come up in the media that I just wanted to hear directly from you is uh there's been a lawsuit against Hartford uh around sexual harassment in the fire department.

Not uh not about you, you're not implicated, but uh in the department that you um that you were the head of and I just want to hear from you about that, what's going on with that, what did you know?

What like can you tell me about this situation?

Thank you for the question, Mr.

Councilmember.

And I believe the lawsuit was about maybe gender discrimination.

Uh I I have not read that lawsuit in detail because I was not involved in the lawsuit, and that is my official statement to you and the residents of the city of Minneapolis.

Even in the article that ran in the news, it said I was not named.

Uh a department that's the size of 400 people, everyone's not going to be perfect.

What you rely on is that people in positions of authority do the right thing.

And one thing I can assure this committee, the council, as well as the residents, as well as the members of Minneapolis Fire Department, there's absolutely never been an issue that's been brought to my attention that I did not quickly and swiftly act on.

I assume command of Hartford Fire Department because there are a number of behavioral issues, violation of city policy and violation of department policy.

In the five to six years that I served as fire chief, emergency management director, and then two years also interim director of public works, working three jobs, department head jobs for the city of Hartford, I suspended andor fired terminated more firefighters in my tenure than the prior three chiefs before me had done during their time as fire chief.

I am known as someone who brings structure, organization, and discipline to an organization.

I would never not act on anything that's brought to my attention.

And I appreciate the opportunity to speak publicly about this because there is this interpretation that I was culparable in some shape, form, or fashion because this lawsuit was filed, I think a year after I had left and assumed command of Oakland Fire Department.

But rest assured, again, I was not named.

I was never contacted by the Hartford City attorneys for any comment for any uh deposition, uh, because I was not involved.

That's that's good to hear.

Um I wasn't trying to insinuate that you were involved, just to be clear.

Yes, sir.

And I wasn't, and I apologize if I if it came across that way.

I'm just saying in general, you know, just for the average person in the public or even a Minneapolis firefighter or any council member that may you know have a question if I was involved.

Yeah, the reason I bring this up is because Minneapolis is not immune from gender discrimination nor racism, and so this is something that you may be confronted with in your time here, and that's entirely unacceptable.

Sure, absolutely we want nothing to do with it, and we want a chief who's gonna act promptly to make sure that women, people of color are protected in our fire department and across the whole city.

Yes, sir.

Um I asked you in our private meeting about um uh uh street designs.

Uh this is something that I think Minneapolis does differently than most other cities uh in the country, and I I wanted to impress upon you that so you will be asked very frequently about uh your thoughts on street designs.

Uh it's it's part of the process which we talked about.

And here in Minneapolis, we build a lot of bicycle infrastructure, and that's very important to people around the city.

Um and I just wanted to hear from you again, and maybe the public to hear from you about um maybe your experience around uh working with public works departments on street design and your um your experience in balancing uh with the public works department, the need for safer infrastructure for our communities as well as infrastructure that is large enough for our our fire trucks.

No, absolutely, and both in Hartford and in Oakland, I work closely with and Hartford, it was public works.

In Oakland, we had a department of transportation that was responsible for the roadways.

And we also had nonprofit organizations that we work with hand in hand in regards to bicycle lanes and other pedestrian ways.

Uh that is uh an important part of my job.

Uh and it is very critical as for me as the fire chief to ensure that I'm doing everything that I can to get to yes.

And what I mean by that is you know, if there's a new design or redesign of a roadway, you know, I am not of the position that uh we are going to stand fast in the scope of well, this has to be X amount of feet wide per uh Minnesota DOT uh so our apparatus can get through.

Um our job as the fire department is to see how we can ensure that we are doing everything in our power to partner with all levels of the community and the city, and that includes roadway designs for pedestrians and bike lanes.

So that's been my experience before in the past.

Uh I welcome that opportunity to have those discussions.

That's never been an issue.

That's great.

That's good to hear.

Um I'm sure there will be many more questions uh going on, but I did want to reiterate some of the questions around the budget.

Um and cross-referencing this with what you've said about uh I I think I must have misheard you, but you you kind of insinuated that Minneapolis didn't have issues in our fire department.

Um and I assure you that the reason that we've been going over five to seven million is because we do have issues.

We have staffing issues in our fire department.

So um can you talk a little bit about the need to address those staffing issues and the need to stay within our budget and how you would advocate uh for the department in regards to that issue?

Yes, sir.

So uh number one job of fire chief is to make sure that firefighters are taken care of.

If the firefighters are not taken care of, they can't take care of the community.

So that's that's critically important.

Uh again, being able to walk into the door to do an analysis of the budget as well as our staffing, look at response times per not just firehouse, but per company, whether it be the engine or the truck company, and if we're not meeting the industry standard, then that's when we start peeling the layers of the onion back even more to try to find out why.

If it's a matter of staffing, uh then that of course is going to be addressed and proposed to my bosses in the form of an additional budget request.

Uh sometimes you need extra members in a class.

You know, I think we have the number of 15 so far that we have allocated for the next upcoming class.

And quite frankly speaking, that number seemed low to me.

And I talked to uh the boss about that uh in regards to, you know, because when I think about how long it takes for a class to get through, and depending on how short we are now, we're still gonna be we may be even negative six by the time that class of 15 hits the streets.

So it's not gonna help us with the over reducing the overtime.

And lack of staffing from a firefighter perspective is a safety issue.

It's a direct safety issue for the firefighters, and it's a safety issue for the community.

If they don't have enough persons on the fire ground to execute their duties of responsibility, because every engine company, every truck has a specific task that they have to accomplish.

If there's not enough firefighters to do it, it compromises public safety.

So my job is to come in and tell that story and to ask for additional resources as needed.

All right, thank you.

All right, I put myself next on queue.

Well, welcome, Dr.

Freeman.

Thanks for being here today.

I have more questions about maybe some of your plans or also maybe some of the work that you've done when it comes to the recruitment of women firefighters and hiring um people of color into the workforce.

You want to hear that some of the issues we're struggling with in the Minneapolis Fire Department, which is not enough women firefighters, maybe more support needed for women firefighters and the employees that we have, and also the recruitment efforts when it comes to not just recruitment of firefighters, but also particular areas that need to grow, in my opinion.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Uh my career started in Mississippi, and I was on the receiving end of a lot of actions that I've not I should not have been privy to uh as the first and the only African American firefighter in that organization.

So for me, having an inclusive organization is personal for me.

Uh having one that's reflective of the community is very personal.

So in Hartford, uh I had the opportunity to hire roughly 130, 135 firefighters.

Out of the 130 firefighters, 96 were either uh black or Latino.

And in Oakland, we partnered with all of our equity groups.

So we had the Black Firefighters Association, we had the National Association of Hispanic Firefighters, and we also had our women's firefighter group that we worked hand in hand with with addressing department issues.

I was a founding member in Oakland of the Oakland Women and Nonbinary Firefighters Group.

Oakland's nickname nickname in California, especially Northern California, is the town.

San Francisco's nickname is the city, but Oakland is the town.

So the Oakland Women Nonbinary Firefighters, the town firefighters, is something that I was co-founder of and very, very proud of what we've done since its exception.

We have not only participated and assisted other girls' camps throughout Northern California, but we had our first girls' fire camp in Oakland under my leadership to where the mayor came and other city council members came to show their support.

There is a letter from Candace Coshman, who uh is actually still the president of the Town Firefighters Association who speaks more in detail as far as my involvement and my contributions uh to ensuring that women and non-binary members of the community have an opportunity to wear the uniform.

Uh so from Hartford to Oakland, uh I have a track record of ensuring that not only the department is reflective of the community, but there is equal opportunity and accessibility for anyone who wants to wear their uniform.

Thank you, Dr.

Freeman.

So before I pass it on to uh Councilmember Whiting, I know that there's a lot of conversations that folks are bringing up on the data, so I'll just move this forward without recommendation.

And what that means for you is the full council will have a final debate on this uh nomination on Thursday next week, if I can get a second.

Uh Councilmember Whiting.

Thank you, uh Chair Chavez, uh, and thank you, uh Dr.

Freeman.

Um I have a few questions, but I also want to note right uh the way I kind of take uh these uh appointments.

Uh I am not a firefighter.

I I don't uh uh perform to be one.

Uh this is not an area of expertise that I do have.

And so uh when these kind of appointments come across my desk, I look at those um who this is their profession, who have spent their entire career uh in this area and have had uh conversations at length um uh with uh with our union representatives uh and and over the last I'm I think what we are close to seven months now for for our new folks.

I don't think there has been uh union representatives that have spoken stronger of their appointee uh than local 82.

And so uh I think that is a a high mark of of trust uh from a group of individuals that are just here, right?

Just meeting you in this version of this process.

And so uh that speaks volumes to me about your credentials and your ability to come in and and uh and keep this uh department to a level of uh of a standard uh that is uh deserving of a city like Minneapolis.

And so uh I am I am fully appreciative of of your uh support here uh for the city of Minneapolis, and I'm looking forward to uh hopefully if if you are confirmed uh leading this department and serving this city.

Uh and with that, I do want to kind of write it's how I again also look at uh how to support uh or or not support uh appointees uh or the people that they have worked with.

Uh I think you sent over 22 uh letters of support from uh chiefs across the country, street chiefs internationally.

Uh and just want to take a moment to read just a few notes from uh uh two of them that I think stuck out to me.

Uh, particularly the first one being the the uh NAACP Oakland branch.

Uh want to note here it says um during his tenure as fire chief of Oakland, Chief Freeman distinguished himself as a respected and effective leader who consistently demonstrated professionalism, integrity, and a deep commitment to public service.

He led the department during challenging times while maintaining a focus on operational excellence, community engagement, and the well-being of both firefighters and residents.

I think this is a version that speaks outside of uh uh internal fire uh department, uh those that you may have mentored or not, but this is a a community group that has no uh I think uh ability to kind of step in, and they decided to do so because I think they believe in in your leadership.

Uh and and it goes on paragraph after paragraph, kind of talking about the highlights uh of what you have been able to do.

Uh the other one is is I think now that the chief over at uh the city of Hartman uh where where you left and again want to kind of read uh a little snippet from that during his time as our 37th Fire Chief Reggie Lefton uh incredible mark on the Hartford Fire Department.

He didn't just manage the department, he transformed it.

He was a driving force behind our push towards uh international accreditation, monetizing our day-to-day operations and creating real paths for professional development, recognizing the critical need for long-term infrastructure stability.

He successfully implemented a comprehensive comprehensive apparatus replacement plan and the capital improvement plan to overhaul our outdated firehouses.

Uh and it it sounds like as you have noted that uh one of the reasons you chose to go to Hartford was because uh that was a place that needed change, needed a change agent.

Uh and in kind of hearing this, it shows that right uh we we hear a lot, I think, especially from this dias of folks that have gone to places that need a change agent, and and maybe or maybe it hasn't actually moved.

Uh, and this I think is a good example of of showing that you didn't just kind of say you're gonna go in and change it.

It shows the implementation and the and the results uh of your efforts and your work.

Um, and then lastly, it just had kind of a few questions as my uh colleagues are are are quite uh astutely mentioning is is we we have a budget deficit.

We have anywhere I think between 28 million to 33 million dollars uh coming up in this budget.

Uh MPD, MFD, public works to a little bit degree uh are kind of the large versions of those have gone over their allocated budgets for the year.

I think uh to Councilmember Vitao's point, I think we heard somewhere between five to seven million dollars over the last uh five to six years that MFT has gone over.

My understanding is a lot of that is based purely on overtime and staffing.

Uh my understanding is that it recently uh that is due in large part to to family leave, uh PTSD leave, injury leave, uh vacation leave, and and the others.

Um right, we all know that overtime costs are are larger than that of a of a kind of on staff, uh a regular firefighter, a regular team member.

Um it is for my understanding again is that a lot of that overtime is based on uh the hiring back.

And so you have to then fill those spots, fill those minimums.

Um, otherwise you have to start shutting down uh uh engines.

Uh with that process, it either sounds like to me that either we are going to have to start to shut down engines, shut down rigs, or increase our staffing levels to get to a point where we don't have that level of leave.

Can you kind of just walk me through a little bit what your calculus would be when you're kind of coming to that point of making those decisions based on, hey, are we gonna have to start kind of cutting engines, cutting rigs, or are we gonna have to figure out a way to, or maybe it's both.

Sorry, I'm like this is this is your appointment.

I probably don't have to figure that out.

No, no worries, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for the question.

So, you know, when you when we look at staffing, there's fire chiefs.

What we we have what we call a field factor calculation.

So a field factor calculation, you look at the historical performance of sick time utilization as well as on-the-job injuries.

And then for the on-the-job injuries, the average days of uh being off the line for these members.

That gives you an idea, and you have your minimum staffing for the day.

Coupled with all of those imperatives with the field factor calculation, which does not include vacation, you have now a number, say let's say, for instance, minimum staffing for MFD is 110 a day, just because of the number of engines, the number of trucks, and the heavy rescues we have in service.

In order to get to 110, because of the field factor calculation, because of the sick-time utilization as well as on-the-job injury, in order to get the 110, we may have to staff every shift at 116.4 in order to get 110.

Now, the caveat or what's contributing to the overtime here is the PTSD utilization, which is a form of sick use, but now we have to take that into consideration.

So uh walking into the door, Mr.

Councilmember, I would be doing that analysis, looking at the field factor calculation that's been done prior to my arrival.

Um, let's just say one percent chance out of 100 it had been done, we will do it.

And then I will take the take those findings to uh to my boss to to public safety leadership.

In regards to shutting down, whether it's permanently or temporarily, browning out companies, it doesn't matter if it's an engine or a truck.

We have what we call the standards of response coverage.

So that standards of response coverage that lets us know how many engines we should have in the city, how many trucks, how many firehouses, and then the locations of these trucks, engines, and firehouses.

So right now we can assume that our 19 stations are exactly where they're supposed to be.

We have the appropriate number of engines, appropriate number of ladders.

Once we start taking away from our current level of resources, it is a uh detriment to public safety.

Number one, then it's a it's contributing to the uh safety of our members that's wearing a uniform that's doing their job.

So cutting resources, whether it be permanently or temporarily, uh, should be done under the dire, the most dire circumstances because of the compromise to safety to the general public as well as to the members.

So the plan is for us to look at where we're at, come up with some formidable solutions to where we don't have to go down that path, uh, but there would be options A, B, and C presented to city leadership.

Helpful.

And then last question here as it relates, I just was learning some numbers with the previous conversation.

Uh I think about maybe 80, 75 to 80 percent of MFD's calls right now are non-fire related.

Uh, and I think that we are seeing that with with the the level of fire mitigation, fire tech uh technologies kind of uh broadening uh the kind of fire approach and fire safety across the country.

Uh, with that that being the case, how do you see a a forward-looking and modernized uh fire department where the vast majority of of your calls are non-fire related and more EMS and uh person in crisis related calls?

How do you see a department like Minneapolis uh moving in a direction that um I think is is uh responsive to the the types of calls that that are now coming in?

Yes, sir, and and you're absolutely right with the statistics in regards to calls for service, EMS particularly, nationwide average for EMS response for fire departments is 70-75 percent.

Uh so we're not immune to that here in Minneapolis in regards to taking on additional scopes of work, such as the behavioral or mental health response or intervention role.

That to me is should be welcomed with open arms, not only just here in Minneapolis, but nationwide.

And the scope of what we do, you know, we're titled or we're chartered on the Minneapolis Fire Department.

This is not going to be popular with our members, but we should be Minneapolis Fire and Emergency Services or Minneapolis Fire and Rescue, because we do so much more than just fight fire.

Uh so uh we embrace those additional duties.

We embrace the expectations of looking at what else we can do to contribute to a safer city here in Minneapolis, and we'll continue that under my administration if given the opportunity.

Thank you.

And then last thing, if if you need some space uh in your budget, you can feel free to uh cut my brother-in-law from from from a few readings.

So put that one on.

Thank you.

Roger that.

Uh thank you on that motion to move that forward to full council without a recommendation.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed say nay.

Any abstentions.

Thank you for being here, Dr.

Freeman.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate everyone's time.

Uh all right, colleagues.

There are one, two, three, four, or five presentations left.

So I will just ask my colleagues on the dais to please we need to finish these items today.

It just needs to happen.

And if you're gonna, you know, be on queue for f 15 minutes talking, maybe let's ask those questions via email.

I don't know, we all want to we all have things to say.

So I just need us to, as an ask to your colleagues, I need us to finish these items today.

I do not want to delay these items any further.

Item number eight of receiving file.

We now have our next item is the receive and file, part of the agenda starting with item number eight, a presentation related to senior resident housing stability in Minneapolis.

I'll now invite Ashley from the our legislative research and oversight senior policy advisors to begin the presentation.

Welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair Chavez and members of the committee.

My name is Ashley Jack, and I'm from legislative research and oversight, and I'm here today to present on senior resident housing stability and co-housing options.

The staff direction requested a landscape analysis of the state of housing for senior residents in Minneapolis and policies and programs from other cities that have increased senior housing and cooperative and co-housing models.

Um just a little background.

Housing supply across the United States faces severe shortages and challenges, including affordable, accessible, and age-friendly housing for seniors.

While traditional senior housing will play a role in fulfilling this need, expanding housing options and modifying existing housing will be necessary as well.

Already in 2017, you can see on the map there, in many metro areas across the country, more than a third of older aged 65 plus households were cost burdened.

Minnesota housing staff said to meet the housing needs in Minnesota, including for older adults, a full continuum of options is necessary along with the funding and flexibility for all of them.

This sentiment was echoed by city housing staff across the country.

There is no one policy or program that will solve housing needs for all seniors, as their needs and wants can vary dramatically.

To address all of them, there likely needs to be a dozen or more programs that support a variety of housing options.

While Minneapolis has goals around increasing affordable senior housing, community planning and economic development staff stressed that even subsidized housing is not truly affordable for many seniors on fixed incomes.

Now we'll get into housing affordability and stability for senior residents in Minneapolis.

According to Minnesota Housing, some communities of shared identities, experiences, or geographies disproportionately face housing instability and experience disparities in access and outcomes.

These include the lowest income, people of color, people with disabilities, single parents, large families, and older adults.

The report contains additional information detailing these disparities of several communities that they face when discussing housing affordability and stability.

Housing cost burden is a key indicator of housing affordability and stability.

When households are cost burdened, they have fewer resources to meet their other basic needs, such as food and health care.

Households are considered cost burdened when 30% or more of their income is spent on housing.

In 2023 in Minnesota, 29% of households households aged 65 to 74 were cost burdened, with that number increasing to 40% for households aged 75 plus.

2024 data showed that 66% of senior renters in Hennepin County were cost burdened.

And it is unsurprising that extremely low income renters face the largest challenges in finding affordable housing.

Having a disability increases the likelihood of phasing housing, facing housing instability.

38% of households with a disability are cost burdened.

The majority of the state's affordable housing stock is older with limited amenities, including accessibility.

As the chart shows, the share of Minnesotans with a disability substantially increases after age 74.

The current needs of the region's residents compounded with increasing needs as the population ages means a supply of housing options accessible to people with disabilities must be increased.

As housing affordability and stability are greatly impacted by income, the poverty level of any given population impacts that population's ability to find and keep affordable housing options.

Minnesota's poverty rate is around 10%, and for the first time in two almost two decades, older adult poverty is as high as the statewide rate.

This has been driven almost entirely by increases in poverty among those aged 75 plus whose poverty rate now exceeds the statewide rate.

In Minneapolis from 2018 to 2022, there were 6,073 seniors aged 65 plus below poverty level.

Another indicator of housing and housing stability is the number of people experiencing homelessness.

Wilder researchers 2023 study found 1,204 adults age 55 or older experiencing homelessness.

Housing cost burden is a key indicator, like I said, of housing affordability and stability.

It was determined that this statistic would be the most efficient in comparing Minneapolis senior housing affordability to example cities.

And for consistency and ease of direct comparison, data for this chart comes from the U.S.

Census Bureau 2024 American Community Survey estimates.

As you can see in the chart, Minneapolis has the lowest percentage of senior renters who are cost burdened at 49.2% compared to the example cities cited throughout the report.

Though not comprehensive, a nonprofit housing link can provide some context around the number of senior designated affordable units created since 2020.

In Minneapolis from 2020 to 2024, four senior designated new properties were created, totaling 306 affordable units, and eight senior designated preserved or stabilized properties were created, totaling 787 affordable units.

How affordable they are is what is shown in the chart there.

And it should be noted that only developments with public and/or private capital funding with affordability obligations are included in these numbers.

On to an overview of local, state, and federal programs that provide housing support for seniors.

There are many federal, state, and local programs that support housing for people of all ages with low incomes.

The list on the slide is a non-exhaustive overview of programs that either target seniors or are main government programs used by seniors to help with their housing needs.

It's also really important to note that according to Penn's Leonard Davis Institute of Health and Economics, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is projected to cut Medicaid benefits by more than one trillion dollars.

Though not directly tied to senior housing, Medicaid is the primary payer for long-term services for older adults and people with disabilities, including nursing home and in-home care.

In addition, Medicaid cuts may drive down pay for already underpaid care workers.

Combined with immigration restrictions, there could be even more severe shortages in both nursing homes and home care.

This may put more pressure on the senior housing landscape overall.

Next, I'm going to go over some local public housing, cooperative, and co-housing examples.

Minneapolis Public Housing Authority has 11 buildings, totaling 1,957 units that are designated senior units.

MPHA staff said they are usually able to get those 62 or older into their system quite quickly, placing them in a unit within a couple months of application.

The availability of senior designated units is much greater than any other type of MPHA unit.

Over the last few years, senior units have not generally had a waiting list for individuals aged 62 plus.

As of April when I spoke with them, there was currently no waiting list for applicants age 62 plus.

But for individuals aged 50 plus, there was a waiting list of 2,635 applicants.

Oops.

Housing cooperatives are a housing model where residents collectively own and control the co-op.

To join a housing co-op, members purchase a share in the cooperative corporation and obtain the exclusive right to occupy a unit in addition to decision-making power in the co-op's governance.

Housing co-ops are generally set up in one of the several main categories listed on the slide there.

Cooperative is the legal, financial, and ownership structure.

Cooperatives can be a type of co-housing.

Differences come in between the legal structure, such as cooperative condominiums, single-family homes, etc., and the community structure, co-housing, co-living, such like that.

Co-housing is an intentional community that combines private living spaces with shared indoor and outdoor spaces designed to support connection, collaboration, and an interdependent life.

It is not a legal structure, but the concept of residential development where someone owns their own private home or unit and share additional facilities with the goal of a collaborative neighborhood.

There are co-housing communities that are co-ops, ones that are condominiums, and some that are single-family homes with a homeowner's association.

There can also be co-living within co-housing.

Co-living is usually shared housing, such as a room in a house.

With about 89 senior cooperatives, Minnesota is home to around 60% of senior cooperatives housing in the country.

There are currently two senior cooperatives in Minneapolis, Beckettwood and Nekomas Square Cooperative.

Some senior co-ops are below market rate, and a few may include affordable units.

While many of them have been around for decades, creating and constructing new senior co-ops, especially for the lower to middle income market, would likely require significant outside financial support.

And speaking with the cooperatives listed on the slide for this report, along with other cooperative and co-housing experts, many of their suggestions for study support, which you can find listed in the report under each of their respective sections, but broadly they fall into several buckets, and I'm going to cover these in the next section.

Speaking, like I said, with cities for the report, most city housing staff said focus is primarily on adding affordable housing options for all low-to-income residents rather than targeting senior housing specifically.

And as requested, I am focusing primarily on cooperative and co-housing models, but I do include a couple more in this presentation, and there is other options in the report as well.

The first bucket I want to talk about is city services.

Cities can provide services to encourage and support housing cooperative and co-housing models.

This could include, for example, streamlining the permitting and approval processes for senior specific housing projects, or providing technical assistance for housing cooperatives, for example, governance and self-management training, resident education, those sorts of things.

Many cooperative and co-housing individuals in the Twin Cities and around the country interviewed for this report emphasized how beneficial city provided education and technical assistance would be in supporting these housing models.

One example program, Boston provides technical assistance for housing cooperatives through a contracted provider for 20 hours a week who supports at least 500 units of housing across five to ten cooperatives.

The second bucket is dedicated funding and financing.

Cities can provide subsidies or grants for home modification, accessory dwelling units, or for creation and maintenance of senior cooperatives.

They can also offer low and no interest loans, tax breaks, and grants to cover startup costs, renovations, and to help individual low-income households purchase membership shares.

The important piece here is that it is targeted and dedicated funding for whatever type of housing model you want to focus on.

Additionally, numerous individuals interviewed in this report discuss the importance of ensuring already existing programs can be used for cooperative and co-housing models.

For example, allowing individuals to utilize down payment assistance programs to purchase cooperative housing membership shares.

The City of Minneapolis's low moderate income homebuyer down payment assistance loan cannot currently be used for buying housing cooperative membership.

Getting into some city examples, Chicago's South Shore Condo Co-op Preservation Program provides grants to existing cooperatives for necessary capital improvement projects.

And their shared equity investment program provides cooperative purchase price assistance and acquisition support.

In New York, not surprising, they had many programs.

The Affordable Neighborhood Cooperative Program selects qualified developers to rehabilitate distressed city-owned occupied multifamily properties in order to create affordable cooperatives for low and moderate income households.

In addition, the city has more recently started financing and providing tax exemptions for new construction, rehabilitation, and stabilization of housing development fund corporate cooperatives.

These HDFC co-ops benefit from reduced real estate taxes in exchange for following income and resale restrictions, among other governance restrictions.

And the city's open door program funds the new construction of cooperative and condominium buildings affordable for purchase by moderate and middle income households.

Like I said, New York has several other programs that are included in the report, which support senior housing.

And lastly, in 2024, Seattle funded four out of 10 units in the Corvidé Cooperative and will also be providing more than $9 million for the upcoming 68-unit ULU.

Next, in addition to funding, many individuals interviewed discuss the difficulty in finding and then securing land or existing buildings, especially when competing against large developers.

Cities can assist small developers and private citizens to find and secure appropriate properties.

Cities can also leverage land they currently own to encourage cooperative and co-housing models by donating the land if certain criteria are met.

In Boulder, for example, the city is considering donating a piece of city-owned land to a project in exchange for a certain number of permanently affordable units.

They sent an RFP in April to developers and architects to ideally get a co-housing model that includes neuro-inclusive design elements.

Sorry.

Zoning is another bucket.

Ensuring zoning regulations enable density could encourage the development of more housing types suitable for seniors, including cooperative and co-housing models.

In 2019, Minneapolis became the first major U.S.

city to eliminate single family zoning.

Several example cities interviewed for this report said while it's important that zoning allows for denser housing models, they are still waiting to see the impact of those fewer restrictions.

CPED staff could not identify any zoning code provisions that would prohibit cooperative or co-housing models in Minneapolis, as evidenced by their being models already existing.

They did, however, point out that though many properties were upzoned in the 2040 plan, all applicable building codes and related policies and procedures have not quite quite caught up in practice.

Several local cooperative and co-housing creators and a couple trying to create one mentioned the complications of working with building codes that do not quite fit the uniqueness of cooperative and co-housing models.

They suggested the city could create building and other applicable codes that are specific to those types of models.

Cities can also incentivize or use incentives and or requirements to encourage the private sector to build or preserve senior housing in order to meet your goals.

This could include offering incentives to developers if a set number or percentage of units are affordable for seniors and new residential projects, or offer property tax exemptions for senior housing cooperatives, co-housing, et cetera.

The last program bucket is quite different from the others.

It is directly funding senior housing support programs.

Several cities in this report have developed and funded programs that help residents safely navigate additional senior housing options.

For example, Bellingham, Washington's home share pilot program connects seniors who wish to rent out bedroom, rent out a bedroom in their home to vetted individuals, and continues to provide support for the duration of the entire rental agreement.

In Rochester, Minnesota, the Coalition for Rochester Area Housing, a cross-sector partnership between the city, county, Rochester Area Foundation, Mayo Clinic, and Destination Medical Center, is currently piloting a senior housing mentorship program, which will train seniors who have already gone through the transition of moving from their family home into a rental property or smaller home.

They will then help other seniors make that same transition.

Some additional national examples include in Chicago, Home is a nonprofit organization that fosters independence, joy, and connection for seniors with low incomes by providing intergenerational co-housing and housing support services.

In Cincinnati, nonprofit renting partnerships has created a self-described rental equity cooperative where renters can earn financial credits if they meet certain commitments.

And in Portland, and now three additional cities, Bridge Meadows is an intergenerational community which uses the power of community to help children heal from the trauma of foster care.

Elders living in the live in the community, serving as mentors, friends, and caregivers to the children and each other, forming a safety net of care and interdependence.

There are several other national programs discussed in the report, and I hope you have time to explore some of them in more detail as you consider this topic.

That is the end of my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions about the presentation or the report.

Thank you so much to you and LO Ashley for this incredible presentation.

I'll first pass it to Councilmember Wandsley.

Thank you, Chair Chavez.

I just wanted to give some brief uh thank yous to our LRO staff for putting this presentation together.

Um, I brought the motion asking for this report after doing a number of door knocks in my ward where I spoke to residents who were struggling with not only just aging in place, but um also feeling as if they were confined to that option is some of these larger homes, especially in Prospect Park, um, because there weren't affordable housing options that they could transition into that's still within their community or or even within the parameters of Minneapolis.

They felt like they would just have to leave either Minneapolis or the state all together if they wanted to pursue affordable housing options.

So they would rather stay in these homes that are becoming increasingly challenging for them to maintain and upkeep.

Um, and also I heard this feedback from our Minneapolis uh advisory committee on aging, where they also named when I chaired the administration entreprise oversight committee that housing was another big issue that comes up for our aging population across the city and the lack of affordable housing options for that community.

So while it was great to see that you know, we have a large percentage of cooperative senior cooperatives.

It's very clear also with slide 13 where that data shows that for individuals 50 and older, that there is a 2600 applicant wait list just for our public housing.

So for me, I think this is just part of the ongoing legislative work that we're gonna have to do as a body of like how to reimagine usage of our bonding and our financing assets to actually encourage more development of extremely affordable housing for seniors.

Um because they're a part of our community and they shouldn't feel as if once they reach the later uh phases of their lives that they can't stay here because it's not affordable for them.

So I'm really grateful that you all compile this report that gives us some really good examples to look at.

Um, other cities that have modeled really good work of supporting their aging populations as we also develop next steps on how we can do the same here in our own backyard.

So I just wanted to say thank you.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Stevenson.

Thank you.

Sorry, thank you.

I have a lot of questions that I'll email you about.

This is this was really interesting.

Just one question uh for right now.

Does Minneapolis have limits on non-related people living in the same house?

Um I think those are some recent changes.

I think there are limits, but I will be very honest.

I'm not currently aware of what they are.

I would have to follow up with that.

Okay, great.

Well, I have some other things I'll I'll ask you offline.

Thank you.

Council President Payton.

Uh thank you, Chair Chavez, and echoing some of Councilmember Wandsley's conversations she's had on the doors.

I've had similar ones in my award around folks um anxiety about aging in place, and it's not just about uh how expensive housing is, but also just access to services and like being able to complete your activities of daily living as part of a more expansive view of what it means to age in place.

So there's organizations like Southeast Senior Services.

There used to be a senior services organization serving Northeast that was similar that has had to fold.

And I think that it would be really wise of us to think about this as a full system of serving uh an aging community, not just the the cost of housing, but what it means to like live and thrive as you age in place.

So thank you for this report.

Councilmember Vita.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to say thanks for the report.

Also, what I hear from uh seniors or the aging population on the north side is primarily around uh market rate housing, actually, like folks who are selling their homes and are looking for condos with lots of amenities and you know, um an opportunity to stay near their grandchildren, their their churches, and so I I certainly have people that are asking for more affordable housing options, but I think it's kind of mixed in what people are looking for.

I've had lots of conversations with seniors just about transitioning into town homes or co-ops so that you know someone is doing the yard care and the things they want to give up in their senior, their single family homes, you know, that they've had for 40 plus years.

So I think it's just kind of a mix of what I hear on the north side, but certainly a need for many different options.

And I I will just say there's also, I was just having a conversation with a developer a couple weeks ago about the need for there being uh senior assisted living facilities in Minneapolis and in particular North Minneapolis, right?

Where they can get help if they have medical conditions or if they um if you know, if they're on their own, but they just want to be amongst community.

You know, a lot of our seniors just want that feeling of community and not live by themselves and have uh someone around.

And so I think I've been hearing about mixed uh how our seniors need so many diverse things because they also talk about community centers, like just for seniors.

How do we build up activities near wherever we are putting new living facilities, even if it's not just for seniors?

So I think it's kind of mixed.

I'm glad to see this presentation, and I'll certainly be following up with some um more questions and maybe some action items.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Seeing no further discussion, uh, thank you for being here.

I mean appreciate you actually and the LOR department.

Uh ask the clerk to file that report.

Our next item is receiving the first and second quarter updates regarding the non-fatal shooting task force.

Um actually just kidding, just kidding, just kidding.

Our next item is receiving an overview of the public health advisory committee.

I'll invite Margaret, our senior public health specialist to be in that presentation.

I just skipped it by accident.

You scared me for a second.

It's like, and we're off.

All right, I think we're ready to go.

Welcome.

Hello, Chair Chavez and Council members.

My name is Margaret Schuster, and I'm a senior public health specialist in the health department.

I'm also the staff liaison for the public health advisory committee.

And I'm here with Bupinder Manhani, who is the associate vice chair, and together we're gonna present kind of a just a brief high level overview of the PHAC as well as its purpose membership and highlight just a few of the accomplishments.

Oh I have to do something here.

It was first established in 1976 as a result of the reorganization of the public health system in the state of Minnesota, which required that community health boards that's you, um, and all the rest of the council members, um, that they actually have a community advisory committee.

And so PHAC first got established during that time.

Their purpose really is to serve the city council, the mayor, and the health department, and provide recommendations on uh matters that affect the people in Minneapolis, whether those are residents or visitors, or the variety of events or tragedies that we have in the state, in the city.

They also serve as liaisons between the city and the community.

They listen to the community's voice, they hear their concerns, their complaints and views, and then are able to direct those recommendations or direct those comments to the appropriate uh party, whether it's city council, mayor, or the health department.

In regards to the membership, members are appointed to serve two-year terms, and then they can serve up to four consecutive terms.

We have 21 members on the committee, and they represent each of the 13 wards.

We have two representatives from the mayor's office.

We have three members that are nominated by the health department for specific professional, occupational, educational or lived experiences that align with health department goals.

And we have three external appointments from longtime partners like the Minneapolis Public Schools, the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, as well as um uh Hennepin County Public Health, and that can be Hennepin County Public Health or Human Services.

In addition, members must complete onboarding requirements, which include an oath of office, ethics training, and a participant agreement.

On this slide, I just wanted to show you the depth of the experience that the membership has.

They have a deep well of expertise, whether it's educational or wide-ranging professional and personal experiences.

And now, Chair Chavez and other council members.

I'm gonna turn it over to Boo, who will uh present for the rest of the slides.

Welcome.

Chair Chavez, Council members.

Uh, my name is Boopendra Manhani.

I often just go by boot.

I'm the associate vice chair for the PHAC, uh, and I work as a healthcare administrator in a local uh healthcare delivery system.

Uh, I want to start by just highlighting a couple of ways that PHAC has supported our city over the last year, and it's helpful to group our work into three different areas.

First would be providing uh policy input.

Examples of this are submitting recommendations on Operation Metro Surge, including a letter that we had in support of an eviction moratorium, and then we've also provided recommendations on the city's opioid response strategic plan.

These types of opportunities uh help bring a public health perspective to these policy discussions that impacted Minneapolis residents.

Second is supporting the public health uh planning.

We became the advisory committee for the community health assessment and also provided feedback on the department strategic plan.

And these types of efforts help ensure that community voices and diverse professional perspectives are informing our our long term planning.

And then finally, community supporting community health initiatives.

Some members have volunteered to host air quality monitors.

We also participate in various educational opportunities, either by bringing in subject matter experts to our meetings and/or going out to the city and the community, such as touring the water uh treatment plant after we learned a bit more about it uh through the Tapwater Ambassador program.

These types of activities have helped us be better informed advisors while also supporting the department's uh initiatives.

Across all of these activities, our goal has been to serve as a resource that can bring together community perspectives and evidence-based discussion.

Looking beyond just the last year, PHAC has consistently served as a forum where emerging public health issues can be explored before or during policy discussions.

Over the last couple of years, we've helped develop childhood-led poisoning guidelines, given feedback during the COVID-19 response, supported a number of different health ordinances, and we've also responded to council requests to study topics such as crumb rubber and playgrounds.

The specific issues can change over time, but PHAC's role has remained consistent.

Bringing together community members and professionals from different disciplines to examine issues through a public health lens.

Looking forward, uh, we'd really like to strengthen our partnership with the city council and with the mayor.

PHAC isn't best used when it's only reacting after decisions have been made.

We do try to regularly review the council, uh, council members, uh council committees agendas and the agendas of other advisory committees so we can identify where a public health perspective might be helpful.

But we'd also welcome opportunities to engage earlier in these types of discussions.

As members of this committee, we would really appreciate what your thoughts on this are.

Are there particularly policy, are there particular policy areas where you think an early public health perspective would be helpful?

Are there emerging or issues or priorities you'd like PHAC to spend more time on over the coming year?

And finally, how can we best support the council overall in council's role as the community health board?

Our goal is to be a constructive partner and a resource that can help inform policy decisions before they are finalized.

I think with that said, thank you for the opportunity to share more about PHAC today.

Uh, we appreciate your continued support, and most importantly, we appreciate the opportunity to partner with all of you, the mayor, and the health department in advancing the health of Minneapolis residents.

With that said, we're happy to take any feedback you might have right now and the questions that we posed, or any questions that you might have for us.

Thank you for that presentation, Boo and Margaret, and for the work of the public health advisory committee and the work and advocacy of the committee to protect the public health of our neighbors here in Minneapolis, in addition to the advocacy to protect our immigrant community, especially from the impact of Operation Metro Surge that our community members are still feeling impact and will for the years to come.

So just thankful that you all came to committee today and please send my thank you to the advocacy of the public health advisory committee, who I really appreciate the expertise and work that they do in the city.

Yeah, thank you.

Uh with that, I don't see anybody else on queue.

So, colleagues, if you do have questions, let's just follow up over email and we can give it to our clerks.

Um with that, seeing no further discussion on this item, I'll ask the clerk to receive and file that report.

Our next item is receiving the first and second quarter updates regarding the non-fatal shooting task force.

I'll invite Lieutenant Schroeder to begin that presentation.

Oh, and welcome.

Good afternoon.

You want to introduce yourself, Z?

I'm uh Commander Zimmerman of Major Crimes Unit.

And Lieutenant Schroeder is uh in charge of the homicide unit and uh help put together our new FAST team.

Thank you.

And if we can get close to the mic so we can hear you clearly, that would be great.

Yeah.

Hey, good afternoon.

Um thanks for having us today.

I'm Andrew Schroeder.

I'm the lieutenant in major crimes here to take here today to talk about our non-fatal shoot team, which we call FAST for firearm assault shoot team.

Uh Councilmember Wamsley had uh the opportunity to come kind of see us in action and get a little tour of uh what what we do, how we do it, and uh today I'm just here to give a brief high-level overview of what we've done so far.

So, kind of just historically um before FAST homicide detectives were assigned shootings.

That took away from homicide investigations.

And so, just kind of a little history of where we were last year.

We had 226 incidents, 310 victims of gunshots, 32 um 32 multiple victim shootings.

So that's two or more.

So, like as you guys talked about it at the beginning of the of the meeting here, we had a couple big ones over the weekend the nine person shoot at rain, and then a five-person shoot at 19th and Nicholet.

And then annunciation, we have a little caveat for last year because Annunciation had 29 gunshot victims.

Was the highest victim count, the largest mass shooting in the country last year.

So who gets shot in Minneapolis?

This is what it looked like last year.

And the data is similar this year.

So 248 males, 62 females, 52 of the people shot were juveniles.

A large percentage just we're talking straight facts here, black males under the age of 35.

So we created the firearm assault shoot team.

We started March 22nd, so we've been going um you know about 16 weeks here.

This was created uh on the last time we were supposed to be here.

Um so who's in FAST?

We have a lieutenant, Lieutenant Adam Lapinski, it's overseen by Commander Zimmerman.

We have four BCA agents, uh Ramsey County Deputy, Metro Transit Deputy.

We have three officers from Bloomington that are here just for the summer.

Um, and then we also share intelligence with you name the agency around.

That's who we share information with.

Hanniping County is a huge partner, and then since this slide was created, we've also added a federal partner of uh special agent from the ATF, um, which is just a huge tremendous support to us.

We also have this the same type of support in the homicide unit of federal ATF agent.

So this was as of uh June 25th of where we're at for the year.

66 incidents, 91 victims, and the graph on the side just kind of shows where where shootings are happening.

Majority of shootings happened in the fourth precinct and the third precinct.

And then just a little context for where we're at right now.

Since July 1st, we've had a busy July.

Um we've had 32 non-fatal shooting victims, three homicide victims.

So, what do we do in FAST?

We don't read the cases and decide if there's enough evidence to go investigate it.

Every single shooting, as it should be, is thoroughly investigated like a homicide.

All of them, no matter if the victim is cooperative or not, if they lie or not, uh if they tell us where it happened or not, we investigate it to the best of our ability.

Part of the reason that FAST is successful and the model is successful is because we're taking shooters off the street.

So that means people that are shooting are now not there to uh commit domestic assault, um, to commit robberies, to commit other violent crimes.

We're taking them off the street by thoroughly investigating all shootings.

Part of the shooting, um, the FAST team is it's um housed next to our homicide unit, which I'll put our homicide unit up against anyone in the country.

They are the best investigators around.

And to have these kind of new, younger investigators sitting with the homicide unit, like you saw, Councilmember Wandsley, there's this kind of uh skill development and mentorship going on every single day.

We have increased communication with uh the use of resources through Hennepin County and the BCA and all over the metro and by solving violent crime by holding people that shoot people accountable.

What's cool about um talking about shootings is everyone agrees that shooting someone is wrong.

Uh, and that's probably something that doesn't happen in this room a lot where every single person agrees on something.

Um, we're able to thoroughly investigate and hold people that shoot people that fire guns in the city in front of people's houses, hold them accountable, and send them to jail.

By by holding people accountable, improves trust with the police department because they know that we're investigating their son or their daughter or their niece or nephew getting shot.

Clearance rates.

I didn't even want to speak about this because it's too early.

Um, these cases take time.

Um, we're still working on clearance rates in the homicide unit from several years ago.

These are long, complex investigations, but as it is, uh 2025, the baseline um was 73 cases at 41% closure, which is decent.

That's all I got for you today.

Um, now that we've given you kind of this overview of it, now future updates and meetings, we can kind of just talk about where we're at moving forward.

So I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you.

Minority Leader Wandsley.

Thank you.

Chair Chavez, of course, always excited to receive updates about the status of our FAST team or our non-fatal shooting task force.

Of course, we're always looking at the tremendous success that's happening across the river, uh, with St.

Paul uh recently accomplishing about 100% closure rate since the implementation of their FAST team as well, or their non-fatal shooting task force.

And I think that success also leveraging up, which some of you all were part of that press conference, but um with the state also now devoting resources to other jurisdictions across the state to do um similar work to reduce gun violence in their communities as well.

So seeing this is a model that's not only being embraced nationally, but seeing two of Minnesota's most largest cities also adopt this as a critical way of reducing gun violence in their communities and getting uh perpetrators who are in fact a small portion of our general community, but that commit a bulk of these these violent uh crimes by being targeted in our resources and going after that specific population, um, how that frees you up for uh or manpower within the police department to actually then do the the accountability piece, getting the people off the streets and working with our uh various partners to do so.

Um so always happy to hear the the progress that's being made um since the very early implementation of this.

You mentioned March.

Um and I just wanted to also get just some updates because since March, as you're aware, we've had some some pretty significant shakeup in our police department leadership structure.

Um so I just want to get a sense of um has there been any um impacts to the FAST team as well in terms of your makeup um since there's been this organizational overhaul at the leadership level um under our current interim chief.

Yes, uh thanks for the questions.

Uh the the major change is that since uh interim chief Chief Peterson came uh within weeks we had an ATF agent sitting with us in FAST.

Okay.

And uh I just got off the phone with Chief Peterson and and I talked with uh the sheriff last night.

Um and uh we're hopefully gonna be getting uh sheriff's deputy uh to work with us on the FAST team also.

Okay, and that'll be very important.

And actually that was something that we talked about during our tour as well.

I think it would be good for this body um to get a little bit more clarity because I heard some confusion um raised even a couple of weeks ago about the makeup of the FAST team in terms of staffing.

So I know the budget amendment earmarked just under two million dollars for, and this is within MPD's existing budget um to support the usage of investigators, and I know there has been some some challenges with with how to bring in the seasoned investigators that you all need in order to um actually execute the work.

But I've been so impressed with the creative ways in which you've brought in jurisdictional partners across jurisdictional partners um to help fulfill the gaps, and at least during the tour, um I was informed that some of these folks were doing it in their volunteer capacity.

So can you just give an overview of like the composition of the team of you know pay personnel to the support that we're receiving from other um agencies in a voluntary capacity?

So um we pay Minneapolis uh detectives, everyone else.

Uh we're not paying the BCA, we're not paying Ramsey County, we're not paying Metro Transit, we're not giving them cars, we're not giving them anything except access to our reports, our our resources.

So if they get called in on their overtime, that's on that's on their city.

Um what's interesting about the makeup of this is that only to date, only about 47, we'll call it 50 percent of our shooting victims actually live in the city.

That means half of our shooting victims live in Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center.

You name the city, that's where they live.

That's why there's this buy-in from, you know, especially Bloomington.

One of our first shooting cases, uh, one of the victims was from Bloomington, and the suspect was arrested at his house in Bloomington, coming to the city to do violent crime.

So we're not paying anything except the seven officers and the lieutenant.

Thank you for Fremna.

So for the MPD or city side, we have eight dedicated staffing um towards this, and everyone else is doing in in their voluntary capacity.

I think that's amazing again of how you've navigated some of the staffing challenges to make sure that we're getting that season expertise we need.

Um, and also just for clarity with the seven um or uh dedicated staff, they're basically doing citywide work because they're taking these case the cases that you all are you know receiving, the non-fatal, this is happening from all across the city because I think there's been some concerns around is this removing resources from one area for another.

From my understanding, this is dedicated to addressing citywide shootings, correct?

100%.

Okay.

You know, one thing, council member, um the um since we started FAST, and I I believe we told you this uh when we met with you a few months ago, um, and it's gotten better since even is um homicide now has time to clear up some of the cases from last year, and um uh you know, that they didn't have time because they're working homicide and shoot uh uh you know, what the FAST team is doing now.

And so it's given them more time to follow up on those cases.

And um I know I've talked to some mothers at at scenes uh at the hospital um uh for uh our victims of shootings, the non-fatal shootings, and they just appreciate so much having an officer, an investigator come uh doesn't matter what time of night or you know, seven days a week, and they really appreciate it, and it's making a difference.

No, I I love that, and this might be raised in the uh quarterly report that MPD is uh presenting, but I think they did this previously of you highlighting again, and you said this in the the in this has been or uplifted in the model itself, as you just highlighted when you're addressing the non fatal shootings, and that I forget the the uh staff member who framed it, every non-fatal shooting should be treated as an attempted murder, um, essentially.

That's one where it didn't happen at that time, but can happen again.

Um, and the way that you all have restructure your way under this task force to treat every single one of them as if they were a homicide, and then doing that along with your homicide division with them being located next to you all, and then seeing the case closure rates significantly um increase for our homicide division as well.

Like again, I'm I'm just very impressed with what you all have been able to do with this in such a short period of time.

And I'm looking forward to what the data shows.

Again, you're at 40 percent right now around case closure, and that's a qualitative uh marker of progress that we should absolutely be tracking.

And I'm glad to hear the anecdotal examples too of you know, having investigators be on the scene immediately, how people really appreciate that presence when they're experiencing one of the worst moments in their lives.

Like I'm really excited to see more of the progress come forward and the reporting on that to this body.

So thank you all.

Yeah, you're welcome.

You're welcome.

Vice Chair Stevenson.

Yes, thank you.

Um it's timely and unfortunate to be having this conversation now after a weekend of a lot of uh mass shootings or a lot of people getting shot in the city.

So thank you for being here.

Um it's clear I've been talking to the inspectors in uh in uh precinct five and and precinct three, my my ward borders the two, and them talking about that they've they've seen reductions in in violent crimes in those precincts.

Um and at the same time, until there are zero shootings in the city, we won't be satisfied.

And I know you won't be satisfied until there's air shootings as well.

Um so I know what's needed uh in some regards when it comes to policy at the state and federal level.

We need uh we need gun control uh absolutely we need um more resources for our communities.

Um but what I wanted to ask you is what do you need from us as a council in order to advance your work here in the city without you know getting outside help?

I mean, no doubt um we need more investigators.

This was this weekend was a great example.

We are we're underwater from this week from this past weekend, but you know, Bloomington has three uh detectives, they're all fantastic, but they're leaving.

Uh they're going back to Bloomington.

They were uh Chief Hodges in Bloomington was only able to dedicate uh staff for the summer.

Um my understanding is the some officers are going back into like school resource officers, so that's where he gave them to us for the summer.

So come uh, you know, September, we're gonna be down three.

We need more bodies.

Um, you know, that's our our big ask right now, and we understand that comes from staffing uh department wide, and we're working with our current leadership to you know have those conversations moving forward.

Are you um are you the ones handling the staffing level of your team and like looking outside the department within the department, and what barriers are you seeing to getting additional investigators?

Well the the the biggest barrier is the number of officers on you know on the street that you know are needed for other duties also, but um we uh we keep chipping away at it, you know, and and uh we uh uh officers have come up to us, express interest in joining FAST.

Um, and uh so it's it's just a matter of uh the the number of officers right now.

Well the the the biggest barrier is the number of officers on you know on the street that you know are needed for other duties also but um we uh we keep chipping away at it you know and and uh we uh uh officers will come up to us express interest in joining fast um and uh so it's it's just a matter of of the the number of officers right now um and i think minneapolis is no different than a lot of suburb agencies when we were in the process of creating fast we like went around like door to door salesmen kind of asking people for um will you help us but also um will you send investigators to us to get experience bloomington doesn't have 260 shootings a year they have a couple uh they bloomington hasn't had a shooting in a couple years um you know minneapolis stands on this mountain of violent crime compared to any other city in the county brooklyn park arguably the most violent city besides us um I think in 2024 they had 16 shootings we had 260 that's the closest number so by other agencies sending us their help they get some violent crime experience so when it does happen in their city they know exactly what to do so the the pro one of the barriers in getting more help from outside resources is everyone's in a staffing crisis people other departments aren't fully staffed where they can just give someone um at this point in time but those conversations are ongoing and we're still knocking on doors if you will saying you know let's work together on this as well I just wanted to add something to this I don't think you all can share this piece but something that we've been in conversations with the administration about is also looking at the upcoming bargaining contract for the police federation.

I mean you hinted there are requirements in terms of how we have to allocate our current MPD staffing um is alluded to as 7030 of who can be out um you know doing patrol versus other administrative and leadership needs of the department um and I think there's been long discussions of how we can um be in in good faith negotiations with the police federation to have a little bit more flexibility so that we can have more staff to dedicate towards investigations because you do have to be at a certain rank uh detective rank in order to do that so I think our contract will be a good place to have those conversations I know on with Vice Chair Whiting and council member uh Pomazano is chair of uh the Entreprise Labor Relations Committee they're having these uh regular check-ins about the contract and I would invite uh collaboration on looking at how we can really strengthen um some proposals to support that flexibility so we can have more dedicated internally um staff or investigations you preempted where I was going with this I I was uh wondering about lateral hires uh whether that is is uh a barrier or not and and what we could do there as well as um if civilian investigators would be possible and I know under the contract both lateral hires and civilian investigators is prohibited and uh in some ways and limited in other ways so um I was curious to if I would hear that from you uh but that's something that I'm certainly looking at so thank you for preempting that uh and uh just uh um to follow up both council members uh um our new deputy chief Charlie Adams um has uh um helped us with barriers that we might encounter as far as getting things uh that we need um and just having somebody at the top that understands investigations he and I worked homicide you know 20 years ago together and um he learned a lot from me then get out of here and uh he's uh uh but he's he's a great deputy chief so thank you thank you council member whiting thank you uh Chair Chavez uh and again and I and I will do this every single time we have a a presentation on on our FAST team uh again just deeply thanking uh councilmember wandsley uh uh for this investment into uh an area that I think is deeply um important I think maybe one of the most important things that the city of Minneapolis can be doing uh in its policing work right now uh and and and and my next comments please don't take this as as any disrespect to to you both uh and your teams uh because I don't think this is is the way that it it was meant or intended um when we are looking at the the non-fatal uh the clearance rate uh of 40 1.2 percent I don't think any version of of 58% non-closer of these things going unsolved are are decent and I don't think that is the the way you met it and and because I know that the that how important you see this work uh but as I think other colleagues uh have stated that is uh a hundred and forty eight victims that and their families that have zero sense of closure and justice zero and so whatever it is to to kind of to council member Stevenson's point however we can be helpful to what it is that you are all doing please please let us know uh I know all of us on this body will work tirelessly to figure out those resources that will do that um because until we see some level of this that that is is not necessarily even non-existent I know that is hard but to a point where I think half more than half of our shootings in this city are going unsolved.

Um because until we see some level of this that that is is not necessarily even non-existent, I know that is hard, but to a point where I think half, more than half of our shootings in this city are going unsolved.

And so that means that is not just 148 victims, that is the the the influence of of family, their friends, and all of their loved ones that also do not have that same level of justice and accountability that is deserved in situations like this.

And so thank you to to you all and your team that is doing this again, like however we can be helpful, whether that's both with within MPD and the resources that you all need or other strategies that you have seen to work, whether that's in St.

Paul across the country, uh uh uh tap us in because you have uh willing participants in the in that work.

So sorry that my frustrations are coming up at you all.

If I can, um please we're 100% with you.

And when I say our clearance rate of 41% is decent, that's compared to national average for cities our size.

Uh I don't think it's decent um unless they're all solved.

That's our goal.

We want to be at 100%.

Now that that's not realistic.

Our 2025 clearance rates for homicides, it's the highest, one of the highest in the country.

It's up close to when we're gonna close another one.

It's it's gonna be 85%.

Beautiful.

And we shouldn't be satisfied until it's a hundred.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's right.

Thank you.

Councilmember Bita.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Lieutenant, and thank you.

Um second, come on, Z.

You're talking about Charlie like that, you're gonna be in big trouble.

Probably a sergeant.

Thank you, thank you, uh, commander.

I really do appreciate both of you uh being a part of this team because I have a history of talking to you and learning from you about what's happening with our um with our families in particular on on the north side.

You both know I've come to you with uh questions and concerns, family members walking up to me at sporting events, at the store, wherever, and asking about progress in their families um justice.

And so I really do appreciate the the two of you being here and being a part of this team.

But some of the questions I've had though was how was the number of officers determined?

Um, like how did we get to we need seven and what is like the desirable number for um MPD officers as a part of this team.

So when we um were building the framework for this, we went um based on I guess full disclosure.

Um I met with St.

Paul.

We they have a very successful team, and they told me the number of shootings they had, the number of detectives they had, and said we don't have enough.

Um they had this is just from memory, so don't quote me on this.

Something like a hundred shootings a year, and maybe like 10 detectives, and they said we could definitely use one more.

And I'm like, well, we're gonna have more than double their shootings, so we need you know, I think our framework number was 16 actual detectives.

Um that's where we built it based on national model um caseloads.

We can't have one detective with 30 cases a year.

That's too much.

So we used our data from the past several years on how many shootings we have divided by best practice.

We want our detectives to have anywhere between 10 and 15 cases.

Same thing for homicide.

These are in a sense the same units.

So that's that's how we base the model, and that's our desired goal.

Um, in a perfect world, 16 detectives.

Oh, in a perfect world, 16 detectives.

Okay.

And we built that number.

We knew we didn't have 16 Minneapolis detectives, so we said, well, what can we get from Minneapolis in our previous administration, and the number was seven that they would give.

So we had to figure out a way to come up with the difference, and that was door knocking from our with other agencies.

Okay.

Yeah, and I and okay, so the door knocking from the other agencies are good, but is good, but I think like where there's been some confusion on this council at is that the seven number were officers who were a part of a precinct and were taken out of the precinct and put into this team.

So, for instance, the fourth precinct lost two officers to the FAST team.

So I appreciate the ability to solve crimes, but that also means that two bodies on the preventative side of things are off the streets and are on this team.

Yeah.

And so the officers who built up this team were officers who were primarily taken out of precincts and put on the team.

Yeah.

No, that's that's true, uh, council member.

Um each of the precincts uh contributed, you know, uh one or two officers.

Um I know it's difficult for uh Inspector Adams at the time to give up two officers to the FAST team, but you know, um what I explained to Inspector Adams is um you know there we have a whole team that's gonna be investigating shootings that happen and um whether it's the north side or south side, and um you know there um uh once once more officers are on the job, hopefully those positions can be filled.

But you know, we we needed to get experience, you know, and fourth precinct uh cert team was one is one of the best, you know, in the city.

And so um that's why we uh went to uh all the precincts and uh got uh investigators.

And one thing you have to think about is you're from if you're all not familiar with our community response team cert, there's a couple in the city, those are like you know, the funnel, two investigations.

They're you know they're a unit that's a mix of patrol and investigators.

So, in a sense, out of seven investigators, we only took two that were uh 911 response.

So only two officers off the street, if you will.

The rest came from uh the downtown cert team, the north side cert team.

So we only took two 911 responders here, and that in a way was beneficial, like Z said, and and now these units, the cert teams have backfilled um their units to give other people more experience.

No, and I I understand that and I appreciate that, but I think the difference and where I've been struggling with this at is that the I followed the draft of new officers, and it's not always you know a consistent number that comes into the fourth precinct.

And so when the fourth precinct loses two officers, then that takes officers off the streets.

We don't know how many officers we're gonna get in the next draft.

So, however long those officers are away, and until we get a consistent number of people or technology or something to help us, there's always a loss in the fourth precinct.

And you said it yourself.

The fourth precinct has the highest, it's the third in the fourth precinct that has the highest numbers of these crimes and fatalities, which mean that you know, yes, there's help on the other end, but on the preventative side, on the side of the folks who knows what's happening on the streets, if we keep taking constant losses like that, then the you worked uh Lieutenant Schroeder, you worked in the fourth precinct for a very long time.

So you know how it is on the on the streets every day in the first precinct and how important it is to have consistent um representation uh like out there every single day and taking losses, not only from um task force or from drafts is a huge hit to uh community that is dealing with a lot of problems.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rainbow.

Uh thank you.

Thank you, Chair Chavez.

Uh I have a question for for either one of you.

When uh district attorney John Choi, County Attorney John Choi came over to tell us about the the success of the FAST team across the river, he uh said he admitted that he had a uh admit they were wrong and how they dealt with the St.

Paul police.

They had to rethink that effort so they could have a better relationship.

I'm wondering how is your relationship with the county attorney?

Has that changed with the Hennef and County Attorney's Office?

I I can tell you um we work and speak to and meet with members of the county attorney's office every single day.

Our relationship on the line level is great.

What happens up above us and below us, I don't know about doesn't affect us.

We, the working guys that are uh putting people in jail and submitting charges, have an absolutely great relationship.

Yeah, with with the uh charging attorneys, the the actual uh attorneys that go to court, um great relationship, and they've been very good with us.

Um yeah, so um we don't uh deal with uh the politics up there.

Right.

And I I'm not asking about the policy.

I just want to say are the cases getting charged.

Yeah.

Thank you.

We're that's a work in progress always, and it's a conversation, but I understand.

It's a good relationship.

Yeah, thank you.

Minority leader once.

Thank you for that.

And actually, thanks for the reminder of like Chair Chavez last term, it was under your leadership that we were able to bring in John Choi and partners from um forgetting the uh Minnesota criminal justice reform team um to come and talk about this model.

And in many ways, they do frame this as actually preventative.

I often don't see 911 or uh patrol officers on the preventative side.

They're on the response side.

And this is actually meeting upstream in terms of being able to catch culprits more quickly before they're able to commit another shooting.

Um, and I would say the way that you've made up this team is very cognizant with you saying you actually pull only two officers off the streets out of the seven that's dedicated on the MPD side.

Um, and noting on slide five, like how explicit you name in precinct four, and also what is the next highest precinct three have the highest rates of shootings.

And I can imagine that again, the investigators that are dedicated on our side, they are spending a bulk of their time also responding to these incidents that's happening in North Minneapolis and South Minneapolis, uh, where the precinct three is to remove perpetrators off the streets.

And also just for clarity of like case closures, you can't close the clay case until there is a prosecution.

So there is the whole full circle of there, you know, from the start of the tragedy happens to the closure is being um that someone is uh indicted on charges and are receiving judicial accountability, and that does have to happen in partnership with our county partners, which again, you all and even John County Commissioner Ramsey, County Commissioner John Torrent named that of like this is a partnership uh model.

You cannot do this in isolation.

So it's great to see you all are lingering in those partnerships and being very explicit in the needs that you have about needing for uh additional bodies in terms of investigators.

And that is what the budget amendment uh that we brought forward essentially reflected that expertise is giving you all that that designated pool of investigators that it's been a struggle to just corral because we recognize there's an extensive backlog as Councilmember Wyden high highlighted.

The hundred plus families who have not been able to be reflected in that case closure is one family that does not have closure that did not receive formal or traditional justice.

Um, so I just wanted to provide some of that clarity and also again, thank you, Councilmember Chavez, for your leadership and having us be able to get to this place where we're talking about the implication implementation of the model, because there were naysayers then being like, I don't think we should do this.

That's St.

Paul's thing.

We can't do that here.

And it's like we are doing it here.

Yeah.

And that's all, and we had people ready and willing within our police department.

We had the political will of this body to move the money within the police department to say, no, we're gonna prioritize this.

And it's because of that that we can see um however many dozen families represented in that 41% case closure who are receiving justice, and then moving forward to we get to that hundred percent so that we know shootings are not becoming normalized in our communities and thus gun violence.

So I'm so grateful to be like, oh, a year later, we're proving we can do the great things that St.

Paul has.

St.

Paul is not the only city that can have nice things.

That's right.

And uh Euro True, I hope they'll learn from us.

Yeah, I think that one just thank you for this presentation.

It's it's really helpful.

And even going further than beyond a year ago, I remember that, particularly with the leadership of uh councilmember once we brought the county attorney to speak in front of the council, and that's when we learned about at least officially through a public meeting, the clearance rates within our police department.

And uh to council member's point, it was worse back then.

And I think that was very alarming for a lot of us on the city council where cases were not being submitted for even charging.

Like what?

You can't blame the county attorney if you're not submitting cases to the county attorney.

That's just not how the math works.

Um, so I think that's an issue if like there's gun violence happening in our city, and we're not even submitting charges to the county attorney.

How are you supposed to prosecute gun violence if you're not even submitting it?

So I think that was a big red flag that we had in committee a couple years ago.

And then just want to thank um my leader once you because she was very relentless in at least saying this needs to happen.

We learn from experts.

We learn from Asley County attorney's office and the work that they were doing across the river, and then this budget amendment happened, and now I the conversation around the time before this happened was that we should not be doing this because we're not St.

Paul.

We should not be learning from experts that have success with this kind of programs.

And to me, it's like I think this is showing otherwise that we can learn from other cities to curb gun violence in our city and investigate things much better.

So at least just want to add more context because yes, to Consulate White's concerns, we do need to improve our clearance rates.

That is a major red flag, but it was even worse back then.

And I think this strategy is one thing that needs to happen a lot more of in order to reduce those clearance rates, because behind these clearance rates, there are families, victims, loved ones that we all care about that have not had justice in their cases.

So I at least wanted to add more details with that.

Okay.

Seeing no one else on queue, thank you all so much for being here.

I'll ask the clerk to receive and file that report.

Our next item is receiving a report related to the police department's participation and federal task forces.

Welcome.

Commander Brown, welcome.

Hi.

Good afternoon, Chair Chavez, uh, council members, council president.

Thank you for so much for uh having me.

I am Commander Chris Brown.

I am uh the commander of the government affairs and finance for Minneapolis Police Department.

Uh with me today is uh CSO Reese.

CSO Reese is gonna assist in uh what I cannot do, which is talk and push buttons at the same time to keep it going.

So um I'll address the uh questions of the legislative directive and I um and I'll be open to some questions if you have any at the end.

So thank you so much.

Uh so question number one the full text of any agreement or memorandum of understanding between MPD and federal agencies related to HSTFs, so that's Homeland Security Task Force.

Um I'll be interchanging the HSTFs and and Homeland Security Task Force throughout my my uh my speaking here.

So um including but not limited to overtime reimbursement agreement for the 63 officers, uh which was signed by Chief Brian O'Hara and the FBI investigations.

Uh specific question uh outlined uh include the date of each agreement that was executed in the name and the title of all city officials who reviewed and approved the agreement prior to signing.

Uh so the full text of the agreement can be found in the LIMS file that was provided uh to council.

And the agreement was executed on January 23rd, 2026.

The MPD signatures uh was former Chief Brian O'Hara, um Commander Eric Forrest, who's now retired with investigations, and uh investigative lieutenant uh Steve Heron.

Second question.

Uh the total number of MPE officers that were signed to uh HSTF HSTF related duties, the durations of their assignments, and whether the scheduled end date exists for the collaboration, specifically identify the specific investigations or enforcement categories officers have been assigned to.

So I'm gonna provide a little bit of context to this.

So Homeland Security Task Force HSTFs are federal interagency law enforcement partnerships.

Uh they were established in 2025 to address the complex criminal investigations and threats uh involving uh transnational criminal investigations, uh human smuggling networks, uh cartel-related activity, weapons trafficking, money laundering, and other cross-border criminal activities.

Uh the task force were structured as court uh coordinated multi-agency operations involving federal, state, and local uh law enforcement partners and rely on intelligence-driven investigations and regional enforcement coordination.

HSTFs are generally led by federal agencies, including components of the uh Department of Homeland Security, such as HSI as well as Departments of Justice, which includes the FBI.

Uh, based on publicly available information, participation in the HSTF related activity may be uh may include investigations involving organized criminal enterprises, weapons trafficking, uh, financial crimes, and other public safety-related criminal investigations.

Uh, any participation by the Minneapolis Police Department would be limited to lawful public safety or criminal investigation functions uh conducted that which are consistent with MPD's authorities, city policy, and all applicable laws and ordinances.

Um so in in the uh uh in the limbs file that we provided, there will be there is a press release uh that was dated June 30th, 2026 that relates to the specific task force um that led to this uh legislative directive.

Um, and I'll talk a little bit more about that after the uh questions here.

So specific MPD HSTF investigations.

Um some of the more recent ones include there's a Lowe's gang investigation that's a RICO case out of North Minneapolis.

Uh RICO stands for uh racketeer influence and corrupt organizations act.

Uh there was a family mob case out of South Minneapolis.

Um that was for a drug conspiracy, uh guns and violence, uh, as well as uh G Block and Bogus Boy gang uh case out of South Minneapolis.

That was for drug conspiracy.

Both of those uh specific cases were the ones in in relation to the January 22nd uh uh MOU with uh the Homeland Security Task Force.

Um additional cases recently, uh there's a firearms possession case out of 19th and Nicholet Avenue South, uh firearms possession case, uh which was related to a St.

Paul shooting, as well as a carjacking incident that occurred at 19th and nickel itself.

Uh the next part of this question uh describe the chain of command governing officers well on HSTF duties, specifically whether officers report to MPD command or to a federal agency supervisor.

So Minneapolis police uh members uh while working in partnership with HSTF do not receive orders or report to any federal agency supervisor.

Minneapolis members uh follow the normal Minneapolis uh police chain of command while they're assisting in these capacities.

So in this way, you would have an officer would report to a sergeant, sergeant to lieutenant, commander to deputy chief, assistant chief, all the way up to chief.

So they would continue to follow that as well as the people responsible for them would be the the higher in the chain of command.

So the next uh next half of the question was confirm whether MPD policy, including but not limited to MPD policy adopted pursuant to the MDHR settlement agreement or city data retention policies apply in full to officers while assisting uh while assigned to HSTF.

So officers just um in case it comes out in my and uh in my in my uh talk here.

Um so T TFOs, which is a task force officer, those are the people that are actually assigned to these Homeland Security Task Force.

So they would be uh and those people, all Minneapolis police department, so including TFOs, when they're here, they are members, and they must bide by all city ordinances, policies, and data retention policies, regardless of whether what capacity they're assisting with another agency.

Um I can give an example.

Um there was uh quite a while ago uh when Minneapolis first got our body worn cameras.

We had uh we were kind of leading the uh law enforcement uh network with with getting the policies, and there were some agreements that we had with other agencies, and because of that, we had to pause some of those agreements because we don't we don't compromise our policies for assisting in any other in any one of those capacities.

Uh third question How is the city monitoring and ensuring compliance with the Minneapolis uh separation ordinance for MPD officers assigned to HSTF duties, uh including what documentation or reporting mechanisms are in place, specifically identify who at MPD or the Office of Community Safety is responsible for ongoing compliance monitoring.

Um so all Minneapolis uh police members uh have completed this many the city's separation ordinance training as well as uh training within our Minneapolis police department going over those uh policies specifically.

Um in matters involving joint investigations with part with federal partners, regular check-ins do occur with the lead MPD investigator assigned to the collaborative FBI, home HSI, and MPD narcotics investigation to ensure that ongoing coordination and compliance with applicable policies and legal requirements.

So there's an ongoing uh communication between MPD's supervisors and the officers that are assigned to assist on the HSTFs.

Uh HSTF currently only has one member, one TFO that's assigned to HSTF, and that's a lieutenant assigned to the task force, and he operates under Minnesota Minneapolis uh city ordinances and MPD policies while working in that capacity.

Uh his direct supervisor is the commander of special operations division.

So once again, um all Minneapolis police members that assist in the capacity in any capacity on HSTFs uh follow all city ordinances and policies uh within the police department because they would not assist in uh any of these agencies if they didn't first wear the badge of MPD.

Question number four.

Uh data on the operation impact of assigning officers to HFC HSTF duties on MPD's core patrol and investigation functions.

Uh specifically identify which precincts or units the 63 officers were drawn from and during what periods.

Um for all of your guys' sake, just to get a little more detail on it.

So for all of your guys' sake, just to get a little more detail on it, the 63 officers specifically referred to in the question are the are those that were part of the MOU that was signed on June 20 uh June 22nd.

The 63 officers, not all of the 63 officers actually had task force duties.

The MOU with putting the 63 on there was uh to aid in in an ease uh financial reimbursement in the event that they did participate.

The uh TFO told me that uh he believes only approximately eight people from that 63 list even had any sort of assistance that they provided during that uh that investigation time.

So they were added for the ease of financial reimbursements.

Uh MPD staff members who who were of the 63 were uh people from Southside uh React Team, Fourth Precinct Community Response Team, First Precinct Community Response Team Gun Investigation Unit, MPD SWAT team, um, and the time period in which the investigations were being conducted was from February, shortly after that was signed until uh the end of March.

Uh the next part of the question was provide any data on patrol coverage response times or investigative capacity during the period of HSTF assignment.

Uh like I said, there's only one lieutenant who's actually signed as a TFO for that HSTF, and he primarily works on Minneapolis cases.

So patrol coverages and response times didn't apply.

We didn't have any slowdown from patrol.

Uh the next part was given Brian, uh Chief Brian O'Hara's uh prior statements to the city council that understaffing requires MPD to triage violent crime investigations.

Explain how the assignment of officers to federal overtime duty on HSTF is consistent with those uh staffing constraints.

This is a fantastic question.

I'm gonna provide a little bit of a context to it.

So HSTF they assist in violent crime investigations to bring together federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in a coordinated effort, um, which includes uh intelligence sharing uh enforcement environment focused on identifying and disrupting organized criminal activity and driving violence that's driving the violence within communities, including Minneapolis.

Through access to combined investigation resources, analytical support, federal partnerships, and multi-jurisdictional coordination, HSTFs enhance the ability to investigate violent offenders involved in narcotics trafficking, firearms trafficking, organized criminal enterprises, and related violent criminal activity.

For local law enforcement agencies in Minneapolis, is definitely one of those.

Uh HSTF functions as a force multiplier.

Uh it expands investigative capacity beyond what any single agency could do alone.

The collaboration allows agencies to leverage shared intelligence systems, specialized federal resources, investigative technologies, and broader regional coordination to identify criminal networks, connect violent incidents across jurisdictions, and support long-term investigations targeting the individuals and the organizations that are driving the violent crime.

These collaborated efforts also promote fiscal responsibility by reducing duplication of effort, maximizing the limited resources, and enabling agencies to accomplish more together than they could independently.

Question number five is whether any agreements or memorandum of understanding between MPD and any federal agency related to HSTF were presented to the city council for approval, and if not, why not?

Uh the further identify any agreements with MPD and federal law enforcement agencies that have not been brought to city council for approval for the period of uh January 20th, 2025 through the present.

So historically, when it comes to a lot of these agreements that Minneapolis is uh MPD is in engaged in, um, historically I would say the answer is no.

And I'll give a little bit of because many of these agreements that MOUs, the MAAs and the JPAs, many of them they've been in place for nearly 20 years.

Uh they reflect a long established collaborative uh partnerships amongst different jurisdictions and agencies.

Uh these primarily serve as mutual acknowledgments.

Um, most of them agreements uh specifically just outline that one agency will aid when another circumstance is a warrant it and reinforce a coordinated response to public safety needs in both communities.

So MPD currently has 25 signed agreements.

Some of them and have end dates, and others uh are ongoing.

Um, 25, 10 of these uh have been approved by the Minneapolis City Council, many of which that are signed by many Minneapolis City Council are specifically because there's a reimbursement expectation.

So there's uh financial requirement uh to get approval for that.

So examples of the different types of agreements we do have with other agencies.

There's a MAAs, which is an agreement between two agencies to share resources, jurisdiction, and staff during certain circumstances.

And the MAAs, they're contemplated and authorized under Minnesota statute.

The joint powers agreements, the JPAs, they're legally binding contracts between two parties and public agencies to jointly exercising common powers, pooling resources, and sharing the risks to provide services.

And both JPAs and MAAs are both on contemplated and authorized under Minnesota State Statute.

So there's a couple couple points to make here.

First one is I can't write a federal warrant.

I can't.

So by being by being part uh deputized underneath uh the federal uh regulations, you're allowed to get gives you that authority to be able to write a warrant specific to that.

There are other other things, documentation, other things that you become privileged to be able to do so.

So why is that important?

Well I gotta do a little bit more digging to be able to be able to explain the details of it.

So uh the federal government operates there and gives their regulations under the CFR.

That's a code of federal regulations.

The the code of federal regulations is made up of titles.

There's 50 titles.

Federal authorities that are granted underneath those titles are um for different agencies to so like one title might be to investigate um firearms cases, another title might be for uh to investigate uh drug cases, customs cases, and yes, um there are titles specifically for immigration law enforcement as well.

So the the titles that MPD has been given deputization in order to um investigate are going to be for firearms, drugs, and customs.

Each one of those are the titles, and those are the deputizations that they actually are are are providing uh authority to so unique to that is uh there are different MOUs, one existing uh with HSI, and I can give you a little bit of interesting, and this is an older um case.

They specifically outline in those MOUs the authorities that are granted or not granted, and one of those um on HSI specifically says, and I'm gonna give it a verbatim here.

Um Title 18 in the CFR is what gives uh enforcement for immigration laws, and um the specific language in there is says, however, in designated customs officers accepted, HSI is not conveying the authority to enforce enforce uh administrative violations for immigration laws.

So they it was actually put into the agreement, and this is prior to Metro Surge as an older agreement that we have, but that was never an authority that was ever granted to us, nor have we ever sought it.

So that's just an important distinction to make.

Um I'll just go over a few things here.

So the operation resulted in arrests, seizure of firearms, drugs, and disruption of major criminal activities.

As a result of the investigations, 25 members and their associates of gangs have been charged over a span of five months.

The individuals indicted today, meaning the June 30th press release, uh, um, attempted to traffic no less than 333,000 deadly doses of fentanyl into the Minneapolis communities.

Uh one of one of the targets of the investigation was a family mob drug trafficking organization.

This member, uh the members of this gang were um fentanyl trafficking conspiracy and that maintained that open air drug market near the area of Lake Street and Park Avenue South.

Another um organization that was uh targeted was a money uh Hudson Drug Trafficking Organization.

The members of this drug trafficking organization, some members of uh of which are associated with the G Block and Bogus Boy's gangs, uh we're based their operation near 19th and Nicolet Avenue South.

Um the flow of the narcotics contributed from this gang's uh contributed to the escalation of uh violence in the shootings that happened in 19 at 19th and Nicolet in the in recent past.

So those are just to show that um when officers from Minneapolis are assisting in these home uh land security uh task force, they're doing so to um uh provide a service to Minneapolis.

This is this is they're combating the crime and the in and the violence and the drugs that are are plaguing our community.

They're not doing it for um, you know, just because it's a uh uh mutual respect to help out another organization.

We're still combating the things that are happening in Minneapolis.

These the tar uh the specific uh agreement that we did have uh sign on uh January 22nd.

I hope you do see the uh fruits of that and um in our community feel safer because of it.

So I can open up any questions you may have.

Yes, thank you so much for the presentation.

I guess a few things for me.

I would still like to get the agreements that were identified on the legislative directive, and if we can add those to limbs, I think you said there were how many?

Uh 25.

We have a file that sir, uh that we'll we'll I think we we can make available to you.

Yes, if we can make it that available to the city council and on limbs for the public record.

I think one of the reasons we brought forward this legislative directive is the concern that some officers could be deputized that you just brought up by the federal government, which is under the Trump administration.

So I think for me, something that I would like as a follow-up doesn't have to be today because that we have a long agenda, would be the protocols that the Minneapolis police department has in place.

Should an officer be deputized.

I think we have uh federal government that in my opinion has threatened deputizing many of our officers across the country, which is something that I think could cause real fear to our community.

And then I think one thing is that the New York police department had an incident where an officer broke city law on November 21st, 2024 under one of these Homeland Security Task Forces.

So when you hear some concerns from some of my colleagues, including myself, is that some of these task forces we've had officers in different parts of the country violate separation ordinance as a result of being in these task forces.

Obviously, some of them were held accountable, which is good, but I think that's where these questions come from to make sure that we do have protocols in place to ensure that if our department is going to participate in these task forces, what guard roles do we have in place to prevent any coordination uh with the federal government when it comes to enforcing federal immigration law, which is not our role.

So I just want to make those comments and would like to see these uh agreements in the future.

Thank you, Chair Travis.

Cool.

I don't see anybody else on queue, so thanks so much for being here.

We appreciate it, and we'll be in touch uh with that colleagues, seeing no further discussion on this item.

I'll ask the clerk to receive and file that report.

And now we have our last item, which is our second quarterly update from the Office of Community Safety.

I'll invite Commissioner Partnett.

Thanks for being patient to begin that presentation.

In the interest of time, if it's okay, Chair Um, I am not good at the computer, so someone will come up and do that.

But what I'm gonna say, I think uh most of this you know, so if you don't mind, I'll just start without the slide presentation.

Uh good afternoon, uh Chair Chavez, uh Vice Chair Stevenson uh and City Council members, Todd Barnett.

It's not moving forward.

Oh, there we go.

It's fine.

Thanks for the opportunity to provide uh second quarter update on the Office of Community Safety and its departments.

Today we're highlight you'll get a highlight from uh each department, the progress that they've made over the past quarter, and uh the focus that they have moving into the second half of the year.

For those who are not familiar with the Office of Community Safety under the Office of Community Safety, the police fire 911, which is emergency communications, emergency management neighborhood safety.

This structure allows us to better coordinate the work, break down silos, and also deliver more comprehensive approach to community safety for the residents and visitors of the city of Minneapolis.

Our mission, of course, is one in which is pretty straightforward is to provide a coordinated, comprehensive, and equitable safety services to everyone who lives and visits the office, visits the city of Minneapolis.

Our vision is a city in which all people feel safe.

Social disparities are eliminated, and the residents can access opportunities and resources.

These principles continue to guide the work that you're here from all of the departments today.

Highlights from the Office of Community Safety for the second quarter.

We've completed, as you know, the national search for the fire chief.

You heard our nominee today, Dr.

Freeman.

We're currently working on uh and looking forward to uh presenting the council with a new uh nominee for the chief of police.

We are uh also in the process as I believe all of you are aware that the um behavioral crisis contract will expire here soon, and so we've been going through the process of looking uh for um our our uh vendor for 2027 as we look ahead um like I say as the fire chief uh vendor and also one thing that's um near and dear to especially the police department and the fire department in September, uh which some of you have attended is the battle of the badges.

I bring that up uh because this year we asked that the departments outside of Minneapolis not cheat.

Um they like to bring in ringers uh to to um uh do the barbecuing and and we stick by the rules.

So um we we're looking forward to that.

In fact, um that is one of the highlights uh for the summer, and I'm so glad that they brought it back because it's a chance to um engage with community, um, and it's just a very fun time uh for our departments to be out there as well.

So I'll pass it off to emergency management, and I hope Director Sayre can advance this.

Thank you.

Welcome, Director Sayer.

Maybe you can get it to there you go.

Thanks.

And then just for colleagues here, because I know we're running out of time, not really kind of yes.

The way I want to approach this today is that there's a long presentation.

We're gonna go through all of it, and then we're probably gonna ask our clerks follow-up questions that we'll then send to department staff to answer those questions if that's okay with everybody.

Want to make sure we get out of here.

So we won't be asking questions out loud today.

Lucky you.

Uh, we're gonna follow up over email.

Hi.

Uh good afternoon.

Uh Council, um, Chair, President.

Chavez.

Sorry, I'm a little tired today.

My name is Rachel Sayer.

I am the director of emergency management.

I'll go through this quickly.

Um, you all know our mission.

We are here to prepare the community and coordinate responses to disasters.

In Q2, we engage directly over 600 people alone.

We're really proud of that.

Um, on readiness for disasters at different events where we really centered, especially engaging with our historically marginalized community members.

All 65 of our sirens in the city are currently updated and working.

That's a really exciting um status for us all.

We had a lot of updating and maintenance to go through over the last year.

We have transitioned our emergency supply warehouse, which is really for emergency large-scale disasters onto a digital system.

That's also really an exciting transition for us.

Uh, we have increased our collaboration with the health department's emergency preparedness team.

So we're approaching that work as one as a whole city.

And we collaborated with a lot of partners to better understand the St.

Anthony Falls cutoff wall report that came out a few weeks ago and implications for city preparedness.

We also in Q2 work to support emergency alert messaging alongside in response to our MPD colleagues when needed for a few incidents.

And we continue to work on recovery activities for enunciation and related to OMS.

Looking ahead to Q3, which we're in now, we would expect to see continued severe weather, including potential for extreme heat, air quality, just want to point out the National Weather Service said that the fires up north are likely not going to be out until it snows.

That means we need to expect poor air quality off and on through the rest of the summer into the fall.

Elections preparedness is another item that we're wanting to focus on, as well as looking out to the 2028 NFL draft planning.

I'll just note my department has been pulled into Heritage Park coordination that is taking almost all of our time.

So that means everything else takes a back seat right now.

So some of this critical work is basically on hold while we do that other work.

That's it from me.

I will hand it over to Neighborhood Safety.

Welcome, Dr.

Harrington.

Good afternoon, Amanda Harrington, Director of the Neighborhood Safety Department.

As you know, neighborhood safety uses public health approach to reduce the impact of violence in our communities with a specific focus on reducing gun violence, as well as continuing the city's work doing human trafficking prevention and intervention.

We had a lot of things happening in quarter two.

First, I will highlight that June was gun violence awareness month and say thank you to Council Member Chowdhury, but all council members who supported the resolution and thanks to all the community members and community organizations who stood with us that day, but then do this work every day.

We've been engaging with the community in Uptown to get their input for the community safety ambassador expansion.

I'll talk more about that in a moment.

And as Director Sayre mentioned, we had the Safe Summer Kickoff.

We believe about 500 people were present at that event.

And so we appreciate everyone who came out on that very hot sunny day.

In May, we launched a shooting alert pilot with Minneapolis Police Department in the third precinct.

Neighborhood safety now gets updates from MPD when shootings occur so that we can get that information consistently to violence interrupters.

The goal is to increase consistent communication to the violence interrupters just to add to the information that they're already getting from their personal relationships within the community.

Once we refine the pilot, we hope to expand that to be citywide and to loop in other resources in our department, including community trauma response and other boots on the ground contractors.

And our new associate director of finance and administration, Vicky, started.

Lastly, I want to highlight the walk-alongs that council members engaged with me and violence interrupters.

So thank you to Council Members Osmond Chavez, Wansley, and Warren for walking with us in the rain and the shine.

All council members are, of course, invited to do walk-alongs.

And I've also walked along with a couple of our other contractors.

I particularly want to shout out community peace builders who have been working in the Stevens Square area and are spending some extra time at 19th and Nicolette following the recent shooting.

Now I'll shift to some specific program areas.

But we do track a number of metrics for this program.

In quarter two, we had 99% of clients reporting no violent activity.

We also had some improvement on their clients reaching their employment goals, independent living skills, and health and wellness.

The Minneapolis program is our violence interrupter program.

Contractors have not changed for this program.

We still still currently have five contracts.

The map on this slide is the most current slide showing the expanded zones in North Minneapolis and South Minneapolis.

Anybody can view this dashboard.

The simplest way is just Google Minneapolis violence prevention dashboard so that you can see exactly where people work and which organization serves which section.

Wanted to note just some of the key measures that we have been tracking.

There's a significant increase in public education materials that have been distributed in communities, as well as conflict mediations.

A lot of that is due, quite honestly, to the nicer weather, just more people are outside.

During one of my walk alongs with Restoration Inc., we were, I was writing in a hot spot when a call came from one of their teams that was near Broadway that there was a fight in progress.

Everybody from that violence interrupter team went to that location.

By the time I got there, the fight was finished, but you could see that the people still on the scene were visibly on edge and shaken.

The violence interrupter team did what they do talking to people, and as part of that, they also spread out in case retaliation, and sure enough, two cars came driving back who had been involved in the fight, and Restoration Inc.

was able to talk those folks into leaving.

We also learned later that one of the individuals who had been involved in the fight had a gun on them.

And so that's just a really good example of it's hard sometimes to prove what violence interrupters do.

We're proving a negative.

We're proved that they stopped something that never happened.

That incident that they were involved in could have been a shooting.

And so when we have stats like 49 conflict mediations conducted, I hope that folks read that to mean 49 shootings prevented, 49 homicides prevented, because that's the meaning of the work that violence interrupters do.

I did not report on safety ambassadors last time, but I know this is a pilot program that folks are very interested in.

Our community interactions have nearly doubled from first quarter, as well as an increase in business checks, referrals to shelter and safety escorts.

We think a lot of this is due to seasonal changes with again more folks on the street, but also with the conclusion of Operation Metro Surge during that time.

A lot fewer people were on the street, and in fact, some businesses were locking their doors, making business checks impossible to do.

We had rolled out the dispatcher in January, but calls really started being received by them in April.

We've had 15 calls from the Lake Street area and five calls from the Franklin area.

Ten of those resulted in escalation to 911, and one of those included a person with a weapon.

We, as I noted, are going to expand into Uptown based on that geographic area.

Right now we're anticipating hiring eight ambassadors, two supervisors, and one additional dispatcher, because we anticipate that the community will tell us that the hours the safety ambassadors should be out in uptown are different from the needs on Lake Street and Franklin.

We have created a survey in addition to the meetings that we're going to to get input from the community.

And the job descriptions that we have for this are currently with HR and the union for approval because as folks know, we are bringing that particular pilot in-house.

Given the number of questions I've received on this in previous council meetings, I have noted to council members that we've tried to schedule legislative laboratories to dig into this deeper.

It's been rescheduled twice, but I'm still hopeful that we'll get one on the books.

And community trauma response.

I want you to know I did hear this question, and I sprinted up here, but I made it by the time the vote had already been taken.

So I'm hoping to answer your question now while I give a summary.

So community trauma response currently has nine contracts.

All of those contracts end at the end of August.

As you noted, one of those contracts, a Mother's Love, was on the consent agenda earlier for an amendment and a one-year contract extension.

We are planning to redo all the community trauma response model in general.

The Mother's Love contract extension is really the first step in that change.

So a Mother's Love was already responding to shootings in addition to doing boots on the ground.

This contract extension enhances that work by increasing communication.

I talked earlier about the pilot that we have going on with the Minneapolis Police Department.

And so what we're building into this next iteration of community trauma response is getting those shooting alerts from MPD and dispatching our community trauma response out to the scenes quicker, obviously when the scene is safe, so that they can provide more immediate response to the community, not just victims because we are getting those in other ways, but to the larger community impacted by shootings.

We will eventually have to do a request for proposal for this new vision of the community trauma response, but we're hoping to learn from the continued contract with the Mother's Love that will help us write the best RFP possible when we have to do it early next year.

I was also asked by Councilmember Wandsley to talk about next step.

Next step is one of our violence prevention services programs.

It's specifically a hospital-based violence intervention.

We contract with Hennepin Healthcare to provide this service, and they operate in four hospitals.

Basically, the next step team gets called any time somebody presents in one of these four hospitals with a gunshot wound.

They will offer services to the individual while they're in the hospital, and they can take referrals.

So if people aren't ready to accept those services at that moment of crisis in the hospital, they'll connect back with them or check back with them later and see if they're ready.

Their goal is really to reduce retaliation, so calming everybody down in the moment, but then also providing that long-term care.

It's a long road to recovery after somebody's been shot.

And so they support them getting physical and mental health treatment, financial assistance, advocacy.

They collect a lot of information, but a few highlights they've served 355 patients this year, 29 of whom were new in quarter two.

Their most used services include individual counseling, emergency financial assistance, and crisis intervention.

I will note that I had a couple of staff from Next Step here, but unfortunately they had to leave before we were able to do the presentation.

Looking ahead, there's always more work to be done.

We plan to complete our first annual department uh report this summer.

We're also going to release a public dashboard for violence interrupters with the help of Cure Violence Global.

Um, spoiler alert, it's actually already on our website.

So you can already uh look at that dashboard right now.

We plan to continue to develop and update policies and procedures.

This was always our plan, but now it's also tied to our work plan to address the recent city audit.

And earlier this year we started a gun violence problem analysis.

We'll continue working and gathering data on that to help us guide programmatic decisions in the future.

We'll continue the community engagement in Uptown and working with MPD to refine the shooting alert pilot.

And lastly, we're working on the next iteration of community trauma response.

As I noted, a mother's love will be kind of the first case in helping us increase more closer to real-time dispatch.

We haven't done any dispatching of services like that before.

And so hopefully by September, we'll have that up and running in North Minneapolis.

Thank you.

Before I had colleagues you can start like repairing the questions you're gonna have.

That way we can read it for our clerks to have on the record so then we can afford it to staff.

So feel free to start thinking some of the questions you might have.

So we just read it to our clerks before the meeting ends.

All right.

Welcome, Director Hodney.

Good afternoon, Chair Chavez and Council members.

I am Johnny Hodney, the director of Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center.

Um, our mission statement for the 911 Center, most of you are familiar with.

Uh, our main goal is to save lives, protect property, and assist the public in their time of need.

Through some of the quarter two highlights, uh, we've done about 158,000 calls in the second quarter, which is remaining about uh steady with past history during the same time period.

The call volume starts to go up a bit in June, and we are seeing that increase on quarter two here where it went up about 2.8%.

Our call answer times are slowly increasing from where we were at last uh quarter.

We are up to about 87% of the time that those calls are being answered within 15 seconds, and over 90% of the time that those calls are being answered within 30 seconds.

So we're getting closer to reaching the goal of wanting to be over 90% of the time in 15 seconds or less.

For 911, we are down about nine employees right now.

I've got nine and a half here because I do have some part-time employees.

The we have five people starting on Monday, so that will help to fill the gap of what we're short right now.

The biggest challenge that we are running into as the call takers and dispatchers or PST2s and PST3s get trained and learn their jobs.

It's the promotion from being a PST2 call taker into being a PST3 dispatcher.

The call takers have developed a certain amount of seniority on the area that they're at right now.

And if they transfer over to the promotional role of a dispatcher, they often lose that seniority and go to the bottom of the list.

That's creating some not a lot of drive for people wanting to do that promotion.

They are two important jobs, but very different jobs.

So right now, to do a balance with that, we are detailing some of the employees to be able to start to learn the dispatch position, but we are going to need to find some ways to encourage them to permanently promote to that.

The group of five that we have coming in right now, the ad has been out there.

They've been through backgrounds for several months before they actually get into our department, and then there's three months of training.

So when this was first placed, we were only down a couple of employees, and since then had lost more.

So we really need to be able to look at that attrition rate that often happens, especially with new employees coming into 911 and discovering this just as a job for them.

Our quality assurance is still staying steady with about 95.2% of the calls measuring at uh a high quality assurance standard.

Our software that we've been running through GovWorks that's analyzing more of those calls than what a human can do is showing that number to still remain up in the upper 90 percentile for a quality assurance.

We're doing some adjustments to that software right now to help pick up on some of the nuances that a computer can't measure when it's going through, and we have to tell it how to recognize, for example, a weapon.

There's a difference between someone standing in the kitchen chopping onions and has a knife in their hand while they're arguing with someone versus somebody waving a knife around and pointing it at someone.

So we have to teach the system to do that.

But we are getting uh more supervisors, managers involved in looking at that and helping to uh narrow down some of those.

So I hope to have it fully up and running for all employees by the first of the year.

We continue to work with mental health and keeping the staff moving in uh a good healthy condition.

We've got some peer support training that goes on on a regular basis, and then of course, our collaborative work with the fire department with BCR, the police department on the response times, which I'm sure you'll hear about more, and uh successfully navigating some of the requirements of the safe and thriving communities.

The radio shop has um updated all the dispatch councils, and they are working on uh making sure that the armor interface to the computers is working properly.

Our embedded social worker program is still showing to be successful.

She's taken about 260 incoming calls since the program started less than a year ago.

She's done 87 referrals to different resources like housing substance abuse needs, and about 13 of them have been referred to police embedded social workers where maybe a face-to-face interaction might be more appropriate.

Looking ahead into quarter three, uh, our call volume typically starts to drop after about the second week in September.

The first couple weeks in September are still very busy as kids get on the wrong school bus, and we spend a lot of time helping with that.

Our training will continue to grow with this quality assurance program.

And thank you for approving today the higher program that we'll be adding to GovWorks, which will help us do some better screening and analyzing for training.

The embedded social work program is starting to make some outgoing calls on calls that she's sitting in there that may be a check wall and could be a resource she could resolve over the phone rather than sending us service out there.

And we'll also start working more with Hennepin County and COPE over the next couple of months as COPE is now able to directly tie to our computer system in a unique method so we can see where they're at.

We can't dispatch them through this system, but at least we can see where they're at and help to make sure that they're secure.

Radio Shop is going to be working on the third precinct community safety center, and our CAD system upgrade that is due to go into place in the uh fourth quarter is installed on our training system right now, and we're spending time over this quarter, the third quarter working the bugs out of it before it actually goes live.

And I will turn it over to Chief Rucker.

Welcome, Internal Chief Rooker.

Good afternoon, Chair Chavez and committee members.

I am interim Chief Melanie Rucker, Minneapolis Fire.

We'll start off with our mission statement.

This hasn't changed, so you guys, I won't have to re reread it for you all.

And then we'll go on to quarter two highlights.

That class graduated on May 22nd.

Out of this year's class of 20 interns, 17 of those graduates are now nationally registered EM EMTs.

And the from the 2016 on graduates from the Minneapolis EMS Pathways Academies have become Minneapolis firefighters and paramedics in agencies across the region of nearly the 200 graduates, 67 are currently members of the Minneapolis Fire Department.

Another eight of those graduates are part of this year's academy.

And as you all know, the EMS Pathways Academy is a pathways to help bring into the fire department the historically underrepresented communities, BIPOC communities and women into the fire department.

So we are very proud of this program and we continue to have it every year.

And then the next uh highlight that we have is the public safety aid added to the fire department's budget in March, allowed us to upgrade critical safety equipment.

We purchased nine new sets of extrication tools.

Um there are spreaders and cutters, commonly known as the JAWS of life, um, which are now being outfitted for and to be deployed on our rescue truck as well as our um uh ladder trucks within the next few weeks.

Um and this is um crucial because according to manufacturers and NFPA standards, these tools should retire um after 10 years of service for the safety of our firefighters and communities.

Our tools were 14 years old.

Um as you know, um extrication tool ages, the hydraulic fluids uh fuels leak.

Um, the cutting and then it reduces our cutting and spreading capabilities.

Um, the metal components uh can become fatigued, um, and older tools struggle with today's reinforced vehicle designs.

And all these factors uh create risks to slower extrications, um, unexpected tool failures on scenes and increases the danger for both firefighters and trapped occupants.

Um, so these upgrades uh have significantly improved the reliability, performance, and overall operations for safety for the fire department.

Um with that um we also with the aid, we also purchased uh 18 new sets of turnout gears for our uh graduating cadet class.

Um, and then you know, with that, I want to thank uh council member Vital and the entire council for this support and investment in the firefighter safety and the communities protection.

And then going on to our staffing and leave pressures.

Uh, this is very important to us because as you know, our total um sworn FTEs for the fire department are for is 434.

Uh, we are currently um operating with only five 412 firefighters, and of that 412, 13 of those uh sworn FTEs are actually within administration and training, so they're not actually operational or on the field.

So we're we're at a minimum of like close to 400 or under 400 at this time.

Um and this is primarily due to retirements and a small number of young firefighters that are leaving for better opportunities.

Um, other fire departments that used to be volunteer are going to paid full paid fire departments, and their starting salaries are higher than ours, but you know, long-term stance of ours is a better opportunity for them to stay here, but they're reaching for that first immediate large number.

Um other fire departments that used to be volunteer are going to paid full paid fire departments, and their starting salaries are higher than ours, but you know, long-term um stance of ours is a better opportunity for them to stay here, but they're reaching for that first immediate large number, so a lot of them are moving to other departments for better opportunities.

Um, and then also in June alone, we have a noticeable loss of 10 plus firefighters that are retiring.

Uh our department currently has 73 firefighters that are eligible for retirement this year.

Um, that's just eligible.

Um, so we're not say certain how many of those are going to take that opportunity to retire.

So that's pr represents a significant staffing challenge for us.

Um, and even um after the current uh cadet class of 17 graduates, we will still be remaining under our utilized strength and bringing us to 429 um operational staffs, warrant personnel.

Um, and then on any given day, approximately 50 fire personnel are absent from duty due to various types of leaves, as we have mentioned before.

It could include uh long-term military leave or just short-term military leave, paper until leave, FMLA, PFMLA, as well as our PTSD related leaves.

Um, this daily impact places additional strain on our operational capacity, so that's major for us.

Um and so again, with that, um, that's gonna also increase our overtime and hire back um needs.

Um then quarter two, our total responses has also increased based on just from last uh year's quarter two.

Uh this year we um for total emergency calls um we have increased 350 calls overall since last year.

And then of those total calls, 145 of 145 of those are structure fires, which has also increased since last year.

Um then we can go on to our um BCR, uh, which is contracted under fire.

Um, their total uh response calls um for quarter two have gone up as well.

Um their turn uh current um quarter two or is two thousand five hundred thirty-two.

So they have increased about six hundred since uh quarter one.

And um, as mentioned before, our behavioral crisis uh response contract uh with our current provider expires August 15th, um, and we are out for RFP.

Um the new uh behavioral crisis response has been renamed to mobile crisis response.

Um, and this name uh change is based on broadering the broadening the scope of response and include responses not just based on mental health but outside and just kind of the livability crisis is that they can respond more to um not just only based on uh mental health responses that are needed.

So we have to increase that capacity.

So that's where we're changing the name to mobile crisis response.

Um the RFP closed on May 19th and is currently in the review and evaluation process.

Um the new contract is scheduled to begin on January 1st, 2027.

And then also again, our current uh firefighter cadet class that we have going on right now of 17 is set to graduate at the end of August.

And of that 17, we're proud to say that five of them are women.

So that is a great uh asset to us to currently expand this profession to um all people that uh willing to work and serve the community.

And then also we are currently in our promotional process of replacing um uh deputy chief position at due to retirement as well as our promotional positions of our fire motor operators, which are the ones that drive the trucks.

Um so that's what we have looking forward into the look ahead in quarter three.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, safety and design.

Director Will Christianson uh good afternoon.

I'm Will Christensen, Director of Community Safety Design and Implementation.

Uh today's update will cover the Q2 highlights and Q3 look ahead across the Safe and Thriving Communities Plan and Work Group.

Um the asset and gaps analysis and community safety centers.

Uh first in Q2, um we've continued our annual review of the Safe and Thriving Communities Plan and implementation of that plan.

Um Susto active projects are going forward across departments and partners.

Um looking ahead to Q3.

Um we'll keep refining that plan and share that and publish an updated implementation roadmap for the rest of 2023.

2026.

Hopefully by our August meeting.

They've adopted their 2026 work plan.

This work plan really continues departmental presentations and site tours to learn more about the city, our systems and the safe and thriving community report.

They've heard from MECC 911 and Emergency Management.

Last week council approved a 2.5 million dollar burn grant to support research and alternative response development.

This work will help us fulfill recommendations from the Safe and Thriving Communities Report and the Asset and Gaps analysis.

As I mentioned last week, data analysis is focused on 911 problem nature codes and what which ones we can responsibly divert from law enforcement to alternative response.

Again, two pilots are being coordinated with uh PMI and OCS, the civilian response to non-injury traffic incidents, and a juvenile deflection program.

Shifting to community safety centers, um, our near-term operations and facilities work.

Uh the Lake Street Safety Center continues operations.

Um for South Minneapolis, construction started in May, and operational planning has begun.

Um for North Minneapolis, the fourth precinct.

Um North Minneapolis uh Safety Center in Fourth Precinct uh feasibility study kicked off in Q3.

Um we'll evaluate uh Lake Street as a pilot, uh capture lessons learned and prep for the transition to the South Minneapolis Safety Center.

Um and then uh also in Q3 South Minneapolis Community Safety Center construction and operations planning will continue with an anticipated goal to open that center at the end of 2026.

I want to provide a brief overview of um operations at South Minneapolis Safety Center and how we're envisioning that process.

Um you know, the center's functionality will prioritize usability and co-located services.

As you know, core components include a 311 service center, uh, several community-based organizations, the Youth Connection Center, um, and shared meeting spaces.

So, next steps there to finalize our operations plan, um, uh space use policy, and establish operating hours.

Um, as we do this planning, uh core principles uh that guide include person-centered and trauma-informed uh design and establishing clear governance and um communications to clarify different partner roles and streamlined services.

These last two slides, uh seven and eight, are really for your reference, covering our work in Q1 and Q2, um, and looking forward to key milestones in Q3 and four.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Then next, and actually last, I think we have the Minneapolis Police Department, and then Colleens will be ready to read our questions, and then we'll be done.

Welcome.

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon, Chair Chavez and Vice Chair Stevenson.

I'm Christopher Gaters, uhssistant chief of Minneapolis Police Department, and I'm here along with uh assistant chief uh Mark Lucko to present the presentation for uh the update for the Minneapolis Police Department.

We'll start off with the uh the uh year uh to date recruitment and staffing numbers.

Uh the last time we uh gave an update, I went through the laterals, recruits and cadets and CSOs and kind of give an understanding of of what those uh platforms are or pathways are.

Uh so unless you want me to repeat those, I'll uh for the sake of time uh move forward with the numbers.

Uh laterals, we're at 10 for hiring at this point this year as of uh July 13th, I will say.

Uh recruits were at 13 have been hired.

Cadets are at 45, and our community service officers, which are commonly known as our CSOs, are at 28.

Our total number to date of hires for 2026 is as is at 96 as of July 13th, and our total sworn staffing as of July 13th uh was at 626.

Welcome.

Good afternoon, uh Chair Chavez.

I'm going to handle the next couple slides.

Council members.

Thanks for having me.

Our real North Stars for operations are clearance rates and uh emergency response.

So investigating crimes that have occurred and then getting to people as fast as we can.

This this slide represents what we did what we did in 2025.

And what we did in quarter two will likely the results will be shown in quarter three, four, and beyond because investigations take take time to uh complete, and that clearance rate that I think we sp we heard from earlier, we heard from uh Lieutenant Schroeder.

Clearance rates continued to go up.

And uh as we as he'd shared, we're very proud of our 85% clearance rate for homicides.

Uh so the other thing that we uh saw in quarter two was the extension of quarters one's progress with related to response time.

Response time across our organization was intolerable over the couple of years in which staffing was a challenge.

But we did find ways to increase our uh response time, increase decrease our response time and increase our service by getting to uh by getting to our 9-1 response uh emergencies quicker.

We did that through a number of initiatives.

I think you've you've heard of some of these, but uh I'll I'll be real brief on them.

We've done these uh these um uh um juvenile outreach initiatives.

That that has helped, I think uh Lieutenant Kelly has uh Lieutenant Kelly O'Rourke has presented on that.

That has helped a lot with our juveniles and and made sure that we didn't have quite a bit as many problems in the community.

We've also implemented this uh JEB, we call it the JEB, the jail in uh efficiency beat.

It's uh might be it might be uh you may have heard of it, but what it's done is allowed our personnel that are assigned to the precincts handling emergencies to rely on people that are working the jeb.

Uh just a couple of folks who are taking their their arrested people and dealing with the some sometimes several hours it takes to get someone into jail and then bringing the allowing the the personnel to get back on the street.

Uh the Jeb is staffed with overtime, and it's it's uh the the um people that are that are investigative folks and people that aren't quite as adept at handling emergencies or frankly doing the the workout in the community that we rely on from our precinct, our precinct folks.

That's turned into a a big a big change in our response times because the people are getting our officers are getting back into the uh I saw you just look at your clock, sir.

I'll be quick.

Um getting back to the service of answering 911 calls and and making arrests when they have to.

Another thing that we've done to increase decrease response times is use um uh our overtime a little bit a little bit better with regard to when our shift changes are to make sure that we don't have large lapses, large lapse in responding to people who uh have called number one, especially in uh the priority priority one calls, which is displayed on the screen.

And those folks uh just uh a little maybe a year ago were waiting nine minutes, 20 seconds as a median uh average, and now they're they're we're we're dropping below seven minutes in some categories, and certain precincts are finding that uh that that person that is working the overtime shift during their shift gap is actually out on the street during roll call.

Those those few people that are out there working really helps us manage the priority one calls and brings brings this number down.

It happens as well in the priority two category, which is on the screen now, and our numbers are our response times to category two is increasing our uh ability to get to the folks who are calling who aren't necessarily experiencing imminent emergencies that people who are hurting or stealing from them aren't aren't there in in their presence, but they've experienced the crime and they they need response.

So getting that number down to 20 minutes or less is one of our successes that we've seen in quarter two.

Uh the these improvements reflect the hard work of our officers' investigators, dispatchers, civilian staff, and while there's a lot more work to do.

We have meaningful indicators that our strategies, our operational strategies are moving us in the right direction.

And we do remain focused on continuing this progress because improving public safety starts with responding quickly and investigating those crimes that that our communities are demanding of us.

Um I think I'm bringing um AC Gators back up.

And then we'll move on to questions.

And as we get into the next slide, it's just uh getting back and updating you on what's been taking place with us uh in the police department, celebrating culture, community, and connection.

Uh we continue to uh get ourselves involved and be invited to uh many events and some of those are listed in bullet points on this slide.

Uh the American Indian kickoff parade, uh, which we have been uh a part of for the last uh few years, and that was uh an excellent event as we travel through from uh the uh Little Earth uh housing community all the way through neighborhoods and over at the American Indian Center on Franklin Avenue.

Uh Cinco de Mayo, uh we celebrated that here in Minneapolis and also went over to St.

Paul as well.

Uh Juneteenth.

Uh the Northeast events, the uh dog parade, which me s most people are familiar with, uh is a very popular event for the the officers and CSOs as well.

Uh let's roll bike ride is where students and police officers go on a bike ride together.

And uh the Mmung International Festival, which we uh also tabled at when I say table, that means there was a recruitment table and community engagement table.

Uh the police uh activities league uh adventure club.

This is where uh we take about 25 individuals, kids, and uh make about eight, nine trips, field trips a year during the year, and that continues as well.

National Night Out is coming up the fourth of August.

Uh so we'll be very excited to see all of you out there.

Uh and the youth community academy used to be our adult academy, now it's our youth academy, which uh we have three dates going August 4th, August uh 11th, and August 18th.

And then the back to school jamboree, which is popular with the kids because you get free backpacks and a lot of a lot of free food out there for everyone.

So and then the people's barbecue.

Um outside of that, that concludes, I believe, our presentation for OCS and barring any questions, but I think we have a different format for questions.

Yes, we have to move on quickly.

I know with the rules, we have to ask the questions here publicly.

I think maybe my request to staff would be with permission to for council members to just email the questions and then get answered back over briefing.

Otherwise we can read it quickly, but it just doesn't feel like we have enough time.

So I guess what I'm just gonna request is that we follow up over email.

If you have qu questions, email it to me.

My office will then either send it to the clerks or send it to staff themselves for a response, because otherwise it's nearly impossible.

Okay.

Thank you all so much for being here.

Thank you for the presentation.

It is greatly appreciated.

Uh well, if folks have questions, just email me or we'll figure it out offline and we can follow up over email.

Um seeing for the discussion, I'll ask the clerk to receive and file that report.

See you know for the business business before us, I would declare this meeting adjourned.