From hiring bonuses and other incentives to targeted recruitment campaigns, bolstering the ranks of police officers after massive decreases in recent years remains a priority for many departments.
The Minneapolis Police Department, like departments nationwide, has been plagued by staffing woes since 2020, which saw the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 at the hands of then-MPD officer Derek Chauvin. To combat the issue, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey earlier this month announced a multi-year campaign aimed at recruiting and retaining more public safety staff. While the goal of the campaign is to hire more officers as a way to remedy staffing concerns, another solution may lie in using alternative non-police responses for lower priority calls for service.
Persistent staffing woes
As of March 9, MPD has 560 sworn officers, including 22 officers on continuous leave of two weeks or more, according to data obtained from the city.
A wave of retirements, resignations and disability leaves caused the number of sworn officers to continually decrease since Floyd’s murder and the ensuing unrest, steadily declining over the nearly four year period from a force of just over 900 officers in May 2020. Meanwhile, the portion of officers on leave simultaneously began to spike, peaking in December 2020 at 152 officers on leave out of 818, or about 19% of their sworn force, according to city data.
Persistent challenges to recruit new hires in recent years is a problem not just in Minneapolis, but in departments in the Twin Cities metro, statewide and across the country. MPD Chief Brian O’Hara, who spoke on a panel alongside Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka and several scholars highlighted those struggles.
“When I say that the department is 40% smaller than it was at the start of 2020, that’s overall. Our investigations unit has shrunk by almost 50%,” O’Hara said during the panel, which was convened in November. “We might soon be in a situation where we’re just not going to investigate property crimes anymore. We might have to do that. And the community that will suffer the most is north Minneapolis.”
In a statement to MinnPost, Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association spokeswoman Leslie Rosedahl declined to comment on MPD and the city’s recruitment and retention efforts. But she said smaller departments across the state are struggling to recruit and retain officers due to more competitive pay at metro area departments.
The statement also tied staffing efforts to waning support for law enforcement as a profession – an oft-cited reason in recent years for hiring troubles after the perception of policing changed for many members of the public following Floyd’s murder.
“Having elected officials that support law enforcement and first responders also plays an outsized role in recruitment and retention,” she said.
Attempts at fixes
Earlier this month, Frey announced the “Imagine Yourself” marketing campaign that will target preferred candidates for jobs within the police and 911 operating departments. The campaign was developed by the city and a contracted third-party firm in September in an effort to reach people ages 18 to 44 within a 300-mile radius of Minneapolis via social media ads, job boards, emails, billboards and flyers.
“We’re committed to trying every available option for recruiting and retention because ultimately that’s what this city needs,” Frey said during the news conference announcing the campaign. “This campaign is really about people’s lives, it’s about filling a very critical safety need in our city – part of that safety need is police officers and 911 dispatchers.”
The campaign comes almost two years after the mayor dedicated $7 million in American Rescue Plan dollars toward strategies for recruitment, hiring and retention.
A day after the campaign was announced, the Minneapolis City Council approved a directive, authored by Ward 2 Council Member Robin Wonsley, that asks the mayor to provide an update on the implementation of recommendations from a 2022 report aimed at improving MPD and emergency services staffing issues. Among the recommendations provided by the report was for the city to look at implementing alternative responses to police for calls such as mental health crises as a way to efficiently free up officers for patrols or higher priority calls.
Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality, echoed the report’s recommendation, saying while programs like the Behavioral Crisis Response teams now exist, the city can do more. Gross said by bolstering the use of alternative responses and diverting certain calls away from police officers, the city could potentially solve its staffing issues and further implement its long-stated goal of public safety beyond policing.
“Part of public safety is doing things like addressing community conflicts, mental health issues and public health issues like substance use disorder,” Gross said. “These things can be handled by non-law enforcement folks, and in fact, there are better outcomes when they are handled by those folks.”
Mohamed Ibrahim
Mohamed Ibrahim is MinnPost’s environment and public safety reporter. He can be reached at mibrahim@minnpost.com.
