Minneapolis Mayor seeks funding to ‘stabilize’ PD, add officers

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - The Minneapolis Police Department is down about 200 officers from its normal staffing level, Mayor Jacob Frey said Thursday.

In a Facebook post, Frey said the department is down to roughly 640 sworn, available officers, which is about 200 fewer than the same time in 2019.

Thursday, Chief Medaria Arradondo joined Frey at a Public Health and Safety Committee meeting where they presented a resolution to free up funding they temporarily set aside for recruit classes, Frey said.

"That increased rate of attrition has made planning and staffing more challenging amid a tumultuous time," Frey said in the post. "We’ve had to make hard decisions to shift available resources to patrol and investigative work."

The mayor said community initiatives have been reduced, SWAT and bomb units decreased and training staff cut by about a third.

He asked the committee to free up funding in an effort to "stabilize, and continue shifting," the department by adding new officers.

This comes after some city councilmembers proposed a new charter amendment that would restructure the police department into a Department of Public Safety and remove a quota for the amount of city officers. The proposal is the latest effort to reimagine policing in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.