After George Floyd’s death, the city will bring in outside advisers to recommend changes to make policing more transparent and accountable.
Minneapolis’ police chief said Wednesday he was withdrawing the city from contract negotiations with the union representing local officers in order to bring in outside advisers to analyze the contract for potential reforms.
“This is not about employees’ benefits, or wages, or salaries,” Chief Medaria Arradondo said. “But this is further examining those significant matters that touch on such things as critical incident protocol, our use of force, the significant roles that supervisors play in this department, and also the discipline process, to include both grievances and arbitration.
“There is nothing more debilitating to a chief, from an employment perspective, than when you have grounds to terminate an officer for misconduct, and you’re dealing with a third-party mechanism that not only allows that employee to be back on your department, but to be patrolling in your communities.”
Arradondo was referring to collective bargaining agreements between police unions and their municipalities that make it extremely hard for departments to fire bad cops. Union-mandated appeal practices have time and time again either shielded cops from discipline entirely or returned them to the force after they’ve been fired as a result of binding arbitration processes.
