Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has found himself in hot water, and time is not on his side. Frey has been ordered to bring the city’s police force up to the minimum officer requirement by January 2027 or face going to trial.
Where’s the Police?
The Minneapolis City Charter requires there to be 0.0017 sworn police officers on staff for each resident, Alpha News explained. In the 2020 census, the Twin Cities population was just under 430,000 people, which required there to be 731 officers.
However, 2020 was the year George Floyd died while in police custody, and riots broke out all over the city and the nation. “Defund the police” cries were shouted from every corner, and states and cities lost a lot of their law enforcement. Before this, Minneapolis had around 900 officers, but, after Floyd, there was a mass exodus, leaving only 539 staffed officers by 2022.
In 2020, the Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC) filed a lawsuit to address the problem of too few police officers on behalf of several residents. In 2022, a ruling from the Minnesota Supreme Court found that the city had to comply with the charter and employ at least 731 officers. However, the city has failed to meet that obligation, so UMLC filed another lawsuit earlier this year. According to court documents, if Frey isn’t able to provide proof that the city increased law enforcement to the minimum requirement by Jan. 4, 2027, he will face a civil trial during which the court will determine if the mayor has a “valid excuse for nonperformance of this duty.”
“This is an important step toward restoring accountability for Minneapolis residents,” UMLC President Doug Seaton said in a statement following the court ruling. “The City Charter is not optional. The Minnesota Supreme Court already recognized this staffing requirement, and Minneapolis officials have a legal duty to comply.”
Minneapolis Communications Director Scott Wasserman told Alpha News that there are 638 sworn officers currently employed and 30 recruits going through the police academy. “There are few police departments working harder to recruit and hire officers than MPD,” Wasserman said. “We’ve brought on more than 150 officers since the beginning of 2025, applications are up more than 200% since 2023, and we’ve built the most diverse police force in Minneapolis history.”
Why This Is a Big Deal
After the defund-the-police fiasco led to more crime and fewer officers, many lawmakers realized the error of their ways and started campaigning to bring back the protectors of their territories. However, such a goal is not easily achieved when trust has been compromised, and the very citizens they are sworn to protect are harassing them.
Still, it’s been years, and police departments have not replenished their numbers, yet courts don’t seem anxious to enforce requirement rules. “You have to understand how extraordinary this is,” Joe Tamburino, a legal analyst and criminal defense attorney told CBS News. “This is the rare situation where a judge actually says, look, you have to answer for this.”
Rachel Paulose, managing attorney for the UMLC, told the outlet that her team is excited about the ruling. “For the first time in four years, a judge said there will be consequences for the City of Minneapolis if it continues to violate the law,” she said.
Training officers takes some time, but it doesn’t take four years. If Frey isn’t able to bring the numbers up to the minimum requirement by January, then he will need to prove that he has done everything in his power to do so.
“One of the problems that the mayor is gonna have though is, it’s been a long time,” Tamburino said, referring to proving that the mayor exhausted all avenues in the last four years, since the court found in 2022 that the city needed to comply.
Minneapolis is far from the only locale still struggling to rebuild its police force after the defund movement. Across the country, many departments continue to face officer shortages, recruitment challenges, and rising public safety concerns years after the protests of 2020. The difference is that Minneapolis is now being forced to answer in court for failing to meet its legal obligations, a case that could set an example for other cities whose leaders have fallen short of law enforcement requirements.
