MINNEAPOLIS — A group that sued the City of Minneapolis over inadequate police staffing has high praise for Mayor Jacob Frey's public safety budget plan. They say it's a big step towards achieving the goal of their lawsuit.
"We think Mayor Frey is implementing the victory we got June 20 at the Supreme Court. So, as result of that, we're looking at it from the perspective of we already won this case and is there anything really left to do?" James Dickey, the lead attorney for the Upper Midwest Law Center, told reporters Thursday at a press conference outside Minneapolis City Hall.
The mayor's 2023 budget plan calls for four new police recruiting academies across the next two years, more money for staffing, police overtime pay and new crime fighting technology. It will be up to the city council to decide how much of it will get the green light.
"The mayor's doing the right thing. We call on the city council to endorse what he's proposed so we can move forward to safety again in Minneapolis," Doug Seaton, the founder and president of the Upper Midwest Law Center told reporters.
Seaton's nonprofit organization paid for the lawsuit brought in 2020 by eight north Minneapolis residents who asserted the city council and mayor weren't meeting the minimum police staffing levels set out in the Minneapolis City Charter.
The charter contains a formula based on the city's population, that currently equates to a minimum 731 uniformed officers. There are fewer than 600 officers available for duty currently, after a wave of resignations that depleted the MPD's ranks.
Hundreds of officers took PTSD disability leave and PTSD disability early retirement following the 2020 murder of George Floyd in police custody and the devastating riots that ensued.
The plaintiffs included former city council member Don Samuels and his wife Sondra, who also led legal efforts against a proposed city charter amendment that would've removed the minimum staffing provision and replaced the MPD with a public safety department controlled by the council instead of the mayor.
Minneapolis voters defeated that ballot question, but the staffing lawsuit, known as Spann vs Minneapolis, continued. The Minn. Supreme Court ruled June 20 that the city council has adequately funded police, paying for 770 officers in the current budget cycle.
But the High Court ruled that Mayor Frey has the legal responsibility under the charter to bring the department up to that threshold of 731 officers. Frey and the council have expedited recruiting efforts with bonuses, but the number of applicants is much lower than in years past.
The Supreme Court said if Frey couldn't get to that 731 number he needed to appear at a "show cause" hearing in district court and explain why. That show cause hearing has now been delayed, and Dickey said it might never happen in light of the mayor's budget plan.
"After the mayor's budget proposals, we agreed to push the hearing back until November 23rd," Dickey explained. "Right now, we're evaluating all options including whether the hearing is necessary at this point."
The City Council will spend the next several months formulating a budget and deciding what parts of the Mayor's plan to incorporate in the final version which must be adopted in December. There's still an active debate over police staffing at City Hall. Some of the council members opposed the charter amendment, while others supported it.
Frey has maintained it's not an either-or proposition, that it's possible to take a broad approach to public safety that goes beyond traditional policing and at the same time restore the ranks of sworn officers.
"I've been consistent in my message, we need officers, and we need them to reflect the values of our city," Frey told the council during his budget address Monday.
Frey didn't respond to that news because technically the lawsuit is still alive, and elected leaders tend not to comment on pending litigation.
Seaton said the plaintiffs in the staffing case didn't have pay any legal fees. It was all financed by the Upper Midwest Law Center.
"We hope people will help us continue to make a difference in this fight and other fights for liberty, safety and our constitutional rights."
Seaton is a Republican campaign donor and retired attorney who specialized in representing companies in civil actions against labor unions. The nonprofit's board of directors are all longtime Republican donors and activists.
Dickey has consistently labeled the lawsuit as a battle against defunding police, and cited the fact that the city council in 2020 cut $10 million from the department's budget. The Council actually cut all city departments that year after a precipitous revenue loss caused by economic slump during the first year of the COVID pandemic.
A veto-proof majority of council members took part in a "Defund the Police" rally in Powderhorn Park days after the killing of George Floyd. Those council members never cut the budget for police operations, but their COVID-related cutbacks did cause police recruitment academies to be canceled.