Minneapolis is again searching for a police chief at a politically fraught moment. City Council leaders are publicly pressing Mayor Jacob Frey to make the process more collaborative after former Chief Brian O’Hara resigned under pressure.
Council leaders demand a larger role in the search
Minneapolis City Council leaders on May 28 called on Frey to work directly with the council as the city begins recruiting a successor to O’Hara, whose departure reopened deep disagreements over public safety leadership and accountability. Council President Elliott Payne said the mayor should share the full findings from last year’s investigations into O’Hara and involve council members more substantively in choosing the next chief, according to MPR News. The demand came one day after O’Hara stepped down and Acting Chief Katie Blackwell was elevated to lead the department on an interim basis.
The council’s message reflected not only immediate concern over how O’Hara’s tenure ended, but also a wider frustration with how major public safety appointments have been handled under Minneapolis’s executive-led system. Since voters approved a strong-mayor form of government in 2021, the mayor has exercised expanded control over city departments, including police. Under the city’s structure, the mayor selects department heads, while the council retains a confirmation role over charter department leaders, including the police chief.
That division of authority is now at the center of the latest dispute. Payne and other council members have argued that if lawmakers are expected to confirm the next chief, they should be involved much earlier in the process, rather than being presented with a near-final choice. The council’s stance also reflects lingering mistrust after O’Hara was renominated for a new term even as allegations about his conduct had been circulating and an inquiry was underway.
The mayor’s office has said Frey intends to conduct a strong national search and find a highly qualified replacement. But the council is signaling that credentials alone will not be enough. Lawmakers want a search that is more transparent, more politically inclusive and more responsive to residents who have spent years demanding both effective policing and meaningful reform after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer.
O’Hara’s resignation jolted City Hall
The new search began abruptly after Frey announced on May 27 that O’Hara had resigned rather than face disciplinary action. The mayor said the chief interfered with an investigation into his conduct, a finding that Frey described as incompatible with the trust required of the city’s top law enforcement official. According to the Associated Press, investigators did not substantiate underlying allegations that O’Hara had intimate relationships with city employees, but they concluded he interfered with the probe.
The written reprimand obtained by AP described two central accusations: that O’Hara deleted a contact card from his city-issued phone in an apparent effort to shield evidence and that he informed another city employee about the investigation after being directed to keep it confidential. Frey said he had informed O’Hara that discipline, including possible termination, was forthcoming. O’Hara then chose to resign, ending a tenure that began in late 2022 and had initially been framed as central to Minneapolis’s reform effort.
Frey said the decision was painful but necessary to preserve public trust. He underscored that trust was not secondary to police leadership but fundamental to it, a remark that encapsulated the administration’s attempt to show zero tolerance for interference in an internal investigation. The mayor’s office also said there were still 17 open complaints involving O’Hara that remained under review, separate from the matter that led to his resignation.
The speed of the collapse stunned many in Minneapolis because O’Hara had been brought in from Newark, New Jersey, with a reputation for navigating reform in a city operating under federal oversight. His hiring in 2022 was seen as a deliberate effort by Frey to bring in outside leadership after years of scandal and crisis within the Minneapolis Police Department. Instead, his exit has revived questions about vetting, oversight and whether City Hall missed warning signs before trying to extend his leadership.
A power struggle shaped by Minneapolis’ new government structure
The standoff over the next chief cannot be separated from Minneapolis’s recent shift in governance. Voters approved a charter amendment in 2021 that moved the city to an executive mayor-legislative council model, giving the mayor direct administrative control over city operations, including public safety. City materials outlining the new structure say the mayor selects and supervises heads of charter departments, while the council confirms those appointments and retains legislative and oversight powers.
In practice, that arrangement has often produced friction rather than clarity. Frey has argued that stronger executive control makes city government more accountable because voters know who is responsible for daily operations. Critics on the council counter that the concentration of power in the mayor’s office can reduce transparency and sideline lawmakers until the moment of confirmation, especially on high-stakes appointments involving police, community safety and reform compliance.
The police chief position is especially sensitive because Minneapolis remains under extraordinary scrutiny years after George Floyd’s killing set off worldwide protests and led to sweeping investigations of the department. The city is implementing reform obligations under the Minnesota Department of Human Rights settlement, and police leadership is expected to steer the department through policy changes, training mandates and public trust challenges. Any breakdown in confidence between the mayor and council therefore threatens to complicate not just hiring, but reform itself.
The current argument also comes amid broader unease about the city’s public safety architecture. Council members have recently clashed with Frey over the Office of Community Safety and over top personnel decisions in that office, according to local reporting. That means the search for a new chief is unfolding in a wider debate over who sets public safety strategy in Minneapolis and how much influence elected lawmakers should have over the people tasked with carrying it out.
What city leaders say they want in the next chief
Even with the political conflict, there is broad agreement that Minneapolis needs a chief capable of managing multiple crises at once. The next leader will need to oversee crime-fighting operations in a department still rebuilding its ranks, while also advancing court-backed and state-backed reform commitments that touch nearly every aspect of policing. The person chosen will face pressure from residents who want stronger responses to violence and disorder, as well as from civil rights advocates demanding accountability, culture change and constitutional policing.
Council leaders have signaled that process matters almost as much as the candidate. They want fuller disclosure about what went wrong under O’Hara and a search that includes more voices from outside the mayor’s inner circle. In recent Minneapolis chief searches, city leaders have relied on national recruitment, finalist interviews and advisory input from civic and community figures. Council members now appear to be pushing for a more formalized role that would allow them to shape the field before a nomination lands on their desks.
Frey, for his part, has indicated that the city will seek a top-tier candidate and has experience conducting nationwide executive searches for major department heads. Earlier in May, he announced a national search result in naming Dr. Reginald Freeman as his nominee to lead the Minneapolis Fire Department. That example suggests the mayor will likely frame the police chief search as another professional recruitment effort aimed at drawing experienced outside contenders as well as possible internal candidates.
Whoever emerges will inherit a uniquely difficult portfolio. Minneapolis police leaders must answer to residents, unions, reform monitors, civil litigants, state officials and elected leaders who often disagree on fundamentals. The interim appointment of Blackwell offers short-term continuity, but it does not resolve the central question now confronting City Hall: whether Minneapolis can find a chief who commands confidence across the city’s fractured political landscape.
Why the fight matters beyond one appointment
The clash over the police chief search is about more than personnel. It is a test of whether Minneapolis’s post-2021 system can function smoothly on the issue that has most defined the city in national politics: policing. If the mayor proceeds largely on his own, he risks intensifying council opposition and making confirmation harder. If he broadens the process, he may improve the nominee’s odds but also open a longer and more politically complicated search.
For residents, the stakes are immediate. A prolonged fight over leadership could distract from ongoing reform work, strain morale inside the department and deepen public skepticism toward city government. Minneapolis has spent years trying to rebuild confidence after overlapping crises involving officer misconduct, violent crime concerns, staffing losses and intense scrutiny from state and federal authorities. Another contentious appointment battle would reinforce the sense that the city remains trapped in institutional instability.
At the same time, supporters of a more collaborative approach argue that the extra effort is precisely what the moment requires. Police chiefs in Minneapolis do not operate in an ordinary environment; they lead a department under exceptional public pressure and symbolic weight. In that context, a broadly vetted leader with buy-in from both the mayor and council could have a stronger mandate to implement difficult reforms and make operational decisions that will inevitably draw criticism.
The coming weeks will show whether City Hall can move from confrontation to coordination. Frey still holds the formal power to choose a nominee, but the council has made clear it expects consultation, transparency and a serious accounting of how the previous tenure unraveled. The outcome will help determine not only who leads the Minneapolis Police Department next, but also whether the city’s divided leadership can work together on the most consequential public safety decision now before them.
