Minneapolis, Minnesota Council Votes 9 to 4 to Eliminate the Office of Community Safety

The Minneapolis City Council voted 9 to 4 on Thursday to eliminate the Office of Community Safety, the City Hall office that oversees the police department, the fire department, emergency management, neighborhood safety and the 911 service.

Council members Linea Palmisano, Elizabeth Shaffer, Jamison Whiting and Michael Rainville voted no. The nine votes in favor are enough to override a veto if Mayor Jacob Frey rejects the ordinance, which he has criticized.

An office created in 2022

Mayor Frey and the council created the office in 2022, after a study found weak coordination across the city's safety departments. The idea was a single chain of command: one commissioner over police, fire, 911, emergency management and neighborhood safety, instead of each department answering on its own.

The office never settled. Its commissioner, Toddrick Barnette, a former Hennepin County chief judge who took the job in 2023, fought a long reappointment battle with the council this year and has announced he will step down by the end of the year. He is serving as interim commissioner while the city searches for a replacement, a search that Thursday's vote now overtakes.

The case for and against

Members who pushed the change said the office added an expensive layer of administration and still failed to hold the police department to its budget. Council Member Soren Stevenson told MPR News that the commissioner is paid $375,000 a year in total compensation but has no authority to hire, fire or discipline the police chief, so a chief who disagrees can simply go around him. A recent city audit also found serious problems in how the Neighborhood Safety Department, one of the departments under the commissioner, oversaw its violence prevention contracts.

Opponents said the council was removing the one part of city government built to move public safety beyond traditional law enforcement. Whiting warned during the committee debate that the change strips that focus away. Shaffer argued the council should cut the office's budget and keep the structure instead. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison wrote to the council in support of keeping the office, and Frey said the council had not laid out a clear plan for handing the office's work to anyone else.

What changes now

Under the ordinance, the five departments that reported through the office will report directly to the mayor or the mayor's designee, and coordinating them becomes the mayor's job. Frey and leaders of the office were expected to respond publicly after Thursday's meeting, FOX 9 reported.

In the same meeting, the council also approved a Safe Outdoor Spaces ordinance that allows people without housing to sleep in their cars overnight.