Survey data shows mixed tone on Minneapolis police
ELEFA’s Jason Armstrong talks to Minneapolis residents at a community meeting on Oct. 3 at Urban League Twin Cities. Photo by Melody Hoffmann
By Melody Hoffmann, Reporter
New survey data shows continued public distrust of the Minneapolis Police Department. The data also included feedback from officers who expressed doubts about their leadership.
The survey included a representative sample of 1,500 Minneapolis residents and close to 250 MPD officers.
ELEFA (the organization managing the settlement agreement with the City, Minneapolis Police Department, and the State) presented the survey data during a community meeting at the Urban League Twin Cities on Oct. 3. ELEFA stands for Effective Law Enforcement for All.
The significant level of officers who were “mistrusting of the system” in the survey surprised Dr. Alex del Carmen, a criminologist who analyzed the survey data for ELEFA.
Community members and officers both expressed little trust in MPD’s discipline process. Only 30% of residents surveyed said they believed officers were held accountable for misconduct, and just 15% of officers said their discipline process was fair.
Part of the settlement agreement requires MPD to clear its own Internal Affairs complaint log.
The bottleneck of complaints doesn’t allow officers to be held accountable “close in time to when policy violations occurred,” ELEFA’s most recent progress review report said.
Residents and officers had different perceptions of how MPD treats residents. About 90% of officers agreed that “MPD treats people equally on average,” while about 30% of residents agreed that “MPD treats people of all races fairly.”
The ELEFA’s community meetings, like the one in October, and its quarterly progress reports are part of the settlement agreement between the City of Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Police Department, and the State.
A dozen ELEFA staff attended the Northside meeting, including lead evaluator David Douglass, who welcomed all the familiar faces back to another meeting.
Routine attendees included members of local organizations Communities United Against Police Brutality, League of Women Voters, and Mpls For A Better Police Contract.
The familiar faces meant the Northside location did not bring in new community members.
“You got to talk to the people that your people police,” Minneapolis NAACP Vice President Thomas Berry said during the meeting.
Tone mismatch
Amid a City Council meeting and a news cycle filled with MPD spending issues and a proposed budget that gives the MPD even more money, the cheery attitude of Douglass and ELEFA meeting writ large felt off.
Over the last few months, the City Council exposed the extent to which the Minneapolis Police Department has been over budget, and Interim Police Chief Bill Peterson said during a council meeting that the department’s use of overtime is “abusive.”
MPD was over budget $20.1 million in 2025 and is projected to be over budget by at least $23 million in 2026.
And according to ELEFA’s own reports, the police department is still behind its settlement agreement goals.
ELEFA presented a positive picture of MPD’s progress on its settlement agreement, for example, calling the deadlines set for years 1 and 2 “overly optimistic” and “not realistic.”
Audience members pushed back on the ELEFA’s relaxed timeline.
“You don't live here. You're not in the community,” Stacey Gurian-Sherman with Mpls For A Better Police Contract said. “There doesn't seem to be a sense of urgency.”
John Salomone with ELEFA said building trust on all sides will help produce lasting effects.
During Salomone’s time working on New Orleans’ settlement agreement, he said he had “police officers call me MFer to my face multiple times because they did not trust what we were doing. We cannot be, as an organization, someone who is thin-skinned.”
ELEFA’s fifth semi-annual report will be out in January 2027.