The good feeling at the Minneapolis City Council on Friday as members unanimously voted to make Medaria Arradondo the city's first African-American police chief is justified. The cop known as "Rondo" brings a strong 28-year record and broad community support to one of the toughest leadership posts in Minnesota.
But his appointment isn't the end of the story. A number of council members say installing Arradondo as Janeé Harteau's successor is the first of many steps they aim to take to ensure that the city's policing better reflects community values. The death of 911 caller Justine Ruszczyk Damond at the hand of a police officer on July 15 was for some a last straw after a series of questionable police actions in recent years.
Linea Palmisano spoke for a number on the council when she said on July 21: "I am done with damage control and crisis management. … I will be pushing for fundamental changes in our Police Department, from top to bottom."
That zeal for better police performance is welcome, and some of the ideas it has spawned are worth exploring. For example, Palmisano favors beefing up auditing of the department to include performance as well as financial audits. Others have said that the city's civilian review process should be more independent from the police force as it investigates complaints. Some have called for more community-based violence-prevention efforts involving both police and nonsworn community outreach workers.
One suggestion strikes us as wrongheaded. It's a call from Council Members Elizabeth Glidden, Cam Gordon and Lisa Bender for a governance change that would give the council oversight of police operations, much as it has for other city departments.
"It is time to put the police chief on equal footing with other department heads and ensure every elected official in Minneapolis is engaged in and accountable for reform," the three council members said in a July 21 joint statement on Facebook. They said they favor an amendment to the city charter to make that change, though no such amendment is known to be in the works for the Nov. 7 city election.
We fear that rather than enhancing police accountability to the citizenry, the change these council members favor would have the opposite result. It would mean that instead of reporting to the mayor, the police chief would report to 13 council members. Police operating policies would be set by 13 political masters with potentially competing priorities and interests — or, more accurately, by any seven of them who coalesced on a given day.
That's already the case for other city department heads. As former City Council President Paul Ostrow described on these pages last week, the result is far from optimal. When one has many bosses, the effect is often the same as having none. Efficiency and consistency are also compromised.
Govern the police the same way, and civilian sway over the force could be lessened. The police chief's autonomy might grow. And the citizens of Minneapolis would be left wondering which elected officials to hold to account at the ballot box when they are unhappy with policing.
In truth, they already have reason to wonder. The current governance arrangement gives Mayor Betsy Hodges more say over policing than over any other city operation. Yet that power is limited. As voters saw in recent weeks, Hodges can nominate a police chief and recommend a chief's dismissal. But it takes a majority vote on both the executive committee and the council itself to hire or fire. And the council — not the mayor — sets the department's budget and approves contracts larger than $50,000.
It's fair to ask whether the current city governance arrangement affords citizens the ultimate control of policing that they ought to have in a democratic society. And it's understandable that council members would deem themselves best able to bring their constituents' views and values to bear. But would-be reformers should know that putting the City Council more fully in charge of police governance would risk diminishing the very accountability to the citizenry they seek.
