Police union approves new contract and sends it to Minneapolis City Council

The Minneapolis City Council will now consider a new contract for the city’s police union.

A week after the city and the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis announced a tentative agreement, the union officially voted in favor of the deal.

Full details are not yet available, but union president Sergeant Sherral Schmidt confirmed that the overall wage increase will be 21.7 percent and was approved by more than 80 percent of union members who voted.

Ratification by the union means the resolution will now go to the city council for final approval.

“We are grateful to have reached a tentative agreement with the city that has been ratified by the membership,” Schmidt said. “We now await council approval and hope that council recognizes the value of this contract for recruiting and retaining officers, especially given the clear and present reality that this is a dangerous profession.”

The Council had already rejected a partial agreement in November that would have provided for new recruitment and retention bonuses for civil servants in exchange for reforms to the shift tendering process.

It is unclear whether the current deal has the necessary support from the Council. The next scheduled plenary meeting of the Council is on June 13.

“I’m confident. This is a good contract,” said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey when asked if he was confident the city council would approve the new contract.

“This will ensure that they are the best paid, or at least close to the best paid, officials in the region,” Frey said of the possible salary increases.

Late Tuesday, the city announced “important reforms and contract changes” included in the contract agreement.

One of them is the “zipper clause,” which the city says would result in some “letters of agreement” – used to resolve problems during the term of a contract – being eliminated and others being incorporated into the agreement.

“What is in this treaty are the rules. There are no side agreements, although we have had many of them for decades,” Frey said of the Zipper Clause. “We had these side agreements and sometimes nobody knew what they were. Many governments signed these agreements. Now everything is in the treaty.”

Another focus is staffing. If approved, Police Chief Brian O’Hara and his leadership team will have more discretion to deploy officers to areas where the need is greatest.

The chief would also have the ability to grant an individual up to 180 days of paid investigative leave related to allegations of serious misconduct, an extension of the current 30-day limit.

“I know that I want the opportunity now to make decisions and make changes without having to ask the union or anyone else for permission,” O’Hara said. “I was hired to reform the Minneapolis Police Department.”

To keep the limited number of sworn police officers on duty, the new contract would also allow the city to “permanently hire civilians to assist with investigative work.”

Requests for public records will also be honored. According to the city, “officials will no longer be automatically notified of the identity of the person requesting public personnel information about them.”

All of these issues were shared and addressed during the darkest days for the department and the city following the fatal shooting of Officer Jamal Mitchell.

Both Frey and O’Hara say Mitchell is exactly the kind of cop they hope will apply to MPD; and they hope this contract will help with that.

“If we are to continue to recruit people like Jamal, in sufficient numbers to provide the public service and security that the people here deserve, we must significantly increase salaries, and this contract provides for that,” O’Hara said.