Growing pains continue to persist with the Minneapolis Community Commission on Police Oversight (CCPO) a little more than a year after it came into existence.
Though this latest iteration in civilian police oversight was meant to solve issues with past versions, concerns over a backlog in cases to review, a lack of training for the commissioners and failures in transparency remain. The CCPO, a 15-member commission with 13 council representatives and two mayoral appointees, was created to replace the Police Conduct Oversight Commission, which was marred by vacancies and hadn’t met for months, prompting chair Abigail Cerra to resign from her position.
The commission, which was approved by the Minneapolis City Council at the end of 2022 and held its first meeting in April 2023, is supposed to request research into Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) complaints, investigation and disciplinary records and make recommendations related to MPD policies. The body is also meant to serve as a review panel made up of three commissioners and two sworn officers.
The commission is housed under the city’s Civil Rights Department, which had its director, Alberder Gillespie, fired by Mayor Jacob Frey in February after the mayor’s administration claimed Gillespie was hindering the city’s efforts to carry out police reforms mandated by a settlement agreement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. John Jefferson, director of the Office of Police Conduct Review (OPCR), resigned from his position hours after Gillespie’s termination.
Frey and City Operations Manager Margaret Anderson Kelliher announced earlier this month that they’ve nominated Oakland inspector general Michelle Phillips to be the city’s new Civil Rights Director. If confirmed, she will begin her tenure in July.
The body has met a dozen times — the second Monday of every month with the exception of a canceled January meeting — but they have made no policy recommendations. As of May 9, The OPCR lists 72 complaints filed against officers in 2024 and 189 cases remain in queue to be reviewed, as well as four cases pending review from a panel.
A month after Gillespie’s firing, Ward 6 Commissioner AJ Awed and Ward 8 Commissioner Fartun Weli abruptly resigned from their positions.
Ward 9 Commissioner Stacey Gurian-Sherman, an attorney and founder of Minneapolis for a Better Police Contract, said commissioners were told several times they’d start doing review panels. Gurian-Sherman said she pushed back, pointing out that the officers they’d be sharing the panels with had years of experience and would likely disregard civilians with no training or expertise.
Just eight commissioners of the 13 have completed training and a background check to access certain data needed to conduct the review panels.
“I had to argue continually and there were so many false starts where we were going to be putting us on review panels, and then pulling back to do training,” Gurian-Sherman said. “Even today, there is a lack of documentation of what each CCPO commissioner has been trained on and when they received the training.”
The commission has also been criticized for its lack of transparency. Instead of creating committees to discuss specific topics like policy research or community engagement – which would require agendas and discussions be open to the public under state open meeting laws – the commission opted to use “work groups,” which allows smaller groups of commissioners to meet behind closed doors. When commissioners are chosen from the pool of panelists to review a case, they can’t then discuss the findings of those panels.
Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality said that’s a mistake because specific complaints should be used to drive the policy portion of the commission’s duties, but that can’t happen as it exists now.
“This lack of transparency and lack of urgency around police accountability is just a recipe for disaster,” said Gross. “I don’t think they can be salvaged. I think it should be completely scrapped and we should start over with actual civilian oversight.”
The CCPO will hold its first public hearing Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Minneapolis Public Service Building to solicit community input on MPD policies, rules, practices and special orders.
Mohamed Ibrahim
Mohamed Ibrahim is MinnPost’s environment and public safety reporter. He can be reached at mibrahim@minnpost.com.
