Latest ELEFA report shows ‘incremental progress’ for MPD

Year-to-year goals incomplete, backlog of internal complaints still exist as of September 2025

Council Member Jamison Whiting talks to constituents about the City’s proposed Community Safety Training and Wellness Center on March 25, 2026 at Turtle Bread Company.

Photo by Melody Hoffmann

Posted Wednesday, April 15, 2026 5:15 pm

MEETING WITH CONSTITUENTS

Ward 11 Council Member Jamison Whiting met with constituents on March 25 to discuss a proposed training and wellness building for police, firefighters, and other emergency services. The City is seeking to buy land in the Windom neighborhood, which Whiting represents.

The multi-purpose building could help the Minneapolis Police Department reach some of its goals laid out in its settlement agreement, specifically in relation to the need for new facilities.

The vast majority of constituents who met with Whiting were opposed to the new building and many wanted the City to invest in public schools and not police “learning how to use their guns better,” as one special education teacher in Linden Hills said (the building would include a firing range).

Whiting tried to keep the conversation on his policy work and what he’s been able to do so far on City Council.

“The politics side of this, I can care less,” Whiting said. “I want to move things forward that help our residents.” Whiting told his constituents he wanted to propose a delay on the Windom building proposal, which the City Council approved at a later council meeting.

By Cam Gordon and Melody Hoffmann

When much of the community’s attention was on Operation Metro Surge in January, the independent evaluators of the City’s settlement agreement with the Minnesota Human Rights Department released its third semi-annual report on Minneapolis Police Department’s progress.

The report detailed the City’s police reform work from April 1 to Sept. 30, 2025, which summarized that the City and MPD have made “measurable and meaningful progress” in achieving the settlement agreement’s goals.

Further progress has been hindered, the report notes, by a “lack of coordination within the MPD and with other City entities, lack of communication by MPD leadership concerning implementation, overburdened staff, and lack of resources.”

WHY THE NEED FOR REPORTS?
In a 2022 investigation that led to the court enforceable agreement, MPD was found to maintain a culture where “officers use higher rates of more severe force against Black individuals compared to white individuals in similar circumstances.”

The investigation found that officers are more likely to stop vehicles with people of color and Indigenous individuals because of their race, and that “MPD officers treat Black and white individuals differently during traffic stops because of race.”

As part of the settlement agreement the City was required to select and pay for an independent evaluator to change the documented racist practices. The City chose Effective Law Enforcement for All, or ELEFA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by attorney David L. Douglass, who also serves as the deputy monitor for the New Orleans Police Department consent decree.

REPORT DETAILS
The most recent ELEFA report revealed a continued lack of by-in from rank and file officers and some improvement in clearing a backlog of officer complaints.
ELEFA found that officer feedback has been constructive but not directed at how best to change their own policies.

Instead, feedback from officers is “focused on complaints that the policy should not be revised, how it will lead to unfair investigations and discipline, or other tangential issues.”

ELEFA suggests that when getting feedback, focus group leaders redirect the conversations away from complaints and include higher ranking sworn officers to facilitate these discussions.

Clearing the backlog of complaints against Minneapolis police officers was a noted issue in earlier ELEFA reports.

The Office of Police Conduct Review has made “notable progress” in increasing capacity but as of September 2025 had not cleared its backlog of complaints. The City announced the office had cleared most of its complaints in late October 2025, but there were still 100 cases left to process.

MPD’s Internal Affairs Department continued to experience a backlog of complaints due to “operational inefficiencies, insufficient staffing, and a lack of trained personnel.” The bottleneck of complaints doesn’t allow officers to be held accountable “close in time to when policy violations occurred,” the report said.

ELEFA reports “important but uneven” progress in achieving 2024 and 2025’s policy goals. ELEFA reported that only six of the 16 policies were completed in 2024. More details on the police department’s goals can be found on page 5 and 6 of the most recent report.

STAKEHOLDERS RESPOND
Police reform advocates, including Communities United Against Police Brutality, shared their concerns at the required public meeting hosted by ELEFA on Feb. 4, 2026 at the Minneapolis American Indian Center.

“This process started in March 2024 but we have little to show for it,” Communities United Against Police Brutality shared at the February meeting. “At almost two years out, many policies still aren’t written or trained on, and we have no real disciplinary mechanism.”

The organization called for more timely updates and a live dashboard with updates on the settlement agreement’s action items where the public can track them.
Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights Rebecca Lucero shared her concerns in a formal letter.

“While we applaud the important progress,” Lucero wrote, “the City and MPD remain far from full implementation of a cohesive accountability system.”

Lucero shared concerns about the City and MPD being behind in implementing two years worth of policies.

“The City and MPD are not able to hold officers accountable to policies that are not yet written, finalized, approved, and trained,” Lucero wrote.

A much needed cultural shift was mentioned by both Lucero and Kenwood resident Chris Baker, who also serves on the Community Commission of Police Oversight.

“ELEFA’s report that many of the officer feedback sessions were dominated by complaints that the policies did not need to be changed was concerning,” Baker said. “It raises the question of how deep the cultural changes that we need to get different outcomes actually are.”

Baker attended the public meeting with ELEFA and said “nearly all of the comments from the public were about MPD’s lack of response during Operation Metro Surge.” After 30 minutes of these comments, ELEFA’s founder, Douglass, told the audience to engage with the police about this issue.

“I want to see some actual dialogue between MPD leadership and the community at large,” Baker said. “It still feels like the general position is [to be] closed off from the community and not leveraging the range of experience from the community.”

Editor’s note: Baker’s comments do not represent the Community Commission of Police Oversight.

Southwest Alliance for Equity, a community organizing group in Southwest Minneapolis, said that MPD achieving its required reforms is a leadership problem, not a resource problem.

“The MPD overspent its $230 million 2025 annual budget to the tune of nearly $20 million and wracked up an additional $5 million in overtime during Operation Metro Surge in January alone, doubling its budget for the entire year,” SWAE said in a statement sent to Southwest Voices.

Rather than confront “key cultural, coordination, and leadership problems” in ELEFA’s report, “the MPD has most recently only made a poor case for a new and expensive shiny object, a $38 million training and wellness center. The City and department do not need that and we can’t afford it,” SWAE’s statement read.

The City released a statement in January in tandem with ELEFA’s report stating, “Comprehensive police reform is a complex and challenging process that requires years, not months, of dedicated effort, and we value ELEFA’s independent role in assessing our progress as well as areas where continued focus is needed.”