The eyes of the world are upon Minneapolis, understandably and deservedly so. Voters in Minneapolis and people around the world are questioning the conduct of city employees all the way up the chain of command to the mayor.Here it’s important to remind people once again that in Minneapolis’ current system of governance, the mayor has sole authority and oversight of the Police Department and is at the top of the chain of command. Put another way, when it comes to the Police Department, Minneapolis already has a “strong mayor” system of government. So the failure to provide a timely after-action report is, like the Police Department itself, the mayor’s responsibility.
Former Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges basically answers why we need to say No to more executive control by the mayor’s office and Yes to police department reform… On that front, doing Nothing is what we’ve essentialy done so far, so doing Anything is better and the city council is more directly representative of their wards, more answerable to them.