MINNEAPOLIS - In his first joint press conference with Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, newly elected Mayor Jacob Frey announced his initiatives to improve police-community relations.
Among them, Mayor Frey wants to hire more police officers, particularly officers of color and those who live in the neighborhoods they serve. In addition, Mayor Frey also wants to narrow police officers' beats and give officers consistent schedules, in hopes that they can build stronger relationships with residents.
"We know that many of our officers are simply running from 911 call to 911 call. They never have time to build out community relations that we purport to want," Frey said. "We also want to make sure that people get to know their officer personally. So by the end of these four years, I want you to know that your officer on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. is, for instance, Jenny and you know Jenny by name."
Frey and Chief Arradondo later sat down for a round table discussion with members of the north Minneapolis community.
"Our city is lucky to have a leader like Chief Arradondo and I am very lucky to be working with him," Frey said.
Together, the two announced a new initiative to fight the opiod crisis. Starting in the spring of 2018, 125 officers will be equipped with narcan, a fast-acting medication that blocks the effects of opioid overdoses.
"We know that we will have officers (with narcan) in our third precinct," said Chifef Arradondo. "All of our city CERT teams, our community response teams will have that narcan. We will also have some of our folks that are out there collecting property and evidence that could come into exposure, they will also be equipped with narcan."
"The goal would be, at some point in time, have our entire department equipped with that, as needed," added Arradondo.
Mayor Frey also stressed the importance of transparency and accountability, especially when it comes to the usage of body cameras.
"I believe that officers, who fail to turn on their body cameras when it needs to be, should face discipline. It's critical to making a strong body camera policy work," he said.
Frey added that Thursday's roundtable discussion is the first of many open meetings with community members.