A Progressive City Takes a Hard Look in the Mirror

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey knew before he was elected in 2017 that the city's police department had a pattern of abuse. The death of George Floyd under the knee of a cop has made it clear just how much of a problem it is. Revulsion over the killing and the ensuing violence have thrown into doubt Frey's mission for Minneapolis to be, as he said in his inaugural address, a city “united around the values of opportunity, inclusion, and justice.”

I know Frey a bit because his late grandfather, Jerry Goldstein, was a friend of mine. I've watched his rise from college track star to a marathon runner for Team USA to law school, then his work as a civil rights attorney and community organizer in Minneapolis, and then to a seat on the city council, followed by his election as mayor at age 36. In an early morning tweet on May 29, President Donald Trump wrote that Frey is “Radical Left.” That is an overstatement, but Frey is unabashedly liberal on issues ranging from racial discrimination to LGBTQ rights to homelessness.

In Frey's first year in office, he helped push through an end to single-family zoning, which covered 70% of residential land. Minneapolis was the first big American city to do so; the goal is to reduce racial segregation and cut the cost of housing for all. In a feature story on the initiative last year, Bloomberg Businessweek quoted Frey as saying that “segregationist and racist policies” had barred blacks from living in certain parts of town, and when those laws became illegal, the city “started doing it in other ways, through our zoning code.” Said Frey: “That's what we're pushing back on.”

The Twin Cities have a tradition of progressive policy and generous corporate giving from a dense concentration of corporate headquarters, including those of Target, Cargill, Medtronic, 3M, Ecolabs, Land O Lakes, General Mills, Best Buy, and US Bank. But it has never managed to root out racial inequity. The difference in the poverty rate between whites and blacks is the nation's third-widest, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported last year. Those old housing laws and zoning rules have scarred the metro area, leaving stark disparities in income, wealth, and educational attainment.

“A decade ago the narrative was, we got it all figured out. Now the issue is, a great city includes everyone, and we're not there yet,” says R. T. Rybak, who was mayor from 2003 to 2012 and is now chief executive officer and president of the Minneapolis Foundation. “We solved so many issues together, but we haven't solved race—and certainly not with the police. The biggest difference between now and before is: We know it. We're finally being honest, and it's about time.”

The police department is a particular problem. Black people constitute 20% of the city's population but accounted for more than 60% of the victims of police shootings from late 2009 through May 2019. There were widespread protests two years ago when police killed Thurman Blevins, a black man who begged for his life.

Frey repeatedly called for the firing of the cop who killed Floyd. (On Friday, authorities said the fired officer, Derek Chauvin, had been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.) Instead of ordering a crackdown on protesters and looters, the mayor said, “We need to offer radical compassion and the love that I know we have in us.”

Frey has tried to reform the police force. Every Minneapolis Police Department officer now receives 40 hours of crisis intervention training. Working with Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, he toughened the department's requirement that officers wear body cameras. But the department has resisted reform. Lieutenant Bob Kroll, the head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, the police union, is an avid supporter of Trump. He was accused in a lawsuit, which Arradondo joined before becoming chief, of wearing a motorcycle jacket with a badge that said “white power.”

Susie Brown, president of the Minnesota Council on Foundations, an umbrella group of philanthropies, says the problems go beyond the cops to the broader society: “It's not unique to the police department. I mean, there may be a unique set of issues there. It has to do with power and race.” Jonathan Weinhagen, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Regional Chamber, says the rioting has caused at least $1 billion in damage, setting back incipient efforts to revive the economy after the Covid-19 shutdown. But he says business owners he's spoken with are determined to rebuild.

In the Twin Cities, as elsewhere, blacks have been hit worse than whites by the coronavirus pandemic. The death of George Floyd and the unrest it triggered have brought home exactly how big a task Mayor Frey and other leaders have ahead of them. Says Rybak: “Minneapolis has been smug for too long.”