Chief Brian O’Hara pushed for the council’s approval for the director of police health and wellness position.
MINNEAPOLIS — The Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously Thursday to create a leadership role within the city’s police department focusing on officers’ mental health.
Chief Brian O’Hara pushed for the council’s approval for the director of police health and wellness position, following the federal government’s chaotic rollout of Operation Metro Surge. According to O’Hara, the position will oversee the department’s Health and Wellness Division and will focus on proactively — instead of reactively — treating officers’ mental health concerns.
“We all know that officer wellness has been an issue for a very, very long time, and it leads to bad outcomes for our residents as well as officers when they are out on duty and are not well,” said Ward 12’s Aurin Chowdhury.
While the council was generally in agreement about the need to address mental health within the department, a debate arose around the position’s possible funding source. On Wednesday, MPD proposed to eliminate a few existing roles, including a community social worker, but came back Thursday with a proposal to eliminate an already vacant forensic scientist position instead.
Ward 10 Councilmember Aisha Chughtai suggested the department’s process to bring the measure forward, requesting the item return to MPD staff and be presented again through the city’s standard budget process.
“I don’t think this is the appropriate way for us to move forward and I think we need to be really thoughtful about the creation of new appointed positions, in particular in a department that we know is going to run over budget this year,” she said.
O’Hara told the council that officers’ overtime costs amounted to $6.4 million between Jan. 1 and Feb. 8, with more than 1,000 of their scheduled days off collectively canceled.
“I pushed this within the last couple of months because I was very concerned,” O’Hara said.
“We have lived through some of our responders who went to Annunciation, having very, very serious mental health issues, a member that committed suicide. My fear has been when I started to see these PTSD numbers again, what happened here a couple years ago, the PTSD numbers went into, I think, well over 200 pretty quickly. And my concern was: What are we doing responsibly to try and make sure that we don’t have that type of thing happen again?”
Ward 4 Councilmember LaTrisha Vetaw recognized O’Hara’s call for help, saying, “I would never reject someone that is reaching out for help and resources.”
“When they come and say, ‘We need help,’ I would never, ever, ever vote against that, and I hope none of us would,” she said. “This is the department at its most vulnerable, saying, ‘Help us,’ and figuring out a way for us to help them.”
Voting to block another delay against the measure, the council ultimately agreed to grant the MPD’s request for the new position, sending it to Mayor Jacob Frey’s desk for final approval.