Minneapolis City Council approves historic new police union contract

The Minneapolis City Council has voted to pass the contract for the Minneapolis Police Officers union in a 8-4 vote Thursday morning.

The contract will increase wages for Minneapolis police officers by nearly 22%. The deal has already been ratified by the union's rank and file. The deal would add $9.2 million to the city’s budget starting next year.

"This vote was extraordinarily important," said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. "It marks a turning point for the City of Minneapolis. It shows that we've turned a corner to recognize that the concepts of safety and change are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they're intrinsically linked."

Frey says this contract will put control of the department back in the hands of the Chief of Police and the city's leadership.

"It gives our police chief the necessary managerial authority to make the change we all want to see. It's the best contract we've gotten in decades," Frey told WCCO's Chad Hartman Show. "What it pushes back on, is many years worth of handing over managerial authority to the Police Federation for keeping pay down."

Minneapolis City Council President Elliot Payne, who voted in favor of the contract, says he almost voted no because the current contract lacked a broader plan on tackling public safety.

"We had a history of a toxic, racist police department because we had a broad community that was willing to look the other way," Payne said following Thursday's vote. "We need a majority of voters in this city to start paying attention. We need a majority of voters in the city to start having a more sophisticated conversation and not just to boil it down to pro or anti-police."

Some of the critics of the new contract said it doesn't include enough reform measures.

But, Minneapolis north side Councilmember Latrisha Vetaw disagrees and told WCCO's Adam and Jordana on Wednesday before the vote that she has seen enough reform to believe they deserve the contract increase.

"We have the chief, who has been working on lots of reforms already," says Vetaw. "And I think that's gonna continue to happen. We have the consent decree coming in and there'll be reforms through that."

Minneapolis Police Department officers would be among the highest paid in the Twin Cities, which leaders hope will help boost hiring at a time when they're hundreds of officers short of minimums set by the city's charter.