The City of Minneapolis says it will proceed with reforms outlined in a proposed U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) consent decree, even after a federal judge granted a third 30-day stay on April 21, 2025, delaying the decree’s review until May 21.
Attorney Jim Michels, representing the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, has expressed concerns about the city’s approach, citing potential violations of state laws and risks to public safety amid ongoing staffing shortages in the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD).
“The City of Minneapolis seems hellbent on imposing the terms of the Consent Decree on itself even if the DOJ and the Court dismiss it,” Michels told Alpha News. “This is nothing short of bizarre. Usually, a defendant in a lawsuit is more than happy to have the case dismissed without suffering any penalty or adverse consequences.”
He said the only possible explanation for this situation is “consistent with comments made by many of the City’s elected officials—they want to weaponize the terms of the Consent Decree to impose certain provisions on police officers even though State Law and the Collective Bargaining Agreement require that those terms be negotiated.”
The city of Minneapolis announced on Jan. 6—two weeks before President Donald Trump’s inauguration—that it had agreed to a federal consent decree with the Department of Justice. The federal consent decree followed a two-year DOJ investigation, launched after George Floyd’s death in 2020, which claimed that MPD “uses excessive force” and “unlawfully discriminates against Black people.” The consent decree is a legally-binding agreement that would require MPD to institute several reforms.
After Trump took office, the DOJ requested a stay to allow the new administration time to review the agreement. Previous stays occurred in February and March of 2025, reflecting the Trump administration’s skepticism of consent decrees, with Michels previously noting, “The Trump administration has made it clear they don’t think too highly of this consent decree process.”
Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson granted the DOJ’s request for a third stay until May 21.
The city objected to the stay, writing in court documents that the DOJ “cannot keep moving the goal posts by claiming a necessity for the entire litigation to be paused in order to bring individual attorneys up to speed.”
“What seems to be completely absent from the thought process of the City’s decision makers is any consideration of what would make Minneapolis safer for people who live, work, and recreate in the City. Making MPD even more undesirable than it already is for the few people who still want a career in law enforcement will only exacerbate the existing staffing crisis,” Michels said. “It is this staffing crisis that poses the biggest threat to public safety, not some people’s misguided obsession over mythical hordes of rogue cops.”
According to Michels, there are some reforms that the city is “apparently already preparing to implement without the required negotiations.”
The city indicated as much in a statement to KSTP, saying that it will “move forward with meaningful reform with the terms laid out in the consent decree, with or without the federal government.”
Michels explained that “state law and the Labor Agreement already provide ample tools to deal with officers who are bad people, bad cops, or just make mistakes.”
“We are where we are because past Chiefs and their leadership teams failed to do so,” he said. “There is no need to punish all officers and the taxpayers by imposing so-called ‘reforms’ that accomplish nothing other than making the monitor rich and appeasing a handful of agitators who want to abolish the police department through attrition.”
Symone Harms
Symone Harms is a Media Production and Business Marketing student at Bethel University. She is actively involved in The Royals Investment Fund, The 25, theatre, and other leadership positions. She also cohosts Rooted, a podcast dedicated to being rooted in truth, growing in freedom, and prospering in life. A Minnesota native with a passion for storytelling and digital media, she aspires to a career in broadcasting as a news anchor and reporter.
