Mpls Office of Community Safety eliminated

The Minneapolis City Council today voting to eliminate the Office of Community Safety. This is the office set up as a result of the communication chaos during the 2020 riots. It was an umbrella for police, fire 911 emergency management, and behavioral response to coordinate on public safety issues. Fox 9's Karen Scullin joins us live Well, the Office of Community Safety wasn't just to break down what this means, Karen. about coordination between these various departments. It also came up with and executed alternatives to traditional policing to work alongside MPD. And it did that. But here we are four years later. And it's poof, pretty much gone in an instant. As of now, OCS no longer exists. The eight or so employees aren't losing their jobs, though, right away because the $2.1 million allocated for them has not been reallocated anywhere else yet by council. Those in favor of elimination said there wasn't enough progress and that departments were going around the OCS commissioner and directly to the mayor anyway, which is where public safety will now land. In the mayor's office. I think one of the biggest barriers to successful outcomes with that structure was the lack of ownership and authority of the commissioner, right? That was a structural problem. That wasn't about any one commissioner, and we've had more than one. We saw that no matter who's in that role, ultimately, we learned that some of those departments would go around that commissioner just to go appeal directly to the mayor. On a daily basis, the commissioner would supervise. He would coordinate between A variety of different departments, and you don't need to take my word for it. Talk to Rachel Sayre, who's the head of emergency management. We reached a level of coordination that we've never seen before. And cities around the country, they look to us as the example that they want to follow. Mayor mentioned Rachel Sayers with emergency management, but also the directors of 911 and neighborhood safety all told council members on Tuesday that they valued OCS and their help with coordination, actually calling it essential. So now, as council pointed out, it is the mayor who will now be held accountable. Prior to OCS, though, you may remember it was basically police and fire that the mayor had to oversee. Now he's got a lot of departments to oversee. Pray said he was willing to compromise with council from going from eight to four employees in OCS, but obviously that didn't work. They still got rid of OCS. Interesting to note here that council members Vita and Warren, who usually support the mayor in his endeavors with all his issues, did not support him in this OCS case. Again, though, it all lands in his office. There really is no plan laid out by council or the mayor at this point, so it's unclear exactly what happens moving forward. A lot of discussion likely still to be had on this one. In Minneapolis, Karen Scullin, Fox 9.