Minnesota Democrats are running around telling their activist base to defy Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers while not acknowledging the fact that they are legitimate law enforcement officials. It harkens back to the demonization of Minneapolis police officers, and those officers are feeling it again.
According to the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, a police union representing Minneapolis police officers, morale is at an “all-time low.” The union told its members that it understands that “the working conditions you are facing are increasingly difficult” and that officers are being put in dangerous situations as Minnesota Democrats demonize law enforcement to their base.
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And yes, you read that right. The morale among Minneapolis police officers is at an “all-time low,” lower than it was five years ago when Minnesota Democrats were calling for their “institutionally racist” department to be abolished.
It is not as surprising once you consider that this is a knock-on effect from that time of rabid police hatred five or so years ago. The city’s police department has not been appropriately staffed since the department was demonized in 2020, which led to a surge in officers retiring, resigning, and finding any other way to get off the streets of Minneapolis. In December 2020, around 19% of the department’s officers were on some form of leave. The department dropped from 920 officers in March 2019 to 560 in March 2024. It was not until last May that the department finally saw a net gain of officers, with a meager rise to 588.
By last August, the city had 614 officers (and recruits). The Minneapolis city charter mandates that the department have at least 713 officers.
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In the meantime, the city has spent millions of dollars on overtime pay to make up the gaps and on new upper-level administrators in the department to accomplish, well, something. Minneapolis police are being hung out to dry by their political leaders and even their department leaders, and they have been for half a decade now. The result is an all-time low morale at a time when the department is finally digging itself out of the “all police are racist murderers” activist messaging that ruled the city for years.
Even if Minneapolis continues to reverse its recruiting problem, politicians such as Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have fomented hatred of law enforcement in the city. It does not end with hatred of ICE, and Minneapolis police officers will have to navigate an increasingly hostile population that deems any serious enforcement action as excessive violence. Or at least the officers who decide to stay on the job will have to deal with it, while others look for the exits, just as they did in 2020.