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Crime, Law and Justice
Matt Sepic
Minneapolis

Minneapolis community safety nominee promises transparency, culture of trust

man with glasses looks at camera
Judge Toddrick Barnette poses for a portrait at Minneapolis City Hall ahead of city council hearings on his nomination for community safety commissioner.
Matt Sepic | MPR News

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The Minneapolis City Council is expected to decide later this month whether to confirm Mayor Jacob Frey’s nominee for community safety commissioner. Frey wants Hennepin County Chief Judge Toddrick Barnette to lead the office, which was created in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

Barnette, whose nomination will be the focus of an Oct. 17 public hearing, would replace Cedric Alexander, who stepped down in September. The community safety commissioner oversees five agencies including the police.

Barnette spoke with MPR News reporter Matt Sepic on Friday afternoon. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Matt Sepic: After Mayor Frey announced your nomination a month ago, you said that you hope to build a culture of trust where every resident of Minneapolis feels respected and heard, but that there would be no quick fixes. What specifically do you plan to do to realize that goal, and how will you know when you've succeeded?

Toddrick Barnette: One of the biggest things is transparency, and that's how you build trust, and that's where you find accountability. We have the consent decree that's coming that will require compliance; we already have a settlement agreement that does that. So I think people will see those things. I hope that that will build trust. Being out in the community, I think is important in this position to build trust.

Sepic: For the last three years, there have been calls for a more holistic approach to public safety, meaning efforts that go beyond policing. From your perspective, as a judge, and before that, as a prosecutor and a public defender, what does such an approach look like?

Barnette: This is why I’m excited. This is really why I took the job. Because when you look at these five departments, you have the police here, which I say is the end of the road. And then when you look at neighborhood safety, that's where the prevention is. So you lift up neighborhood safety, to have that prevention piece, people [won’t be] interacting with the police. These alternatives are important.

That's the exciting part about this, is having these alternatives, and that's going to require partnerships and collaborations within the city departments. But community safety is not just these five departments, we're going to have to work with public health, we're going to have to work with the county, we're going to have to work with the state. So all those things are important to bring a holistic approach [and] requires all of us to work together.

Sepic: Violent crime in Minneapolis, particularly homicides, shootings and carjackings, is down significantly since last year, but still well above pre-pandemic levels. What's your response to residents’ concerns about crime in the city?

Barnette: What we need to do is look at the things that are working, what's had an impact on crime, see if there are things that we should continue, things that we should improve or expand. The great thing about this job is that we're doing some transformation. So there's gonna be some new things that we try. We have to look at what are other cities doing? What's working there to reduce crime? Can we incorporate that here? So those are the things I think are important.

Sepic: One of the criticisms that I heard when this position was created is that it could add another layer of bureaucracy to city government and could increase finger pointing if there's a critical incident. Do you see that as a potential source of friction?

Barnette: No, there's no finger pointing. There's problem solving if there's something that happens. The thing I think that is important here is that you have these five departments under the Office of Community Safety, that are going to work together. And so I don't see it as a layer. I see this as improving how we look at public safety, how we look at community safety, the approaches that we take, the partnerships and collaborations that we can improve. This role is to improve what we're doing in the area of community safety.