By Max Nesterak | Deputy Editor
Good morning, Reformers.
Brian O’Hara is out as Minneapolis police chief.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey made the “extremely difficult” announcement of O’Hara’s resignation at a hastily assembled news conference Tuesday night, saying O’Hara breached the trust of the city.
O’Hara was accused of having inappropriate sexual relationships with subordinates last year and while outside investigators could not substantiate those allegations, they found he deleted a contact from his city-issued phone in an effort to hide his connection to a witness, according to the investigative report. O’Hara also told a city employee he was being investigated despite being instructed to keep it private.
“This is not about being intolerant of mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, including me. But what I can’t allow is a breach of trust,” Frey said.
O’Hara led the department since 2022 as it sought to rebuild and reform following the police killing of George Floyd and through the tumult of the Annunciation Church shooting and Operation Metro Surge. Frey praised his leadership, saying the city made “real progress.”
While O’Hara appeared to enjoy broad popularity among residents, he faced a skeptical city council and confirmation of his reappointment was in doubt.
Council President Elliott Payne released a statement saying Frey’s nomination of O’Hara for another term was “massive error in judgment” given the active investigations into his conduct.
O’Hara’s resignation means the department could soon be without two of its top leaders, with a narrow majority of the council recently voting against the reappointment of Community Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette.
Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell will serve as interim chief.
KSTP published the full news conference and outside investigative report here.
(Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
By Michelle Griffith
Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday signed a bill into law enacting new guardrails for Minnesota children on social media platforms including Instagram, TikTok and SnapChat.
The bipartisan law requires parental consent for Minnesota children under 16 to obtain a social media account. The account defaults to the highest privacy settings that allow parents to limit their child’s usage.
The law also bans infinite scroll, autoplay video and push notifications on accounts belonging to children — “addictive” features that can cause excessive screen time for minors, the bill’s advocates argue.
At least 19 other states have enacted laws addressing minor access to social media, according to the Age Verification Providers Association. Social media companies have sued many of the states, with judges in Louisiana and Arkansas striking down those states’ age-verification laws.
By Shalina Chatlani
In its latest effort to narrow pathways to immigration to the United States, the Trump administration says it will crack down on attorneys who file fraudulent asylum claims for their clients.
James Percival, Homeland Security’s general counsel, said “it is standard practice for immigration attorneys representing illegal aliens to assert that virtually every illegal alien is going to be persecuted or tortured in his or her home country.”
The limited available data suggests that asylum fraud is extremely rare. A 2015 report by the Government Accountability Office found that as asylum applications increased during the early 2010s, the terminations of asylum status due to discovered fraud declined, from 103 in 2010 to 34 in 2014.
By Eric Janus
Former President and Dean of Mitchell Hamline School of Law Eric Janus argues in today’s guest commentary that the state is squandering over $100 million every year locking up sex offenders after they’ve served their prison sentences through the Minnesota Sex Offender Program.
While the program was meant to prevent sexual violence, research shows civil commitment delivers no discernible impact on rates of rape and sexual assault. Wisconsin, for example, has roughly the same rate of rape per capita yet spends far less on a similar sex offender program because it releases and reintegrates far more people.
“Imagine what the $1.3 billion spent on MSOP in the past 14 years could accomplish if directed toward evidence-based programs that serve victims, intervene early, and stop harm before it happens,” Janus writes. “That is what keeping communities safe looks like.”
IN OTHER NEWS
Democratic state AGs say their staff excluded from Vance anti-fraud meeting | Reformer via States Newsroom
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