The Minneapolis office in charge of agency performance reviews has found that the city’s community peacekeeping program, an activist alternative to traditional policing that was born out of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, is at “increased risk of fraud, waste, and abuse.”
According to a recent 60-page report from the Minneapolis City Auditor’s Office, government investigators concluded that the city’s Neighborhood Safety Department fails to properly oversee the millions of dollars it pays nonprofit groups to patrol certain high-crime areas in place of police.
Since the death of George Floyd in police custody, Minneapolis has spent more than $36 million on community-oriented public safety programming meant to prevent violent street crime through the deployment of “violence interrupters.”
Dressed in neon-colored visibility vests, these outreach workers contracted by the city provide mental health counseling and conflict resolution services aimed at addressing the “root causes of violence.” The city’s approach to curbing violence recognizes that “income inequality,” the high cost of housing, “harmful norms around gender and masculinity,” general “oppression,” and “racism” are contributors to criminal conduct.
“Violence takes an unequal toll on communities of color and specific neighborhoods,” the Neighborhood Safety Department’s city webpage says. “We need to dismantle structural racism to prevent violence.”
SOME ‘COMMUNITY PEACEKEEPERS’ CHAMPIONED BY DEMOCRATS NOW CHARGED WITH MURDER
But the latest audit of the department discovered the taxpayer-funded initiative, five years after its rollout, still does not regularly conduct site visits of the community contractors to ensure that violence prevention services are actually being performed.
In fact, the department’s official site-visit policy, guiding how often inspections occur and what on-site conditions are recorded, is “still in a draft stage and not formally implemented.” Contract managers occasionally check in with the dozens of community groups enrolled in the program rather than follow a structured monitoring schedule.
Auditors additionally flagged the Neighborhood Safety Department’s billing and payment practices, as well as ambiguity around allowable reimbursements.
City contracts generally operate by reimbursing contractors for services rendered on the condition that all invoices submitted include receipts, itemized descriptions of the work performed, and sufficient documentation to substantiate the amount being billed prior to payment authorization. However, auditors examining the Neighborhood Safety Department’s records identified invoices where payments were made despite missing documentation.
The public safety program’s current payout system does not require full supporting documentation, such as employee timecards, at the time of billing. According to the audit, the department often allows select contractors to self-attest and only send partial proof of their work with each invoice, under the expectation that they will submit the remaining paperwork at a later date.
Auditors discovered the Neighborhood Safety Department does not consistently track or document contractor training, either, including the two-hour financial compliance course required of contractors raking in over $50,000 from the city.
The audit also found that the department’s lack of disclosure requirements concerning possible conflicts of interest and behind-the-scenes contract negotiations leaves the contracting process susceptible to political pressure.
“There are currently no safeguards in place to ensure the contracting process is not influenced, directly or indirectly, by those who have direct channels with elected officials,” the audit report reads.
The auditor’s office cited several instances of politically connected contractors appealing to the Minneapolis City Council and other officials to approve contracts in their favor or help resolve contract-related disagreements with city staff.
Auditors observed at least one contracting discussion appearing to be driven by “Council Member preferences of who may contract within their ward.”
Following the report’s publication, Neighborhood Safety Department Director Amanda Harrington acknowledged a couple of instances in which contractors contacted the mayor or city council members about negotiating the terms of their contract or invoices not being processed quickly enough.
The audit’s findings come after one of the city’s 100 violence-interrupter contractors, a Minneapolis crime prevention group called We Push for Peace, was charged with charity fraud.
State officials say We Push for Peace’s executive director, Trahern Pollard, diverted charitable assets toward luxury cars, trips to Las Vegas, and child support payments as part of a self-dealing scheme.
Pollard, a self-proclaimed “expert in the field of crime reduction,” touted that he was called upon by Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and other high-ranking Democratic leaders, all the way up to the Biden White House and its community violence task force, “for his knowledge, voice, presence, and solutions surrounding crime, intervention, prevention and creating safe communities.”
We Push for Peace received roughly $2 million from the city of Minneapolis for its violence interruption and community outreach work from 2021 to 2025.
The city has budgeted $5.5 million for the violence-interrupter program this year.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, an earlier advocate for expanding the program, has proposed slashing its budget by $2.6 million in fiscal 2027.
Frey argued that the Floyd-era initiative, though “noble,” has “not demonstrated the level of results taxpayers deserve.”
Some city council members are pushing back on the budget cuts, saying the program is integral to combatting crime.
“The violence interrupters program is working,” Jamal Osman, vice president of the Minneapolis City Council, said at a September budget committee meeting. “We can’t take that away.”
MINNESOTA CRIME PREVENTION GROUP CHAMPIONED BY DEMOCRATS IS ACCUSED OF $6.5 MILLION FRAUD SCHEME
Osman was the victim of an armed carjacking last year and thanked the Minneapolis Police Department for its “phenomenal” response. The councilman told the Washington Examiner that he handled the incident as any resident would by calling the police but said it has not changed his beliefs about the best way to prevent crime.
Other council members have expressed skepticism about the program’s crime-fighting capabilities. In March, City Councilwoman Pearll Warren compared the violence interrupters she has witnessed in her Minneapolis ward to “21 Jump Street cops” who look like “a parade of Skittles” in the streets.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
