"Holy Byzantium, Gnatman," says the Larvae Wonder, "somebody has taken
me seriously." Okay, okay. Le me tink. I can tink a bit and I'm
creative; folks in the Macalester Groveland area of St. Paul had a
problem with crossing Snelling Avenue on foot and I gave the St. Paul
forum a whole new Metro Rabid Transit System based on vines,
trellises, trebuchets, catapults, parachutes, GPS, other automated
bells and whistles, and now teleportation. I must get serious though,
because this is much more involved than how a St. Paulite crosses the
road. We're talking about saving Minneapolis some major scratch and
passing big ugly problems over to regional government where perhaps
they can actually be solved, so I'll tone down my jester persona and
turn up the student of urban and regional planning a bit more. Here
come the tome.
The Met Council, as Dave Garland suggests, might be a poor choice for
accountability, but then if we really cared about that, we'd ("we,"
meaning folks like Paul Ostrow, Don Samuels, and Ralph Remington more
than us) not be attempting to streamline things so much, or would we?
So we might call the Met Council into service, hypothetically, and
assume they're suddenly by some magic -- something like the magic of
our present mayor waving his virtual hand over our problems with the
flair of a polished communications professional (just look at his e-
mails) -- ready to ride herd on a bunch of cops roaming our fair city
and the whole Metro. Does accountability change much from one mayoral
term to the next in our fair city? Or is it static as we elect one
mayor and council after another to deal with the same screwups that
never seem to stop? Perhaps we're well past the notion that a city in
the midst of a large metropolitan area can assume that what policy it
adopts and implements will have any of the desired results, or even be
affordable.
Of course, one aspect of accountability Dave ignores in favor of a
more scapegoating mindset, is the contract; a contract can be
insurance of accountability. For instance, there is a level of
competence that must be higher in the more troubled areas of the Metro
like Minneapolis. Certainly it is recognized that higher pay goes with
that higher level. There is no reason that Minneapolis would have to
put up with cops not up to the demands of the job; it would be much
easier for a Metro force to transfer personnel presenting a problem to
a less demanding area at less pay than for the City of Minneapolis to
lose the same nimrods from the Minneapolis Police Department. You
might think of it more like professional sports and major and minor
leagues. Certainly a cop farm system might help ensure a higher
quality of law enforcement for the whole state, not just Minneapolis.
Of course it would not be like we'd have an easy option of not
contracting for policing once we moved in this direction, but there's
no reason to have to pay good money for non-fulfillment. Of course if
we still owned the cop shops, we'd have have the option of
reconstituting MPD; starting over might even provide the best outcome,
but not easy to do without some intermediate step. I still kind of
think that a regional force with fewer jurisdictional problems would
serve us better.
A comprehensive law enforcement plan for the region actually
implemented, as might be more feasible with a Metro force, could turn
a whole lot of places around and be more proactive in addressing the
real roots of crime: poverty of all kinds (income, opportunity, and
even playing fields). So using a planning body that works on water,
sewer, parks, transportation, general development needs of what folks
need now and into the future, makes more sense to me than when I first
suggested it. The council could focus on land use solutions to
problems, but for day to day law enforcement operations, we'd need law
enforcement professionals, just as the Met Council has folks under
them to help guide and implement decisions in given areas. Look at the
organizational chart I've attached (which uploads to our files with a
link in online posts and e-mails) and try to figure out where to put
the Metro police force for the best accountability and get back to me.
Met Council appointments would likely remain a sore point with many,
but I don't really see that an elected body would necessarily be
better; what I would rather see is good people with some real
qualifications (active and competent work in and for their
communities) on the council. Every governor would insist that this is
already what she does, but what he really means is choices are made
from those with a c.v. that includes membership in the right party; if
they chose less partisan folks with deep roots and active
participation in efforts to improve the place they live in, who may or
may not have a c.v. of several pages, things might actually change.
Still, aside from doing what the Met Council does now, I don't see
them ever as capable of running day to day operations of a law
enforcement agency. I think we probably need a stand alone regional
entity with or without the umbrella of the Council, run by a cop's cop.
Whether the Met Council oversees or not, we'd need that Czar,
accountable to the governor directly or perhaps through the attorney
general's office (for checks and balance), or both, to provide law
enforcement based on contractual obligations to municipalities like
Minneapolis (to stay local or I'll soon have to move this to MN-Pol
forum), on a consistent standard for unincorporated areas, on goal
setting based on regional analysis of that which is understood to
spawn crime, and on the ability for superior emergency response.
Clearly defined standards, direct implementation, and ongoing analysis
would be both the measure and definition of accountability to the
people over the whole region. If one were to sue over some perceived
injustice, one would sue the State of Minnesota, and I would hope that
our state would never settle out of court unless that injustice is real.
Can I help it? It's a trend. We're slowly losing one legacy after
another. We've lost the library because city government can't find the
money for maintaining a collection that was rightly a source of pride,
now in danger of becoming much less. With proposals like that of our
'gang of three', we're in danger of losing our parks. We've pretty
much lost NRP.
I am beginning to think I might be okay with losing the MPD, as good
as they are, to gain something more effective. Like some on the list,
I'm also okay with losing the St. Paul Police Department and the
Ramsey County Sheriff, especially when the latter comes traipsing into
our city with the feds; of course we might be open to many more
shenanigans with a Metro force.