Protesters pack Minneapolis City Hall, launch ethics complaint against Frey
Over a thousand Minneapolis residents are lobbying the city to conduct an ethics investigation into Mayor Jacob Frey — who is facing scrutiny over his handling of the killing of Amir Locke by local police.
A crowd packed into City Hall on Friday to deliver a round of ethics complaints against Frey, with organizers holding a rally in the rotunda to call out the mayor over his controversial statements about no-knock warrants:
Criticism against Frey came to a head this week when he attempted to address questions about his administration's supposed no-knock warrant ban in November 2020 — a move that was announced with much fanfare at the time.
But in a Monday City Council meeting, he explained that the policy only ended "the practice of entering unannounced while serving no-knock warrants," though his re-election campaign had touted the "ban" as one of the mayor's "top achievements" on its website. The claim remained on the site through October 23, 2021.
Frey admitted that, during the campaign, "language became more casual, including my own, which did not reflect the necessary precision or nuance."
This latter comment earned Frey harsh criticism, including from Democrats like 5th District Rep. Ilhan Omar, who tweeted: "Mayor Frey lied, Amir died and he needs to own that!"
According to Facebook user Ashley Horan, who was involved in Friday's City Hall rally, the group "delivered more than 1300 individually signed ethics complaints" against Frey.
Reclaim the Block, one of the groups organizing the rally, released a "residents' complaint" on Thursday, calling for an "ethics investigation into Mayor Frey for his massive failure to exercise judgment which led to the murder of 22-year-old Amir Locke by the Minneapolis Police Department":
Per MPR, many at the rally also called on Frey to resign. The station said "dozens" of Minneapolis residents were in attendance.
The debate over no-knock warrants followed the revelation that Minneapolis police were serving such a warrant at Locke's downtown apartment on February 2 — leading to his death.
Following the shooting, the city instituted a moratorium on the controversial warrants.
Bring Me The News reached out to Frey's office for comment, and received the following statement from the mayor:
"Just as past politically motivated complaints were dismissed without merit during the last election, these baseless allegations will be recognized as such. Mayor Frey is focused on partnering with community to enact policy reforms and bring stronger oversight to the department's release of public information.”
