Police Chief O’Hara’s Resignation

May 27th, 2026

Dear Community,

Last night, Brian O’Hara resigned as Chief of Police after a report concluded that he interfered with an ongoing investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct. While the sexual misconduct allegations have not been substantiated, O’Hara was determined to have deleted information from his City phone and violated the integrity of the investigation by speaking about it with other City employees. 

I received the news of O’Hara’s resignation at the same time as the general public. I’ve had varied experiences with O’Hara’s leadership, but there is also a larger context to the abrupt end to O’Hara’s tenure at the City. O’Hara’s resignation is a symptom of a larger problem: Mayor Frey’s failure to effectively manage the Minneapolis Police Department. 

Mayor Frey has been promising meaningful police reform since he was first elected in 2017. He has put forward leader after leader as vehicles for these promises. Yet the majority of these appointments– Chief Arradondo, Interim Chief Huffman, Chief O’Hara, Commissioner Alexander, and Commissioner Barnette – have resigned or been forced out after high-profile stories about MPD’s continued failure to reform. The common denominator is not any one leader of MPD, it is Mayor Frey. 

Mayor Frey’s failures to reform MPD allowed officers like Derek Chauvin to remain on the force and continue using discriminatory policing and excessive force. After MPD murdered George Floyd, Mayor Frey continued to promise reform, but the Department of Justice investigation into MPD identified that MPD’s practices still violated constitutional law as of August of 2022. 

Nine years after he first ran promising police reform, Mayor Frey hasn’t delivered any meaningful police reforms to the people of Minneapolis. It’s not for lack of understanding: there are lists of clear, specific reforms provided by state and federal officials, courts, public safety experts, and community organizations with dozens of strategies to reform the police. Stronger discipline for officers who discriminate or use excessive force, requiring that all training officers have a clean disciplinary history, investing in civilian investigators, regulating off-duty work, effective domestic violence response, and many more. 

Instead of the reforms that Mayor Frey promised, his leadership has yielded a revolving door of chiefs and commissioners, scandal after scandal, and failure after failure. That pattern continued into yesterday’s news about Brian O’Hara. 

The investigative report affirms that Mayor Frey knew there were unanswered questions and pending investigations into Brian O’Hara when he renominated him to the City Council a couple of weeks ago. This is completely out of step with professional norms. In cases where the Chief of Police has serious allegations regarding misconduct, neighboring jurisdictions took immediate action. Metro Transit Police Department, Golden Valley Police Department, and Rosemount Police Department all placed their Chief of Police on administrative leave once allegations triggered investigations into potential misconduct. Mayor Frey has yet to explain or defend his choice to allow Brian O’Hara to remain the acting police chief while these claims were being investigated, or why he nominated him for a second term. 

I hope that O’Hara’s resignation is a wake up call to Mayor Frey that it’s time to stop deflecting to appointed leaders or telling residents that reform will come from his next flashy new nominee. Mayor Frey is the sole authority over MPD and has been since 2017. MPD’s failures are Mayor Frey’s legacy. In light of Brian O’Hara’s resignation, I’m calling on Mayor Frey to finally take responsibility for MPD himself, as voters elected him to do.

Minneapolis residents deserve to finally get what they’ve been promised for a decade: meaningful police reform and for a public safety system that really serves everyone. Mayor Frey has the sole authority to make that happen.