A City of Minneapolis employee files a complaint.

Internal Affairs (IA) investigates complaints made by City employees regarding allegations of misconduct by Police Department employees. 

Office of Police Conduct and Review (OPCR) investigates complaints made by the public regarding allegations of misconduct by Police Department employees.

See data on complaints received

Filing a complaint

City employees can access the employee complaint form on CityTalk.

Learn more about the complaint filing process for the public

We receive your complaint and gather information. 

The appropriate MPD Command Staff receives a summary of the event. 

Within 3 days of receiving your complaint

• We file your complaint and assign it a case number. 

Within 7 days of receiving your complaint

• We notify you of your case number in writing.
  • Your case number is helpful if you want to contact us about your complaint in the future.
  • You can also enter your case number into our officer complaint status lookup dashboard.
• If you did not give contact information in your complaint, we are not able to give you your case number.

Within 30 days of receiving your complaint

• We review your complaint and gather evidence.
• We may contact you during this step if we need more information.
• If we see other potential policy violations while reviewing the evidence, we add them to the case. 

We review all of the evidence and information from intake. We collaborate on how to route the case. 

After we meet, we decide to do one of the following:

• Investigate the case.
• Refer the case.*
• Dismiss the case.*
• Send the case for non-disciplinary corrective action, such as coaching or training.*

This happens within 30 days of receiving your complaint.

*Cases we refer, dismiss or send for non-disciplinary corrective action

IA takes no further action on these cases. We only take further action on cases we investigate.

See the terms and definitions

Within 180 days of us filing your complaint

We send a notification of investigation letter to the focus employee(s). These are the police employees your complaint is about.

We complete an investigation and write a summary report of the evidence.

During an investigation, we may:

• Gather more evidence.
• Speak with you and any witnesses.
• Speak with the focus employee(s).

If the investigator needs more than 180 days

The investigator must ask the IA Commander for an extension. If approved, the IA Commander decides on a new deadline.

The investigator submits the completed report to the IA Commander. 

Within 15 days of receiving the report

The IA Commander reviews the case file and does one of the following:

• Approves the investigative report and forwards the case file for panel review.
• Asks for more investigation and gives the investigator a new deadline.
• Re-routes the case for referral, dismissal, or non-disciplinary corrective action based on information gathered during the investigation.*

*If the IA Commander re-routes the case 

IA involvement ends with this step. We only complete the next step for cases we forward for panel review.

Within 30 days of the IA Commander approving the investigative report

A review panel of three civilians and two members of MPD leadership meet to review and discuss the case file.

Learn how we select review panels

Within 3 business days of the panel’s meeting

The panelists make recommendations about whether the focus employee(s) violated MPD policy and procedure.

• If yes, they also recommend corrective action for the focus employee(s) using the discipline matrix. 
• If the panelists need additional information to make a recommendation, they can ask us for further investigation.

See data on review panel recommendations

Within 30 days of the review panel’s recommendation

If the Chief is considering discipline on any allegation:

• A Loudermill pre-discipline hearing is held, unless the police focus employee is on leave.
• If the focus employee is on leave, then the hearing will be held when the focus employee returns from their leave.

Loudermill hearing

The purpose of a Loudermill hearing is to provide the focus employee an opportunity to:

• Provide additional information or explanations and/or;
• Apologize and take responsibility for their actions.

The hearing is held before the Chief makes a final decision on discipline.

Note: IA is not involved in this step, but we are notified of the process.

Within 7 days of the review panel’s recommendation

The Chief receives the case file and recommendation.

Within 15 days of receiving the case file and review panel’s recommendation

The Chief can ask us to investigate further if needed to make a decision.

Within 30 days of receiving the case file and review panel’s recommendation

The Chief reviews the information and makes a decision about the case.

The Chief does one of the following:

• Determines the case has no merit.
• Directs the focus employee(s) to complete non-disciplinary corrective action.
• Disciplines the focus employee(s).

A Chief's decision imposing discipline is detailed in a formal memo. It explains the reasons for any discipline decisions.

If the Chief decides to discipline the focus employee(s)

This information is not available to the complainant or the public until all grievance and arbitration processes have ended.

Process for sworn police employees

Grievance and arbitration procedures for sworn officers is detailed in the Police Officers' Federation of Minneapolis (POFM) contract. This is only meant to give a general overview of what’s described in the contract and not establish guidelines, procedures, or any different practices.

These processes for the focus police officer(s) are optional. Only the POFM union can start a grievance.

The union will review the case file and can vote to file a grievance.

See the POFM labor agreement

See definitions for these processes

Grievance process

Step one grievance

A union representative will inform the Chief’s Office in writing of a step one grievance.

Step one decision

The MPD Chief or designee responds to the step one grievance. 

The union can escalate it to a step two grievance.

Step two grievance

The union representative informs the Police Chief in writing of a step two grievance.

Step two decision

MPD Chief or designee responds to the step two grievance. The union representative can appeal the step two decision and send to arbitration.

Note: A grievance will be filed as a step two grievance when it involves:

• Class-action grievance.
  • Five or more similarly situated employees.
• Suspension.
• Demotion.
• Discharge.

Arbitration process

• The union representative requests arbitration.
• An arbitration hearing will be held.
• The arbitration decision will be given within 30 days. An extension may be granted.

Process for non-sworn police employees

Civilian employees may have similar processes. The applicable process for civilian focus employee(s) follow their labor union agreement.

See the labor union agreements

All steps and processes are complete. The complaint has reached the status of final disposition. 

If discipline is imposed, the basis for the Police Chief's decision is made public. 

The information generally available to the public includes:

• Case number.
• Incident date.
• Precinct that the incident occurred in.
• Police employee's name.
• Police employee's number.
• Sworn police employee's badge number.
• Police employee's work assignment.
• Violation type.
• Violation category.
• Date of Police Chief's discipline memo.
• Type of discipline.
• Police Chief's discipline memo document.

See data on the Chief's discipline decisions