Minneapolis mayor defends millions spent in police overtime amid 2026's crisis events

WCCO reported in January that Minneapolis police officers worked at least $3 million over budget during Operation Metro Surge. 

In a news conference Thursday, Mayor Jacob Frey said he wanted to clear up what he calls misinformation about the numbers, stating overtime spent during crisis events was unavoidable this past year.

In March, the city said a team prepared an analysis of MPD's budget, assuming the department hadn't experienced elevated attrition after 2020. That analysis showed — with nearly $23 million in overtime pay spent — they're still roughly $2 million under what the cost would be to hire back to 2020's staffing levels of 888 officers.

Frey said hiring back to those levels is a goal, as they lost 40% of officers back then.

"We were drastically under counting the dollar figure in the budget to complete OT hours. We have done that for as long as I can remember," Frey said. "The difference, however, is that we used to be able to accommodate those OT hours with vacancy savings that resulted from attrition in the police department. So in other words, if you're expecting to have 880 officers and you have 630 officers, we would use those savings, those savings would then go into overtime."

Frey is set to present his budget proposal next week.