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Minneapolis Mayor, Chief Secure Funding for Officer and Community Mental Health Programs

The Minneapolis mayor and police chief have laid out plans for a $200,000 Mobile Mental Health Crisis Unit and a $500,000 Early Intervention System, which they say would be covered with $700,000 of grant money from the Pohlad Family Foundation.

The Minneapolis mayor and police chief have laid out plans for a $200,000 Mobile Mental Health Crisis Unit and a $500,000 Early Intervention System, which they say would be covered with $700,000 of grant money from the Pohlad Family Foundation.

While the mobile unit would be used to respond to mental health calls in the community, the Early Intervention System (EIS) would be for officers, KARE reports.

Mayor Jacob Frey and Chief Medaria Arradondo say the EIS would track individual police officer actions related to their performance and their well-being. Already used in other states, the system would use predictive modeling and algorithms to recognize when an officer may need additional support or intervention. Examples mentioned in a city hall press conference Tuesday included how often officers call in sick and times they used their weapons or other force. 

Frey and Arradondo say this would not be a disciplinary measure but rather a preventative one so that if a problem is identified, it can be mitigated before something negative happens while officers are responding to calls or interacting with the community.

This is now a new attempt using the outside funding. The grant money will be on the agenda at a committee meeting Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. The full city council would then need to approve the grant as a package deal for both initiatives.

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