Posted on February 13, 2025 by Scott Johnson in Media, Minnesota, Policing

O’Hara’s law

Brian O’Hara is the post-George Floyd chief of the Minneapolis Police Department. He is the successor to Medaria Arradondo, a Minneapolis native who served on the MPD for 32 years. Arradondo was also the department’s first black police chief. Since he stepped down as chief, we haven’t seen or heard much from Arradondo.

If our local press were functioning properly, some enterprising reporter might have tracked him down and asked him if he agreed with Minneapolis political authorities, with the Walz Minnesota Department of Human Rights, and with the Biden Department of Justice that he was running a racist police department during his five-year tenure (2017-2022) as police chief.

O’Hara was the Director Newark Public Safety when he took the job in Minneapolis. In his brief tenure here he has concurred with the state and federal charges of racism against his department. He was one of the featured speakers at the January 6 press conference called by then Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke to announce the consent decree intended to bind his department for the foreseeable future. The entire production was meant to tie the hands of the incoming Trump administration.

I formed a negative opinion of O’Hara at that January 6 press conference. His department is short of its legal minimum number of officers by 150 and short of its pre-George Floyd force by 330 officers. O’Hara seems to think that another consent decree is just what the doctor — Dr. Jill? — ordered. I inferred from O’Hara’s performance that he is not a stand-up guy. He won’t even stand up for his own department.

Looking for a thumbnail photo to use for this post on the homepage, I found that O’Hara features a photo of himself with Barack Obama on O’Hara’s LinkedIn profile. Perhaps the photo dates to the time O’Hara oversaw the Newark Police Department’s compliance with the terms of the 2016 consent decree obtained by the Obama Department of Justice against it.

Yesterday the Star Tribune published O’Hara’s column “The truth about the tragic actions of Derek Chauvin.” O’Hara’s column seems to have been triggered by news coverage of last week’s hearing on the motion to dismiss Deputy Chief Katie Blackwell’s ill-advised defamation lawsuit against Liz Collin and Alpha News for Liz’s book and the movie based on it — The Fall of Minneapolis. I wrote about the hearing over the weekend in “Alpha News goes to court.”

O’Hara doesn’t mention Liz or The Fall of Minneapolis by name in the column. Why not name names? I will name names. O’Hara is a spineless weasel.

Instead of naming names, O’Hara refers to “some conservative media outlets.” What you mean “some conservative media outlets,” Kemo Sabe? O’Hara imputes bad motives to them, whoever they are: “Their goal is clear: to sow doubt about the legitimacy of Chauvin’s conviction and to undermine efforts to reform policing in Minneapolis.”

Attorney Chris Madel represents Liz and Alpha in Blackwell’s defamation lawsuit. Responding to O’Hara’s column, Chris first addressed O’Hara’s spinelessness based on his own personal experience with him.

Chris followed up with an update on that point.

MediaWatchMn noted the hole in O’Hara’s column. The comment reads in full: “We await MN media asking @_BrianOHara the tough questions about why 34 MPD officers filed sworn declarations disagreeing with Blackwell’s testimony – asseverating under oath that the restraint technique in question was indeed taught. And asking why he seems to be using George Floyd’s death to shift attention away from the defamation lawsuit Blackwell herself initiated against @lizcollin.” That’s not gonna happen.

Chris made the same point in his comment on O’Hara’s column.

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