Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara has resigned after Mayor Jacob Frey said O’Hara interfered with an investigation into his conduct, including allegations that he deleted a contact card from a city-issued phone and warned an employee about the probe.
When Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara walked away from his job, the break wasn’t just personal—it was about trust, and it landed in the middle of a city still wrestling with what happened to George Floyd and how policing should change.
On Tuesday, Mayor Jacob Frey announced that O’Hara has chosen to resign rather than face disciplinary action for interfering with an investigation into his own conduct.
O’Hara was hired to oversee reforms after Floyd’s killing. Frey said that during the time O’Hara led local police during the city’s recent federal immigration crackdown, he was also under investigation on accusations that he was engaging in intimate relationships with city employees.
Those allegations were never substantiated. But Frey said investigators found O’Hara had interfered with the probe. The charge laid out in a written reprimand obtained by The Associated Press includes claims that O’Hara deleted a contact card from his city-issued cell phone in an attempt to shield evidence. and that he told another city employee about the investigation after he was instructed to keep it quiet.
Frey told O’Hara he would be disciplined, and that discipline could include termination. Instead of accepting that outcome, O’Hara resigned, Frey said.
“It was an extremely painful decision, obviously, but I concluded that was necessary to maintain public trust, and this was the right way to move forward as a city,” Frey said.
“Trust is not secondary to the job. It is the job,” he added.
The resignation also did not close the door on other questions about O’Hara’s conduct. Frey’s office said the city still has 17 open complaints against O’Hara—separate from the investigation that led to disciplinary action. A spokesperson for the mayor. Jennifer Lor. said the city will continue investigating. and Lor could not comment on the nature of those complaints.
O’Hara did not immediately respond to a LinkedIn message seeking comment.
O’Hara became police chief in 2022. when the department was at the center of a nationwide reckoning over racism and brutality in policing. Two years before he took the role. Floyd. a Black man. was killed by a white officer in Minneapolis. igniting global Black Lives Matter protests and calls to defund the police.
Last year, Minneapolis entered an agreement with the federal government to overhaul its police training and use-of-force policies in the wake of Floyd’s murder. The U.S. Department of Justice under President Donald Trump canceled the agreement months later.
O’Hara also oversaw the law enforcement response to the deadly Annunciation Catholic School shooting last August. In December, he criticized immigration enforcement tactics after a federal agent kneeled on a woman’s back during an arrest and then tried to drag her to a car.
During Trump’s immigration crackdown, Minneapolis police faced scrutiny from all sides—people who believed officers were helping federal agents, and those who believed they were hindering them, along with protesters watching each move.
As the search for a new chief begins, Assistant Police Chief Katie Blackwell has stepped in to lead the department, Frey said.
Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara Jacob Frey resignation investigation misconduct city-issued phone contact card DOJ agreement George Floyd
Deleted a contact?? so what, like people don’t delete stuff all the time. Smh.
Wait I thought this was about policing reforms after George Floyd. Now it’s phones and relationships? Sounds like politics dressed up as “investigation.”
Isn’t this the guy who helped with that immigration crackdown thing? Like of course he was under investigation, the city probably targets certain people. Deleting a contact card doesn’t even mean he did anything, y’all.
All these resignations every time someone gets called out… it’s like the system never fixes itself. If he was warned to keep quiet then told someone anyway, that’s shady, but I’m also wondering how “intimate relationships” ever get proved. Minneapolis gonna Minneapolis. George Floyd or not, they’ll still fight over whose lying.