Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara Resigns Amid Probe Into Investigation Interference

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara resigned on Wednesday after the city concluded he had interfered with an internal investigation, Mayor Jacob Frey announced, abruptly ending the tenure of a leader brought in to steady the department in the years after George Floyd's murder.

The investigation began with allegations that O'Hara had engaged in sexually intimate relationships with city employees. Those underlying claims were not substantiated, Frey said. But investigators determined that O'Hara had intentionally deleted a contact card from his city-issued cell phone and had discussed the inquiry with another city employee even after being explicitly instructed not to do so.

"Trust is not secondary to the job, it is the job," Frey said in announcing the resignation. "And when trust is broken, it becomes extremely difficult to continue leading effectively." The mayor was blunt about why the conduct, rather than the original accusations, proved disqualifying: "The interference itself is a breach of trust."

Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell will take over leadership of the department. O'Hara, who had led the Minneapolis Police Department since November 2022, was at the helm during a series of high-profile moments, including the response to the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting and a federal immigration enforcement push known as Operation Metro Surge.

A veteran of Newark, New Jersey's public safety apparatus before his move to Minnesota, O'Hara was hired in late 2022 to steer a department still reeling from the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer and the mass protests that followed. He inherited a force operating under court-enforceable oversight agreements with state and federal authorities and contending with a sharp decline in staffing, and he was often credited with stabilizing a shrinking department even as critics pressed him over the pace of reform.

The departure leaves lingering questions. City officials said 17 additional open complaints against O'Hara remain under continued investigation, and the resignation does not by itself resolve them. The chief had been a central figure in the city's effort to overhaul its police force under a court-enforceable agreement and intense public scrutiny following the 2020 unrest.

His exit thrusts Blackwell into one of the most challenging policing jobs in the country at a delicate moment, as Minneapolis continues to navigate reform mandates, recruitment struggles common to departments nationwide, and the task of rebuilding community confidence. Blackwell, a longtime Minneapolis officer who had served as an assistant chief, becomes the public face of a force that remains under a microscope nearly five years after the killing that made it a global symbol of policing controversy. City leaders said the transition would take effect immediately, and that the open complaints against O'Hara would proceed independent of his departure.