Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara resigned on Tuesday afternoon after Mayor Jacob Frey said an internal investigation had concluded the chief had interfered with a separate probe into his own conduct. O'Hara, who took the position in November 2022 to oversee post-George-Floyd reforms under a federal consent decree, had been the public face of the department's reform effort for the past three and a half years.
According to a city statement, the internal-affairs probe of O'Hara had originally been triggered by anonymous complaints that he had engaged in intimate relationships with two city employees, allegations the city said investigators were ultimately unable to substantiate. But during the same probe, investigators concluded O'Hara had deleted a contact card from his city-issued cell phone in an attempt to shield evidence and had told another city employee about the investigation after he had been explicitly instructed to keep it confidential.
Frey, speaking from City Hall on Tuesday evening, said O'Hara had "elected to resign rather than face disciplinary process," and called the conduct findings "incompatible with the standards expected of the chief of police." Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell, who has led the Fourth Precinct in north Minneapolis since 2023, will serve as acting chief while a national search for a permanent replacement is conducted.
The resignation is a setback for a department that had been slowly stabilising. Major-crime statistics for the first four months of 2026 had shown a sustained decline in shootings and homicides relative to the same period in 2025 and 2024, and federal monitors for the post-Floyd consent decree had this spring described O'Hara's leadership as "constructively engaged" with reform requirements.
O'Hara had also drawn national attention earlier in May for an order to officers not to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations within the city, an order that Frey publicly backed but that drew federal scrutiny. Conservative outlets had separately accused O'Hara of "interfering with ICE," language that has reappeared in coverage of his resignation though city officials say the ICE order was not the subject of the internal investigation.
Minneapolis City Council president Andrea Jenkins said the council would convene a public-safety committee hearing next Tuesday on transition planning. Federal monitor Sheila Bedi, who oversees the city's consent-decree compliance, said in a written statement that reform commitments remained "binding on the department, not on any individual leader," and that monitoring activity would continue without pause.
The Minneapolis Police Federation issued a guarded statement praising O'Hara's "support of street-level officers" but stopping short of criticising the city's handling of the matter. Blackwell, in her first remarks as acting chief on Wednesday morning, said she would "maintain reform momentum and operational discipline" and would publish a hundred-day plan within ten days.