It’s been a rough first year for Minneapolis Police Chief Janeé Harteau, who took over as chief in January. With numerous protests spurred by the death of Terrance Franklin, who was shot by police in May, to recent incidents involving racial slurs by Minneapolis Police Officers in Green Bay and Apple Valley — including homophobic remarks about Harteau, a lesbian — the 48-year-old chief has her hands full.

Harteau joined the force under Chief Tony Bouza in 1987. She’s the first woman to hold the title of Police Chief in Minneapolis, in addition to having Anishinabe heritage. She describes herself as having empathy, and an ability to understand negative experiences, because she’s experienced it herself both from people within the department (Harteau filed a discrimination and harassment suit earlier in her career), in the media and people on the street.

From the very start, Harteau has made changes in the department — she calls her desired version of the department’s culture MPD 2.0 — including leadership changes from the top down and changes in the ways officers deal with the public. “Change takes time,” Harteau says. “Culture change takes three to five years. This expectation of change occurring over night is — I’d love that, but that’s unrealistic. Trust gets built over time. People have to trust me.”

Perceptions

When The UpTake first asked Harteau to describe the nature of the problem between the police department and the community, she responded, “What problem are you speaking of?” Then, she went on to describe a “perception problem,” in which the community doesn’t necessarily know a lot of the things that the police are doing. Distributed by OneLoad.com