Janeé Harteau

Black Lives Matter Activists Group Continues To Protest Police Shooting Of Jamar Clark
MINNEAPOLIS, MN - NOVEMBER 20: Minneapolis Police Chief, Janee Harteau speaks with protesters behind a barricade outside the 4th Precinct police station November 20, 2015 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Activists are keeping up pressure for more information about the shooting death of Jamar Clark by a Minneapolis police officer. A video of the shooting has not yet been released. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)Stephen Maturen—Getty Images
  • Title
    Chief of Police
  • Affiliation
    Minneapolis

Over the past 18 months, Harteau has endured the kinds of challenges that every chief dreads. Growing tension with the police union. A spike in overall crime rates. And most challenging of all: the fatal shooting by police of an African-­American man, Jamar Clark, under dubious circumstances that prompted an 18-day protest organized by Black Lives Matter.

 

Harteau weathered these woes with the steadiness that has made her a leadership role model. A 30-year veteran and the city’s first female and first gay police chief, Harteau is the mind behind MPD 2.0, a drive to build trust in the community by putting more cops on the beat. Civic leaders credit her for dismissing cops for misconduct. The officers involved in the Clark shooting were not indicted, but local prosecutors are rethinking the use of secret grand juries in police-involved killings—a victory for the transparency that both Harteau and protesters favor. And Minneapolis was one of the few major U.S. cities to report a significant decline in homicides in 2016.