The Resident Solution · Directive 04

Public Safety
& Law Enforcement
Evolution

Fix the staffing crisis. Support the officer. Rebuild the trust. All three — or none of it works.

Minnesota has a public safety problem. It is not the one politicians keep arguing about. The actual problem is a system that burned out its officers, sent them into calls they were never equipped to handle, gave communities no real mechanism for accountability — and then asked everyone to act like it was fine. It is not fine. Officers are leaving. Communities don't trust what's supposed to protect them. And a Governor who picks a side in that fight instead of fixing the system is failing both.
Read the directive
What It Is

Not Anti-Police.
Not Defund.

Anyone who tries to put this directive in one of those two boxes is lying to you — or hasn't read it. This directive addresses the dual crisis Minnesota law enforcement is actually in: a documented staffing and retention emergency, and a documented breakdown in community trust. Both are real. Both have consequences for public safety. Solving one without the other doesn't work. This does both.

01
Veteran Fast-Track to the Badge
Minnesota has a military reciprocity pathway in statute that the POST Board is not using aggressively. Veterans with years of military law enforcement experience are sitting on the sideline while departments are understaffed. We activate that pipeline on day one — and we push to remove the barriers that are still in the way.
02
Officer Wellness Is Operational Readiness
First responders are one of the highest-risk groups for suicide in the country. Minnesota does almost nothing about it institutionally. Officer mental health support, peer programs, and realistic workload standards are not soft — they are the difference between a functional department and one that is quietly falling apart.
03
Co-Responder Scale-Up
Minnesota has already authorized co-responder models in statute. The evidence is in. Pairing mental health professionals with officers on appropriate calls reduces escalation, reduces officer liability, and gets people in crisis the help they actually need. The problem is scale. We fix that.
04
Accountability That Builds Trust
Transparency in use of force, officer discipline, and complaint resolution is not an attack on law enforcement — it is what makes communities willing to work with law enforcement. Without it, every incident tears the relationship further. With it, trust gets built one interaction at a time.
The Structure

Four Pillars.
One System.

Each of these four reforms addresses a documented failure in Minnesota's current public safety system. They are not independent talking points — they are connected. You cannot fix the staffing crisis without addressing burnout. You cannot rebuild trust without accountability. You cannot reduce escalation without co-responders. This is the system Minnesota needs.

01
Veteran Fast-Track — The POST Board Pipeline Problem
Minnesota is sitting on a ready-made solution to its law enforcement staffing shortage and refusing to use it. Veterans with military police training — Combat MPs, CID agents, military working dog handlers, security forces — spent years conducting law enforcement operations in some of the most demanding environments on earth. When they come home, Minnesota tells them to go back to school.

The pathway already exists in statute. MN Stat. 626.8517 authorizes a military reciprocity examination for veterans with qualifying service. The problem is that the POST Board applies the same friction-heavy process to these veterans that it does to a first-year applicant — degree requirements, administrative delays, and a certification timeline that drives candidates to other states or other careers.
What This Directive Does: On day one, the Governor directs the POST Board to maximize the 626.8517 pathway — streamlining applications, eliminating unnecessary administrative delays, and prioritizing veteran reciprocity processing. Simultaneously, the Governor submits to the legislature a request to remove the two-year degree requirement for veterans with four or more years of military law enforcement service. Minnesota is one of 19 states already accepting DOD POST-certified credentials — but it is not using that recognition effectively. That changes.
Precedent: Illinois changed its military reciprocity policy in 2024 — veterans who previously had to complete the full 640-hour basic academy can now apply for a certification waiver. Minnesota has the statutory skeleton. It needs a Governor willing to use it. Veteran-officers can be processing applications within 5 days of this EO. The first wave can be deploying to understaffed departments within 30 days.
02
Officer Wellness — Operational Readiness Is Not a Soft Issue
Law enforcement officers in Minnesota are experiencing one of the worst retention crises in the state's history. Departments are running short-staffed. Remaining officers are absorbing the workload of officers who quit or retired early. Officers are being dispatched to mental health crises, homelessness situations, and social emergencies they were never trained or equipped to handle — and told it is their job anyway.

That is a system failure. Not an officer failure. When you put people in situations they were not designed to manage, without support, without relief, without any institutional acknowledgment of what it costs them — they burn out. They leave. Or they stay and the job breaks them. Minnesota has one of the highest law enforcement suicide rates in the region, and the institutional response has been essentially nothing.
What This Directive Does: Directs the Department of Public Safety to establish a statewide First Responder Peer Support Program under MN Stat. 181.973, connecting all Minnesota law enforcement agencies to trained peer support networks. Mandates access to confidential mental health services for all licensed peace officers that cannot be used in disciplinary proceedings. Requires the POST Board to establish workload standards and staffing ratio guidance for all agencies receiving state funding. This connects directly to Directive 12 — Men's Mental Health & Suicide Prevention. First responders are one of the highest-risk categories. The system that asks the most of them does the least to protect them.
03
Co-Responder Scale-Up — Stop Sending Officers to Calls They Cannot Win
Approximately 20 percent of all law enforcement calls in Minnesota involve mental health crises, substance use emergencies, or homelessness situations. Officers are not mental health clinicians. Asking them to be — without training, without support, without an alternative — is a setup for bad outcomes for everyone involved. The officer, the person in crisis, and the community that watches it happen.

Co-responder models work. Minnesota has already authorized them through the Crisis Intervention Team funding under the Department of Human Services. Several counties have implemented them. The evidence is consistent — co-responder pairs reduce use of force incidents, reduce repeat emergency calls, reduce officer liability, and connect people in crisis to actual services instead of a jail cell. The problem is that the model exists in patches. Rural Minnesota has almost nothing. Low-income urban communities have inconsistent coverage. The scale is wrong.
What This Directive Does: Directs DHS and DPS to develop a statewide co-responder expansion plan under existing MN Stat. 245.4661 (community mental health grants) and MN Stat. 299C.62 (crisis intervention team training). Requires all metro-area departments with more than 50 officers to have operational co-responder capacity within 18 months. Establishes a grant program for rural counties to build shared co-responder capacity across adjacent jurisdictions so no part of Minnesota is left without this option.
04
Accountability & Transparency — Trust Is Built, Not Declared
In Black communities, Native communities, and immigrant communities across Minnesota, trust in law enforcement is not broken because people don't understand policing. It is broken because people have direct, lived experience with a system that treated them as suspects instead of residents. That distrust is not irrational. It is documented. And it has real public safety consequences — witnesses who don't come forward, communities where crimes go unreported, neighborhoods where people have decided the system is not for them.

You cannot police communities that don't trust you. Accountability mechanisms do not make officers afraid to do their jobs — they make communities willing to let officers do their jobs. Transparency in use of force reporting, officer discipline outcomes, and complaint resolution timelines is not a threat to law enforcement. It is what law enforcement looks like when it is working.
What This Directive Does: Directs the POST Board to establish and publish a public annual report on use of force incidents, officer discipline outcomes, and complaint resolution timelines, disaggregated by agency, race, and incident type — using authority under MN Stat. 626.8459 (use of force reporting) and MN Stat. 626.89 (Peace Officer Discipline Procedures Act). Requires all agencies with more than 25 officers to publish use of force data in plain language on a public-facing dashboard updated quarterly. No paywall. No buried appendix. Residents can see what is happening in their community.
What this is not: A civilian review board with disciplinary authority over individual officers. A mechanism to second-guess every use of force incident in real time. An attack on officers doing their jobs under impossible conditions. What it is: The transparency that earns the public trust that makes the whole system function.
Who It's For

Everyone Who Needs
This to Work.

This directive does not pick a side. It serves the people on both sides of a fight that should never have been framed as a fight — because both sides want the same thing. Safe communities. Officers who can do their jobs. A system that works for the people who depend on it.

The Officer on the Job
You signed up to protect people. You did not sign up to be the crisis counselor, the social worker, the housing caseworker, and the mental health clinician — on every shift, without backup, without support. This directive gives you the resources, the wellness infrastructure, and the staffing to do the job you actually signed up to do.
The Veteran Ready to Serve Again
You spent years as a military police officer, a CID agent, or a security force specialist. You know law enforcement. You know accountability. You know what it means to operate under rules of engagement that protect both the mission and the people around you. Minnesota needs you and is making it too hard to get here. That ends on day one.
The Community That Stopped Calling
You live in a neighborhood where something happened — or a lot of somethings happened — and you stopped trusting that calling was worth it. That is not a failure of character. That is a rational response to a documented pattern. This directive builds the accountability infrastructure that gives you a reason to try again.
The Person in Crisis
You or someone you love is in a mental health emergency. Under the current system, the first responder who shows up has a badge and a gun and very limited mental health training. The co-responder expansion in this directive means that call gets answered by someone who can actually help — not just contain.
The Department That Can't Hire
Rural sheriffs running eight officers where they need twelve. Metro precincts absorbing mandatory overtime because they can't fill open positions. Departments losing experienced officers to burnout faster than they can train replacements. The veteran pipeline and officer wellness reforms in this directive were built for you specifically.
Every Minnesota Resident
You pay for the public safety system whether you use it or not. You deserve to know it is funded well, staffed well, and accountable to you. Not to political narratives. Not to whoever is loudest in an election year. To you.
Why It Has to Happen

The Crisis
Is Real.

Minnesota law enforcement is not in a political debate. It is in a documented operational crisis — on staffing, on burnout, on community trust — and the current system has no plan to fix any of it.
35%
Increase in law enforcement vacancies in Minnesota since 2019 — departments can't fill positions
Source: MN POST Board Annual Report, 2023–24
3X
Rate at which law enforcement officers die by suicide compared to line-of-duty deaths nationally
Source: National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2023
20%
Share of all Minnesota law enforcement calls involving mental health, substance use, or homelessness
Source: MN DPS, Crisis Intervention data, 2023
11K
Total licensed peace officers in Minnesota — below sustainable staffing levels for current call volume
Source: MN POST Board Annual Report, 2024
19
States already accepting DOD POST military police credentials for civilian law enforcement licensure — Minnesota is not one of them
Source: U.S. Army Military Police School, 2024
40%
Reduction in use-of-force incidents documented in jurisdictions with operational co-responder programs
Source: SAMHSA, Crisis Response Partnerships, 2022

The POST Board annual report shows 11,943 total licensed peace officers as of mid-2024 — and that number is not keeping pace with retirements, departures, and population-driven demand. Departments are running on mandatory overtime. Officers with five years of experience are being asked to cover shifts that require ten. That accelerates burnout. Burnout drives departures. Departures worsen the shortage. It is a cycle, and no one in state government has a plan to break it.

Meanwhile, officers are being dispatched to calls they were not trained for — and blamed when those calls go badly. That is not an officer failure. That is a system failure. A co-responder who can de-escalate a mental health crisis is not a replacement for law enforcement. They are the partner that makes law enforcement more effective on every other call.

The fight between "support the police" and "reform the police" is a false choice designed to keep everyone angry and nothing fixed. Officers need staffing, support, and tools that match the job they are actually being asked to do. Communities need accountability mechanisms that give them reason to trust. You cannot have public safety without both. Anyone who tells you otherwise is using this issue — not solving it.

How It Works

Day One.
Thirty Days.
Eighteen Months.

The Governor holds supervisory authority over the Department of Public Safety and the POST Board, appointing authority over agency leadership, and direct authority over agency operational directives. These are the mechanisms this directive activates — in sequence, with specific timelines.

1
Day One — Direct the POST Board
The Governor issues a direct executive directive to the POST Board: maximize the existing MN Stat. 626.8517 military reciprocity pathway immediately. All eligible veteran applications are to be processed within 5 business days of receipt. Administrative holds and scheduling delays that have historically stretched this timeline are eliminated. The POST Board Director receives a performance standard: veteran reciprocity applicants are prioritized as a matter of public safety necessity.
2
Day One — The Protector Priority Act
The Governor submits the Protector Priority Act to the legislature on Day One — a targeted amendment to MN Stat. 626.8517 that allows four or more years of qualifying military law enforcement service to fully substitute for any post-secondary degree requirement. The EO maximizes what statute already allows. The Protector Priority Act removes what statute still requires. Both tracks move simultaneously. The administrative fix is immediate. The statutory fix begins on day one. Minnesota joins the 19 states that already treat DOD POST credentials as the standard they are.
3
Day Five — Veteran Fast-Track Portal Opens
DPS and the POST Board stand up a dedicated Veteran Fast-Track application portal — a single entry point for all veterans seeking Minnesota peace officer licensure through the military reciprocity pathway. No navigating multiple agency websites. No duplicate paperwork. One application, one point of contact, tracked status updates. Veterans can begin submitting applications within 5 days of the EO signing.
4
Day 30 — First Responder Wellness Program Established
The Department of Public Safety establishes the Minnesota First Responder Peer Support Network — connecting all licensed law enforcement agencies in the state to trained peer support resources under MN Stat. 181.973. Confidential mental health services for all licensed peace officers are designated as protected from disciplinary proceedings. Every department in the state receives access to the network within 30 days. No department opts out because it is too small or too rural — the network serves everyone.
5
90 Days — Co-Responder Expansion Plan Delivered
DHS and DPS deliver a statewide co-responder expansion plan to the Governor — covering metro deployment timelines, rural shared-capacity models, grant program structure, and training standards. The plan uses existing authority under MN Stat. 245.4661 and MN Stat. 299C.62. Implementation begins immediately upon plan approval. Rural counties receive dedicated grant funding so cost is not the barrier to coverage.
6
18 Months — Accountability Dashboard Live
All Minnesota law enforcement agencies with more than 25 officers are publishing use of force data, complaint resolution timelines, and officer discipline outcomes on a public-facing dashboard — updated quarterly, written in plain language, disaggregated by race and agency. Not buried in an annual report. Not accessible only to researchers and journalists. Available to every resident who wants to understand what is happening in their community. That visibility is the accountability.
Legal Authority

The Governor's
Tools.

Every action in this directive is grounded in real Minnesota statutes and existing executive authority. The POST Board and the Department of Public Safety are both executive branch agencies under the Governor's supervisory authority. The co-responder and wellness frameworks exist in statute. The military reciprocity pathway exists in statute. This is not new power — it is existing power being used.

MN Stat. 626.8517Military Reciprocity
Eligibility for Reciprocity Examination Based on Relevant Military Experience. Establishes the existing pathway for veterans with qualifying military law enforcement service to take the Minnesota peace officer licensing exam without completing the full PPOE program. This is the statute the Veteran Fast-Track maximizes. Four or more years of qualifying military law enforcement service, or two years plus an associate's degree, qualifies for the reciprocity exam.
MN Stat. 626.843POST Board Authority
POST Board Powers and Duties. The Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training operates under the supervisory authority of the Governor's administration. The Governor may direct agency operational priorities, streamline administrative processes, and set performance standards for state agency boards — including timelines for processing applications under the military reciprocity program.
MN Stat. 299A.01Dept. of Public Safety
Commissioner of Public Safety — Powers and Duties. The Commissioner of Public Safety serves at the pleasure of the Governor and is responsible for administration of state law enforcement programs. The Governor may direct the Commissioner to establish new operational programs — including the First Responder Peer Support Network and the Veteran Fast-Track portal — within the Department's existing mandate.
MN Stat. 181.973First Responder Mental Health
Peace Officer and Firefighter Mental Health. Establishes the framework for peer support programs for licensed peace officers and firefighters in Minnesota. Provides the statutory basis for the Governor to direct the Department of Public Safety to establish and fund a statewide peer support network and mandate confidentiality protections for officers seeking mental health services.
MN Stat. 245.4661Crisis Mental Health Grants
Community Mental Health Grant Program. Authorizes DHS grants to counties and organizations for community mental health services, including co-responder programs. The Governor directs the Commissioner of Human Services to prioritize and expand co-responder program grants through this statute, establishing a structured rural expansion grant program within the existing funding framework.
MN Stat. 626.8459Use of Force Reporting
Peace Officer Use of Force — Reporting Requirements. Requires law enforcement agencies to report use of force data to the POST Board. The Governor directs the POST Board to publish this data in a public-facing plain-language format, disaggregated by race and agency — using existing data already collected under this statute. The accountability dashboard makes visible what the law already requires agencies to report.
MN Stat. 626.89Peace Officer Discipline
Peace Officer Discipline Procedures Act. Establishes the framework for peace officer discipline in Minnesota. The Governor directs the POST Board to publish aggregate discipline outcomes — not individual records — in the public accountability dashboard, giving residents visibility into how officer conduct complaints are resolved across the state without compromising individual due process protections.
Opposition & Rebuttals

They'll Say It.
Here's the Answer.

Every reform in this directive will face opposition. Some of it is honest disagreement. Most of it is political cover for not doing anything. Here is what will be said — and what the honest answer is.

They Say "This is anti-police."
My Answer
Read it. This directive funds officer wellness programs, builds a peer support network for first responders, creates a pipeline specifically to bring more qualified officers to work in Minnesota, and gives departments co-responder support so officers are not alone on calls they were never equipped to handle. If that is anti-police, the word has lost all meaning. The people calling this anti-police have no plan to address the staffing crisis, the burnout crisis, or the fact that officers are dying by suicide at three times the rate they die in the line of duty. I do.
They Say "Accountability measures just make officers afraid to do their jobs."
My Answer
The accountability measures in this directive are publishing data that agencies are already legally required to collect. Use of force reporting. Discipline outcomes in aggregate. Complaint resolution timelines. That is not an officer performance review published on a billboard. That is the public seeing what their public safety system looks like — the same standard we apply to every other state agency under Directive 01. If the numbers are good, publishing them helps law enforcement. If the numbers are bad, residents deserve to know. Either way, transparency is not the problem.
They Say "Co-responders are too expensive and too slow to deploy."
My Answer
A co-responder call that de-escalates a mental health crisis without an arrest costs less than the jail booking, the public defender, the court proceeding, and the follow-up crisis call three weeks later when the same person ends up in the same situation with no services. The cost argument falls apart when you count the full cost of not having co-responders. And the deployment argument falls apart when you look at the counties in Minnesota that have built this — it does not take years. It takes leadership and a budget line. Both exist in this directive.
They Say "The POST Board exists for a reason — you can't just bypass standards."
My Answer
This directive does not bypass standards. It uses the standards the POST Board itself established for military reciprocity — MN Stat. 626.8517 — and directs the Board to actually apply them on an accelerated timeline instead of treating veterans like first-time applicants. A veteran with four years of military law enforcement experience, combat deployments, and a DOD POST credential has demonstrated more in the field than most academy graduates have in a classroom. The standard is not the problem. The bureaucracy around it is the problem. We fix the bureaucracy.
They Say "This won't fix the trust problem. Communities have been burned too many times."
My Answer
I'm not claiming this fixes everything. I'm claiming it starts the work that has to be done for trust to be possible. You do not rebuild trust in a single executive order. You rebuild it by consistently doing the things that make trust rational — accountability, transparency, follow-through — until the relationship has a track record worth trusting. This is the track record starting. The communities that have been burned the most deserve that more than anyone else.
How This Gets Paid For

The Resident
Solution Fund

Every reform in this directive requires resources. The veteran fast-track needs a portal and a processing system. Officer wellness programs need staff and coordination. Co-responder expansion needs grant funding. The accountability dashboard needs infrastructure. None of this is new spending pulled from existing programs. Here is where the money comes from.

01
Directive 01 Recovery Funds
The forensic audit launched under Directive 01 will recover misspent and fraudulent funds from across the state apparatus. A designated portion of those recovered funds — held in the Resident Solution Fund — is directed to public safety infrastructure: co-responder grants, peer support networks, and the veteran fast-track portal. This is misused public safety money coming back to public safety.
02
Directive 07 Cannabis Revenue
A portion of cannabis tax revenue under Directive 07 is directed to law enforcement support — including officer wellness programs, co-responder expansion, and rural department staffing grants. This is a documented funding stream used in multiple states to offset public safety costs associated with cannabis legalization. Minnesota uses it here for the departments that bear the most pressure.
03
Existing Program Reallocation
The co-responder expansion uses existing grant authority under MN Stat. 245.4661 — no new appropriation required. The accountability dashboard uses data already collected under MN Stat. 626.8459 — the cost is presentation, not collection. The veteran fast-track uses POST Board infrastructure that already exists. We are not building from scratch. We are using what the state already has, better.

Honest note: Specific dollar amounts for each program will be finalized once Directive 01 recovery data is verified and Directive 07 revenue projections are confirmed. What is fixed is the intent, the authority, and the commitment. Every program in this directive has a funding pathway. None of them require cutting existing services to residents.

Executive Order 27-04 — Public Safety & Law Enforcement Evolution Ready for Signature · Day One
STATE OF MINNESOTA Executive Department
Executive Order 27-04
Directing Veteran Fast-Track Licensure, Establishing First Responder Wellness Infrastructure, Expanding Co-Responder Programs, and Requiring Public Safety Transparency Reporting
GovernorTom Berhane
DateJanuary 4, 2027
StatusDraft — Legal Review Pending
Directive04 of 13
Whereas
Minnesota law enforcement agencies are experiencing a documented staffing and retention crisis, with vacancy rates that have increased more than 35 percent since 2019, leaving departments understaffed and officers absorbing unsustainable workloads that accelerate burnout and departure from the profession;
Whereas
Minnesota Statute 626.8517 establishes a military reciprocity examination pathway for veterans with qualifying military law enforcement service, yet the administrative process surrounding this pathway has not been maximized as a solution to the law enforcement staffing shortage, leaving qualified veterans on the sideline while departments remain understaffed;
Whereas
Law enforcement officers in Minnesota face documented occupational mental health risks, including suicide rates that exceed line-of-duty death rates nationally, and the state's institutional support infrastructure for officer mental health has not kept pace with the documented scale of this crisis;
Whereas
Approximately 20 percent of law enforcement calls in Minnesota involve mental health crises, substance use emergencies, or homelessness situations for which officers were not specifically trained, and co-responder models pairing officers with mental health professionals have demonstrated consistent reductions in use-of-force incidents and improved outcomes for persons in crisis in jurisdictions where they have been implemented at scale;
Whereas
Community trust in law enforcement is essential to public safety, and in multiple Minnesota communities — particularly Black, Native, and immigrant communities — that trust has been damaged by documented patterns of disparate treatment, and the absence of transparent, publicly accessible data on use of force, discipline outcomes, and complaint resolution has prevented both accountability and the rebuilding of that trust;
Whereas
The Governor holds supervisory authority over the Department of Public Safety under Minnesota Statute 299A.01, supervisory authority over the Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training under Minnesota Statute 626.843, and a constitutional obligation under Article V, Section 3 of the Minnesota Constitution to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, including the military reciprocity provisions of Minnesota Statute 626.8517 and the use of force reporting requirements of Minnesota Statute 626.8459;
Now Therefore, I, Tom Berhane, Governor of the State of Minnesota, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of this state, do hereby order as follows:
Veteran Fast-Track — POST Board Direction

The POST Board is hereby directed to designate veteran military reciprocity applications under MN Stat. 626.8517 as a public safety priority category. Effective immediately upon signing of this order:

  • All complete veteran reciprocity applications shall be processed and a determination issued within 5 business days of receipt
  • Administrative holds, scheduling delays, and non-statutory procedural requirements that have historically extended this timeline are suspended pending formal review and justification
  • The POST Board Director shall report to the Governor's Office within 30 days on the volume of pending veteran applications and any statutory barriers requiring legislative remedy
  • The qualifying military occupational specialties listed under 626.8517 — including Army MOS 31B, 31A, 31D, 31K, Air Force Security Forces, Navy Master-at-Arms, and Marine Corps Military Police — are confirmed as eligible under this directive's prioritization
Veteran Fast-Track Portal — Establishment

The Commissioner of Public Safety is hereby directed to establish, within 5 days of the signing of this order, a dedicated Veteran Fast-Track portal within the Department of Public Safety. The portal shall serve as a single point of entry for all veterans seeking Minnesota peace officer licensure through the military reciprocity pathway. The portal shall:

  • Accept and route all required documentation for the MN Stat. 626.8517 reciprocity examination process
  • Provide applicants with real-time status updates on application processing
  • Assign a dedicated point of contact within DPS for each active veteran application
  • Be publicly accessible and mobile-optimized within 5 days of this order
Legislative Request — The Protector Priority Act

The Governor's Office shall, on the first day of the 2027 legislative session, submit to the Minnesota Legislature the Protector Priority Act — a targeted amendment to Minnesota Statute 626.8517 to remove the two-year postsecondary degree requirement for veterans with four or more years of qualifying military law enforcement service, provided such veterans meet all other minimum selection standards for peace officer licensure under Minnesota Rule 6700.0700. The Protector Priority Act is necessary to fully eliminate remaining statutory barriers for the most experienced veteran applicants and to formally align Minnesota with the 19 states that currently recognize DOD POST certification without unnecessary academic barriers. The administrative fast-track in this order is immediate. The Protector Priority Act makes it permanent.

Minnesota First Responder Peer Support Network

The Commissioner of Public Safety is hereby directed to establish, within 30 days of this order, the Minnesota First Responder Peer Support Network under MN Stat. 181.973. The Network shall:

  • Provide trained peer support resources to all licensed peace officers in Minnesota, regardless of agency size or location
  • Establish and enforce confidentiality protections ensuring that an officer's voluntary use of peer support or mental health services cannot be used as the basis for disciplinary action, demotion, or termination
  • Establish a rural access component ensuring that officers in agencies with fewer than 25 sworn officers have access to network services equivalent to those available to metro departments
  • Report to the Governor's Office within 60 days on network enrollment, utilization, and any gaps in access by agency or region
Co-Responder Statewide Expansion Plan

The Commissioner of Human Services and the Commissioner of Public Safety are hereby jointly directed to deliver to the Governor, within 90 days of this order, a Statewide Co-Responder Expansion Plan. The Plan shall include:

  • A deployment timeline for all Minnesota law enforcement agencies with more than 50 sworn officers to have operational co-responder capacity within 18 months of this order
  • A rural co-responder access model using shared capacity across adjacent counties or regional service areas, funded through the co-responder grant program established under this order
  • A training standards framework for co-responder pairs to be adopted by the POST Board and DHS
  • A grant program structure using existing DHS authority under MN Stat. 245.4661 and POST Board training authority under MN Stat. 299C.62, designed to ensure no rural county is excluded due to cost

Implementation of the Plan begins immediately upon delivery and approval. The first co-responder grant awards shall be issued within 120 days of this order.

Public Safety Accountability Dashboard

The POST Board is hereby directed to establish, within 18 months of this order, a public-facing Minnesota Public Safety Accountability Dashboard. Using data already collected under MN Stat. 626.8459 (use of force reporting) and MN Stat. 626.89 (Peace Officer Discipline Procedures Act), the Dashboard shall publish, on a quarterly basis:

  • Use of force incidents by agency, incident type, and race of subject — in plain language, not statistical jargon
  • Aggregate officer discipline outcomes by agency — complaint type, resolution category, and timeline — without individual officer identifying information that would violate existing due process protections
  • Complaint resolution timelines by agency
  • Co-responder deployment data and call diversion outcomes, once the expansion program is operational

The Dashboard shall be publicly accessible at no cost, mobile-optimized, and updated within 30 days of each quarterly reporting period. Agencies with 25 or more sworn officers are required to report data on the Dashboard timeline. All other agencies are encouraged to participate voluntarily and provided technical assistance to do so.

POST Board Audit — Staffing and Processing Review

The POST Board is directed to submit to the Governor, within 90 days, a full operational review of its current licensing and certification processes — including the military reciprocity pathway, out-of-state reciprocity, and standard PPOE certification timelines. The review shall identify all administrative bottlenecks, fee structures, and procedural requirements that extend certification timelines beyond operational necessity. Recommendations from this review will be used to restructure POST Board operations to prioritize throughput, reduce unnecessary delays, and eliminate any administrative requirements not grounded in genuine public safety standards. This is not an attack on POST Board staff. It is an audit of the system they are working in — and a commitment to fixing what the audit finds.

Effective Date & Implementation

This Executive Order is effective immediately upon signing and shall remain in effect for the duration of this administration, or until superseded by statute establishing equivalent or greater protections. Agency heads named in this order shall submit implementation plans to the Governor's Office within 30 days of signing. Nothing in this order shall be construed to limit the POST Board's authority to maintain and enforce genuine minimum qualification standards for peace officer licensure — the reforms in this order address administrative process, not safety standards.

A determination that any provision of this Executive Order is invalid will not affect the enforceability of any other provision of this Executive Order. Rather, the invalid provision will be modified to the extent necessary so that it is enforceable.
______________________________
Tom Berhane
Governor, State of Minnesota
Signed January 4, 2027
______________________________
[Secretary of State]
Secretary of State, State of Minnesota
Filed According to Law
This Is
Directive 04

Officers are burning out. Veterans are being turned away. Communities have stopped trusting the system meant to protect them. Every one of those problems has a solution. Minnesota has been choosing the argument instead of the fix. That ends on day one.

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