Minneapolis violence prevention contracts are riddled with red flags as the city tries to clamp down

In the nearly five years since George Floyd’s murder, Minneapolis has poured tens of millions of dollars into alternative public safety efforts. But the violence prevention contracts with community groups are riddled with red flags that raise questions about oversight and financial controls, according to interviews and internal city documents obtained by the Star Tribune.

In one instance, a vendor claimed reimbursement for working eight hours a day, seven days a week for months on end. The city attorney’s office also recently found evidence of vendors double-billing the city and Hennepin County for the same work. Some of the nonprofits that have received city contracts don’t do basic financial reporting or register as charities with the attorney general’s office, as required by law. And a city employee approved hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to vendors without substantiating invoices.

As a result, the once nationally renowned violence prevention program is in disarray, with even its most vocal City Council supporters demanding reform. Now on its third director in five years, the department is tightening controls and enacting new rules, but some contractors are pushing back, threatening to walk away.

Community Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette said the Neighborhood Safety Department, which he oversees, is strengthening its invoicing and procurement processes.

“We want to be good stewards of taxpayers’ dollars,” he said. “There’s indications that we’re on the right path.”

Since 2020, the city has ramped up alternatives to police, with overall spending on these programs increasing from $2.7 million in 2020 to $23 million last year. The most visible program is violence interruption, where community members — some of them former gang members or ex-cons — use their street smarts to defuse conflicts.

The city auditor recently recommended the city withhold its final payment to a company that does youth gang violence intervention, saying evidence suggests the organization is billing Minneapolis and Hennepin County for the same work. City documents indicate the county first alerted the city.

Jamil Jackson, executive director of the youth mentoring group Change Equals Opportunity (CEO), had a county contract, and a city contract that expired last month.

Jackson “told” a city employee he worked almost full time for Hennepin County and the city last year, in addition to working as a part-time teacher and head basketball coach at Henry High School, according to internal city documents.

Jackson also owns and operates three businesses, including one that hires people with criminal histories — raising concerns about “whether these services are truly benefiting the community,” according to an internal city email.

The city auditor reviewed his contract, and found “Jackson bills 80 to 90 hours per week” to the city and county, according to a recent internal city memo.

The auditor also found:

Jackson said in an interview he only works one hour a day as a teacher with Minneapolis Public Schools’ Office of Black Student Achievement, and has only had a county contract since August.

Jackson said he hires youth and felons to work for his businesses “because nobody else will hire them.”

“They’re gun-toting kids, and they’re kids that are on the verge of being victimized, and so we can’t put them at a Target or a Cub or anywhere like that,” he said.

Jackson said he’s gotten $352,000 contracts annually in recent years, and until last fall, the city never required him to submit receipts, timesheets, or any documentation.

“All of those vendors who have been doing this work for a long time have kind of been used to that,” he said.

The city recently concluded that another gang violence interruption contractor was claiming the same payroll expenses for both a city and county contract for group violence intervention.

Urban Youth Conservation submitted invoices for reimbursement of $4,000 in payroll expenses to both the city and county, according to a letter from the city to the nonprofit’s president, Ferome Brown.

The city notified the organization of the duplicate reimbursement request in March; 13 days later, the nonprofit again billed the city and county for wages on two of the same dates and times. The city wrote that the two incidents within weeks of each other “raise significant concerns regarding UYC’s billing practices.”

The city asked for a detailed accounting of all payments the nonprofit has received under the contract, and told the nonprofit to come up with a “corrective action plan.”

Brown said the first incident was a mistake and it was rectified, but the most recent one was not. He met with city officials Tuesday.

“It was just a billing error,” he said. “I definitely didn’t double dip.”

Last summer, the city attorney’s office found another vendor, W Berry Consulting LLC, claimed reimbursement for working virtually nonstop on its city contract for gang intervention.

A review by the city attorney’s office questioned whether Weston Berry-Belton, “a solo practitioner,” would be capable of taking on additional work, given he had already been paid for 1,570 work hours and $93,673 in direct program costs for 2024. Since he was halfway through the contract, that works out to over eight hours a day, every day, including weekends.

A 2023 lawsuit against the city also contended Berry did not provide “any documentation” when he submitted invoices for more than $50,000. Nevertheless, the organization was chosen in February for another $207,612 contract combatting gang violence.

Berry-Belton did not respond to a request for comment.

Sasha Cotton became director of the Office of Violence Prevention when it was established in 2019. The violence interruption program was set up quickly as violence spiked after Floyd’s killing, she said.

While the violence interrupters were highly visible — walking the streets in groups wearing bright, matching shirts or coats — figuring out what they were doing was less clear. Cotton told the City Council the interrupters had made hundreds of contacts and de-escalated conflicts, but she provided no reports documenting that in 2022. The city said at the time that the information was gathered verbally.

Communities United Against Police Brutality, a longtime advocate for police accountability in Minneapolis, asked six nonprofits for invoices, monthly progress reports and training records. Out of six, some responded, others said they had no records, and one blew them off entirely. So CUAPB sued.

City officials said they met with the groups regularly and required them to do annual reports, but when CUAPB asked for notes of those conversations, the city said there weren’t any, CUAPB President Michelle Gross said.

CUAPB supports non-police responses, but Gross said, “This business of handing out money with no accountability is just not accountability.”

The city is working to improve oversight of the programs, but some of the groups are bristling at the new requirements in contracts, with several threatening to walk away.

When Luana Nelson-Brown became director of the Neighborhood Safety Department, the successor to the Office of Violence Prevention, in the summer of 2023, she found “some very unethical practices happening” and little documentation of how money was spent, she said in a recent interview.

“I couldn’t tell you what the hell it was spent on,” she said. “Some programs felt very entitled to that money.”

She stopped payments to vendors last year, saying there wasn’t enough documentation to support the invoices.

New contracts have financial stability requirements; set hourly pay limits; and require contractors to submit new staffers’ identity for vetting.

Lea Lakes, interim director of the Neighborhood Safety Department, told the City Council in February the department is trying to improve transparency and accountability.

Two of the five vendors recently chosen for violence interrupter contracts say they may not sign them.

T.O.U.C.H. Executive Director Muhammad Abdul-Ahad said all the new requirements will require him to lay off most of his staff of 32. He said he may not sign the contract.

“They basically control the budget,” he said.

Mad Dads Executive Director Jordan Borer Nelson started doing violence prevention work in the summer of 2023, but said he plans to reject a $619,394 annual violence interruption contract because the city is capping hourly wages of certain employees, mandating he pay benefits and dictating what time people work.

Meanwhile, he said he’s never been paid on time, and as of April 1, he was still owed money for work done in January. He said the city cited the 2023 Zachary Coppola lawsuit as the reason. The suit, which has since been settled, accused the city of using substandard accounting methods.

Cotton said the city requires vendors to hold onto receipts, but they don’t need to be requested for every contract.

“They’re just individuals with passion and relationships and skill sets, but they’re not business people,” she said.

The organizations sometimes struggle to comply with basic financial reporting requirements, like registering with the attorney general’s charities division, making tax documents publicly available or filing audits with the state.

The nonprofit 21 Days of Peace, for example, isn’t registered as a state charity, and doesn’t make public certain tax documents. The IRS website says its federal tax exempt status was automatically revoked for not filing a Form 990 for three consecutive years. The group’s tax-exempt status was reinstated in September, IRS records show.

The Rev. Jerry McAfee has said 21 Days of Peace is part of his other nonprofit, Salem, Inc. McAfee made headlines in February when he interrupted a City Council meeting and threatened council members, saying some were ignoring his calls. About a month later, the city withdrew a recommendation that Salem, Inc., get a nearly $650,000 violence prevention contract after two of his workers were charged with multiple felonies in connection with a north Minneapolis shootout after a community barbecue.

Internal emails show a city employee failed to substantiate hundreds of thousands of dollars in vendor invoices.

The emails from January 2024 show Nelson-Brown pressed former Neighborhood Safety employee Ethrophic Burnett to explain how she had approved payments based solely on unsubstantiated invoices. It was Burnett’s job to verify the city only paid reimbursable expenses.

Burnett replied that she spot-checked the vendors by driving by and checking on them and had weekly and monthly meetings with the teams.

One day after she debated the rules with her superiors by email, Burnett announced she was leaving the Neighborhood Safety Department.

A year later, Nelson-Brown resigned amid allegations that the department advocated contracts for those with personal connections to city staff, including a $175,000 consulting contract with a man she previously dated.

In one of the consultant’s progress reports, he wrote that he “restructured the physical space,” moving Nelson-Brown’s desk “to a more strategic location” and creating a “war room.”

Nelson-Brown denied wrongdoing, saying she was vilified and pushed out of her job for demanding more financial oversight, and alleging city leadership prevented her from speaking publicly about millions of dollars paid to contractors “without a shred of documentation.”

Meanwhile, Burnett landed in the City Auditor’s division of oversight and evaluation, and is running for the City Council in Ward 5.