Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara raised eyebrows over the weekend after openly suggesting that the legality of a fatal police shooting is now beside the point in his city, as long as the public is angry.
During a nationally televised interview, O’Hara said that even if an investigation ultimately determines the shooting of Alex Pretti was legally justified, it “doesn’t matter” because of the level of outrage surrounding the incident.
“Even if there is an investigation that ultimately proves that at the time of the shooting it was legally justified, I don’t think that even matters at this point,” O’Hara said, pointing instead to “so much outrage and concern” in Minneapolis.
The comment drew immediate pushback from the interviewer, who asked plainly, “What do you mean it doesn’t matter at this point?”
From a law-and-order perspective, that question cuts to the heart of the problem. If legal justification no longer matters to police leadership, then what does? Public perception? Protest pressure? The threat of riots?
O’Hara’s remarks appear to concede what many critics have warned about for years: that policing decisions in Minneapolis are increasingly driven by fear of backlash rather than by the rule of law. In a city still scarred by the aftermath of the George Floyd riots, officers are being told, implicitly or otherwise, that lawful actions may still cost them their careers, or worse, if the mob disapproves.
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