Four days later, police shot a black man alleged to be a gang member on the city's North Side. In subsequent media accounts, witnesses claimed that they heard one cop allude to payback for the death of Melissa Schmidt.
Ten days later, a riot erupted on the North Side after a police bullet ricocheted and hit an 11-year-old black boy. Vehicles were torched and vandalized, and two Star Tribune reporters were beaten by the angry mob.
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Police and community leaders alike pointed to the spat between Johnson Lee, then the only African American on the City Council, and the federation as one of the causes of the unrest.
Asked about it today, Delmonico says he regrets "that things got ugly," but declines to elaborate.
But that wasn't the only time Delmonico and the union battled their political enemies. Though the union endorsed R.T. Rybak's mayoral candidacy in 2001 and played a huge role in his upset of incumbent Sharon Sayles Belton, relations had soured by the time he ran for re-election in 2005. Faced with an uptick in crime and the attrition of 170 officers under Rybak, the federation endorsed his opponent, Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin. Rybak eventually won, and noted along the way that "the people spoke, and John Delmonico and his Swift Boat full of special interests sunk."
But Delmonico defends the move, saying that he felt Rybak had been a fair-weather friend to police.
"That was the frosting on the cake with the end of our relationship, because he lied to me," Delmonico concludes. "Disagree with me, but don't do that."
Disagreement might be an understatement regarding a recent dust-up with Ralph Remington, the first-term council member representing the 10th Ward. Remington has long been a vocal critic of the MPD, so in an effort to clear the air, Delmonico and Remington met at a cafe near Uptown.
When Remington arrived, he saw that Delmonico had brought three other members of the federation with him. In an email to Rybak about the incident, Remington complained about the reception he received: "The tone was loud and hostile.... Their manner was aggressive and meant to intimidate."
Remington later noted at a press conference that one of the cops said, "We will remove you," which Remington took as a personal threat. The federation members later claimed that they'd meant they would remove him from office. Either way, it was an unseemly incident.
By now, Remington has calmed, saying that Delmonico eventually apologized. "It just reminded me of some old-school union-boss shit, and it was ham-fisted," Remington says. But it clearly still stings—the federation had endorsed his candidacy in 2005.
Delmonico bluntly assesses both the Rybak and Remington situations. "My issue is that they looked at our endorsement as a one-night stand," he says, "and we look at it as a long-term relationship."
Two years ago, Delmonico signed on to help teach a criminal justice ethics class at Metro State University. Today, Delmonico dresses in a blue oxford button-down and blue jeans. He paces on one side of the room, interjecting real-life cop stories into soliloquies from Mark Mathews, a philosophy professor prone to quoting Sartre.
Delmonico clearly relishes the chance to pontificate. He talks about how the code of silence toward even one bad cop's behavior can bring down an entire department. "It's tough to rat somebody out," he says, "because you want to be accepted by your peers. But I guarantee you, if you do the right thing, if in the end you really do the right thing, five or six of your colleagues will come forward and tell you."
It's a familiar dilemma to Delmoncio. "When a cop comes to me and he's been in trouble," he continues, "I can tell within 10 minutes if he is actually remorseful or not. Seeing the wrongdoing, that's his absolution."
He then goes through a litany of police offenses, some real, some hypothetical. "Why are there violent cops? Why are chiefs inconsistent in doling out suspensions? Is there a reason Minneapolis cops are getting DWIs? Are we treating them rather than just firing them?"
He looks out the classroom window for a moment. "That's what I ask," he says, "And I haven't gotten an answer yet."
