Ryan does not support efforts to dismantle the Police Department and replace it with a public safety agency. And, ultimately, I didn’t feel like I had much of a long-term future within MPD.” “I dealt with constant harassment, sexual harassment, discrimination. “It was a long 6½ years with the department,” Ryan said, sitting in her sparse northeast Minneapolis living room among stacks of luggage. Once her fellow officers learned she supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 and marched against Trump, they refused to partner with her and purposely stalled in backing her up during dangerous calls, she said. Bob Kroll, who was then head of the Minneapolis police union, appeared onstage with Trump during a rally downtown. them” complex among officers toward the communities they serve. She described a cultlike adherence to former President Donald Trump’s “Back the Blue” politics, which she said has given rise to an “us vs. Ryan, who agreed to speak with the Star Tribune and FRONTLINE last week, a day before she left the country, said she endured years of harassment in what she described as a misogynistic and homophobic culture running deep within the department. The Minnesota Government Data Practices Act limits what we can say regarding this matter.” The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) declined an interview for this story, but city spokesman Casper Hill said in a statement: “The City takes all allegations of discrimination and harassment very seriously and will participate in any investigation by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. When Ryan raised the disparity, the field training sergeant said the force could not risk Ryan putting her “personal agenda above the department while training new recruits out on the streets,” according to the complaint. One of the men violated the department’s search and seizure policy, Ryan said, and the other has an open DWI case. As of June, the department had promoted two straight men on her shift, the complaint says. The complaint says police leadership cited the unsanctioned interview - her only discipline - in denying her a job as a field training officer this year. Ryan also filed a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, alleging her former employer discriminated against her because she’s a lesbian who advocated for “women and queer officers” in the workplace. 21 and left Minnesota a week later for a new career outside the country.
Ryan’s infraction: speaking without permission to a magazine columnist about what she called a toxic, para-militant police culture that breeds dangerous officers like Derek Chauvin. She’s also the only Minneapolis police officer formally disciplined for misconduct tied to the department’s riot response last year that prompted repeated allegations of unchecked police brutality. Colleen Ryan is an openly gay, liberal feminist who wears T-shirts emblazoned with Ruth Bader Ginsburg quotes.