Officials with the City of Minneapolis have released previously redacted invoices from the independent monitor overseeing police reform efforts.

The invoices were submitted by Effective Law Enforcement for All, or ELEFA. The group has billed the city more than $1.1 million from March of last year to January of this year, according to city records.

When 5 INVESTIGATES first received more than 200 pages of invoices back in April, the descriptions of what that money was spent on were completely redacted.

The redacted portion of the documents cited a Minnesota statute that governs the release of information related to “pending civil legal action.”

Hours before a story about those redactions was set to air and after three days of all-day promotion of that story, the city released the invoices without redactions.

What’s in the invoices?

A review of more than 200 pages of invoices found the majority of taxpayer money is billed as services for the work of the monitoring team.

The data shows lead monitors — David Douglass and Michael Harrison — billed the city for nearly $250,000. The two came to Minneapolis half a dozen times from March of 2024 to January.

The thousands of line items range in amounts, from $2 for a light rail ticket to $3,360, which a monitoring team member billed the city for a day-long ride along with police officers.

While the City of Minneapolis released the documents, the city attorney’s office maintains that some of the data in the invoices is not public under the law. 

“Transparency is a core value of the City of Minneapolis,” read a statement from the city. “We are committed to sharing information with the public in accordance with state laws. We will continue to fulfill data requests to the best of our ability while adhering to legal requirements and will always take the opportunity to conduct additional analysis to determine whether we can release additional information.”