CULTURETECHLENSMedaria Arradondo
PROVISIONAL evidence grade of this record
Medaria Arradondo (born 1967) was the first Black chief of the Minneapolis Police Department. A fifth-generation Minnesotan of Colombian heritage whose paternal grandparents came from Colombia, Arradondo joined the MPD in 1989 and worked patrol, school resource, property crimes, and internal affairs, which he later headed. In 2007 he was one of five Black officers who sued the department alleging a pattern of discrimination and retaliation; the case settled in 2009 for $740,000 and Arradondo's rank was restored. He rose to deputy chief and assistant chief. Arradondo became acting chief in July 2017 after Chief Janeé Harteau resigned in the aftermath of the police killing of Justine Damond, and was confirmed that September — the department's first Black chief. He ended the department's low-level marijuana stings in 2018 after data showed stark racial disparities in them. On May 25, 2020, Arradondo's officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd on a Minneapolis street. Arradondo fired Chauvin and the three other officers involved the next day — an unusually fast move for a police chief — and later testified for the prosecution at Chauvin's murder trial, a sitting chief testifying against his own former officer. He announced in December 2021 that he would not seek a third term and retired in January 2022.
Notes
Merged 2026-11-02 from the staged police chiefs packet (website/.build-work/scratch-v114/police/) under the GOV-006 founder gate opened 2026-11-02; the staged record is carried verbatim — no claim upgraded in transit (GOV-004). · Roles as staged: Police leadership — Chief, Minneapolis Police Department (2017–2022) · Photo: Photo © Chad Davis, CC BY-SA 2.0. Source: CultureTechLens. Full per-asset record in this package's photo-records.json, keyed to CTL-E-6786.
Sources
- Wikipedia, 'Medaria Arradondo' — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medaria_Arradondo
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Chicago: CultureTechLens. “Medaria Arradondo (CTL-E-6786).” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph. Chicago, IL: CultureTechLens, 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-6786/
APA: CultureTechLens. (2026). Medaria Arradondo (CTL-E-6786) [Entity record]. CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-6786/
MLA: CultureTechLens. “Medaria Arradondo (CTL-E-6786).” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph, 2026, https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-6786/
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