As children clamored for treats at an ice cream truck in St. Paul, Bill Finney stepped out of an unmarked police car, helped them make their choices and paid for them.
“This is what makes Bill Finney special,” Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said of Finney’s deep-rooted community connections.
Finney’s last day with the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office was Friday, the second time he has retired in 20 years. In 2004, Finney left the St. Paul Police Department after 12 years as police chief — and most people still call him “Chief.”
Finney and Fletcher ran against each other for sheriff in 2006—a politically contentious race that Finney narrowly lost. After being voted out of office, Fletcher won re-election in 2018, convincing Finney to run for him.
“He’s the original ambassador for police-community relations,” Fletcher said. “… We both wanted to put the future of policing in the community above all the differences we had in the past.”
It’s been a challenging job. Finney was in charge of overseeing community relations at the sheriff’s office during a time of distrust in law enforcement. And the sheriff also asked Finney to step in to run the county jail when some employees said they had been discriminated against.
There have been lawsuits over conditions at the prison in recent years, and the Minnesota Department of Corrections ordered the prison to address overcrowding after an investigation found that staffing shortages led to delayed or denied medical treatment for inmates. The prison has hired more staff and is complying with state requirements, DOC said.
The state’s first black police chief
When Finney told Fletcher he wasn’t going to renew his police officer license, the sheriff reminded him that he didn’t need it to be in charge of the jail.
“I said, ‘Well, Linda Finney says it’s time for me to sit down,’” Bill Finney said of his wife. “And I’m 75½, that’s enough. … It’s been a long career.”
Finney grew up in the St. Paul’s Rondo area. His family’s home was demolished when Interstate 94 was built through the neighborhood.
He began serving as a reserve officer in Mankato during his senior year at Mankato State College (now Minnesota State University, Mankato), from 1969 to 1970. Finney became a St. Paul police officer in 1971.
“I never thought I would be a chef,” he said. “When I was young, all I wanted to do was be a homicide detective and the more I got into it, the more I said, ‘I think I want to supervise and manage officers.’”
Finney said he was not given opportunities in the department to advance beyond his rank of captain. He decided to run for the St. Paul School Board “because I needed to show the outside world that I could do more.” He won the election and served on the school council for three years.
“The other thing that happened that made me very qualified to be police chief was Rodney King,” Finney said. King, who was black, was beaten by white officers in California and a jury found them not guilty in 1992. At a time of critical race relations, it was the right time for Minnesota – and St. Paul – to have its first black police force. chief, Finney said.
Fletcher, who became a St. Paul police officer in 1977, worked for Finney when he was police chief.
Building community relationships at the sheriff’s office
The 2006 sheriff’s election between incumbent Fletcher and former police chief Finney featured plenty of personal and professional beef. Fletcher won by just over 1,000 votes, narrowly missing an automatic recount.
Then, during the 2010 sheriff’s race, former St. Paul Police Chief Matt Bostrom ousted Fletcher, who had been sheriff for 16 years. Bostrom retired midway through his second term as sheriff, and Jack Serier, Bostrom’s second in command, was appointed sheriff in 2017.
One day Finney, a cigar connoisseur, was at a private cigar club in Lilydale, where he liked to read. He looked up and saw Fletcher enter. “I knew Bob didn’t smoke cigars, so I said, ‘What’s going on?'” Finney recalled.
Fletcher asked Finney if he would run for sheriff, and suggested they run against each other again. Finney said “no,” but told the former sheriff that, from everything he heard, Fletcher would win again if he ran.
“I said, ‘Everyone knows Fletcher. They either like you or they can’t stand you, but everyone knows who you are,’ so name recognition is nine-tenths of the equation here,” Finney said recently.
Fletcher asked Finney if he would come work for him if he became sheriff again.
After Fletcher was elected in November 2018, then-St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell — who worked with both Finney and Fletcher — also tried to convince Finney to work for the sheriff’s office.
“One thing is clear about Chief Finney: Public service runs through his veins,” Axtell said. “I just knew he wasn’t done being a public servant and he still had a lot to give.”
Finney talked to his wife about working for Fletcher as an undersheriff. Linda Finney asked, “Well, why would you want to do that?” said Bill Finney. He told her, “He’s a different Bob Fletcher than the one I used to have conflicts with.” Finney said he saw a softer side of Fletcher emerge.
Fletcher agrees. His 26-year-old son Kyle died of a drug overdose in 2015. He lost his sister-in-law to breast cancer. “Death gives you perspective,” Fletcher said. “… My evolution was also to observe what was happening in the police world.”
Still, Finney pressed Fletcher, asking, “Why do you want me to work for you?” Finney said the sheriff told him he wanted to work on building relationships with communities of color. Both men said Fletcher had solid ties to the Asian and Somali communities, but not to the black community.
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“You have to have good relationships, you have to know who the movers and shakers are in the communities,” Finney said. “They have to trust you and like you and believe that you will do your best and that you will investigate everything that someone has questions about. That’s what Bob wanted to help me with, and I was happy to do so.”
Finney and Fletcher hired people who were committed to the community, including people with close ties to the Black communities in St. Paul and its suburbs.
Tyrone Terrill, president of the African American Leadership Council, said Finney “did something that many people thought couldn’t be done, in terms of reconnecting us with the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department.”
“It’s the tremendous confidence in him,” Terrill said of how Finney built connections. “Chief Finney was the drum major for justice and equality. The foundation is so good that we know it will continue even when he is gone.”
Managing the prison
When George Floyd was killed in 2020 and then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was arrested, he was originally held in the Ramsey County Jail.
Eight correctional officers who worked for the sheriff’s office filed a lawsuit, saying they were initially ordered to stay away from the floor where Chauvin was being held captive. They said in their lawsuit that they were “separated and prevented from doing their jobs… solely because of the color of their skin.” Ramsey County reached a nearly $1.5 million settlement with the officers.
Fletcher asked Finney to take over management of the jail after the Chauvin incident in 2020. Finney had faced tensions with staff during his time on the force. He said that was why he mainly spoke to prison guards, especially those who were dissatisfied.
The undersheriff had never worked in prison — “I just took people to prison,” he said of his time as a police officer — and he promoted veteran prison guards from the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office to his top staff.
In 2021, a woman suffered a broken shin bone and severed an artery while in jail. She filed a federal lawsuit alleging that correctional officers used excessive force and that she was denied medical treatment for 17 hours, resulting in her leg being deformed. Ramsey County settled the lawsuit last year for $3 million.
Finney said he was “really angry” when he heard about the woman’s condition and ordered her to be taken to the hospital.
The FBI contacted the woman’s attorney, Richard Student, and indicated they had opened their own investigation. It has since been closed and the prosecution has been dropped, Student said in an update he received.
“It’s a difficult operation,” Fletcher said of locking up 20,000 people a year at the prison. “We’re not perfect, but managing that imperfection is part of our job, and Bill did a great job of managing the problems that would develop.”
Finney had the opportunity to hire correctional officers and he said he was committed to recruiting more women. “It was kind of a glass ceiling and I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen — if they deserved it, they got it,” he said of promotions. The jail’s new undersheriff, Ashlee Bryant, is the first woman to lead the Ramsey County jail, Fletcher said.
Finney also wanted to hire more correctional officers of color to better reflect the prison population. “You have less conflict when they can look across the street and see that there’s a correctional officer who looks like them,” Finney said.
Life after retirement
Finney’s wife, Linda, retired as chief inspector of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in 2006; she was the first woman to lead the agency. They enjoy taking cruises and Bill said they are looking forward to traveling more.
Finney was an avid motorcyclist, riding 20,000 miles each summer from coast to coast before he became undersheriff.
“There’s three or four old retired guys riding with me,” Finney said. “They said, ‘Hey, let’s go to lunch. Where do you want to go to lunch? Let’s go to Maine, get some lobster.’ We told our wives and off we went.”
But he has only ridden four times this year because he has problems with his hip. He had his left hip replaced 12 years ago and his right hip is next.
He and Linda have grandchildren of different ages and now also a great-grandchild.
When Finney was police chief, he spoke to classes at the academy as people became St. Paul officers. He encouraged them to maintain their friendships with people who were not officers, which he said is still good advice to keep them grounded.
“After a while, you get a certain hardness about yourself and you think the world is against you and only the police understand you,” Finney said. “I told them, ‘Go around to the people who are your lifelong friends and hear how normal people, which is almost everyone, look at a certain situation. You need to hear that.'”
