[zeugma]

I’m a bit unclear on exactly where a court gets the authority to tell a city how many cops to hire.

[Bruce Campbells Chin]

The writ of Mandamus linked in the articles says that the Minneapolis City Charter, Section 7.3, specifies that the City must have 0.0017 licensed police officers per city resident.

So the court got its authority from a City Charter provision that the city itself enacted, and the plaintiffs sought to require the city to comply with its Charter.