Molly Fischer
Molly Fischer’s office offers glimpses of a career both established and still unfolding. Mementos from more than two decades in law enforcement sit neatly on her desk and shelves, and a few framed photos rest against the wall, waiting to be hung. She’s still settling into her new office as the incoming Minneapolis Police Department’s (MPD) 2nd Precinct Inspector, a position she started around a month before her March 9 interview with the Northeaster.
“The main goal here is to run a precinct where the community truly feels as if they’re getting the response from our officers and the service from our officers that they feel like they deserve,” Inspector Fischer said, “And that the officers are getting everything that they need so that they can actually do their job well.”
The promotion came after Nicholas Torborg, who served as the MPD’s 2nd Precinct Inspector for two years, retired on December 31, 2025.
Minneapolis has five precincts, and each has an inspector as its leader. The 2nd Precinct’s service area includes Northeast and is bounded by the Mississippi River on the west and south, 37th Avenue NE on the north, and St. Anthony and St. Paul on the east.
Each inspector is responsible for overseeing the overall operations of a specific precinct within the MPD. This includes, among other things, allocating resources for officers, training and development, ensuring officers follow proper procedures and serving as a bridge between law enforcement leadership and officers to ensure the department’s goals and missions are being executed at the precincts.
“I think the piece that I like the most is that you’re the bridge on the way back as well,” Fischer said. “You’re getting the information, what the officers are saying they need, ideas that those officers have, stuff that’s coming from the community with those concerns — you’re that bridge back to the chief as well in that front office to say, here are the needs that are being requested and trying to make sure that those things actually get accomplished.”
A way into the force
The new role feels like a full circle moment for Inspector Fischer. Outside the building, traffic hums along Central Avenue — the same corridor that, long before she wore a badge, she traveled countless times as a child.
Fischer was born and raised in New Hope, but she took regular drives up and down the road to visit her grandparents. That road now falls under her watch.
“The entire time I was growing up, my grandpa really felt like you could get anywhere that you needed to go by using Central,” Fischer recalled.
After graduating high school, she attended community college while she evaluated her future career path. At one point, she started working as a security guard at Target Center, where she interacted with many MPD officers and became interested in upholding standards to keep the community safe. But there was a particular female officer who became a role model for Fischer.
“Ultimately, I kind of decided while watching her do her job there, that that was something I could do,” she shared. “Watching another female doing this job and thinking to myself, ‘I could do that’—that’s when I made the choice and decided what I was going to do.”
Fischer served as a community service officer for a little more than a year before she went through the police academy in 2002. Since then, she’s served in many roles over her nearly 25-year career: answering 911 calls on the north side of Minneapolis, being promoted to sergeant in the third precinct, serving on mounted patrol for nearly five years and working in the violent crimes division. She was also a lieutenant and oversaw the Field Training Officer (FTO) Program for five years, and just before being named Inspector, she spent another year and a half in the third precinct as lieutenant.
“That was one of the reasons I wanted to take on this role,” Fischer said. “I really felt that being in all of those different positions helped set me up for success, to be in this role and understand and be able to explain some of those things to the officers, and have a good understanding that I can take back to the front office as well and explain things to them.”
The start of her time as inspector hasn’t been without its challenges. When asked about how she felt the presence of ICE officers in Minneapolis may have impacted police operations at the start of the year, she shared a sentiment similar to what the broader police department’s leadership has expressed: They felt strongly about continuing to provide adequate police service.
The MPD was “Trying to control what (we) could control, still responding to calls as best we could,” Fischer said. “Obviously, we got pulled away from doing some of those things because of what was going on here. So our job was to try to efficiently and effectively … provide the police services that the residents deserved here (in response to) the crime that was occurring within the city bounds.”
Moving forward, she’s optimistic about the future of the department as policing continues to evolve.
“(Officers) want to evolve and have better techniques of how to do things, obviously, with the goal that the community is safer,” Fischer said. “I love the profession of policing. I absolutely believe in the importance of this profession, and I believe in the oath that I took when I graduated from the academy. That is what has kept me here in this department.”