Posted on 06/07/2020 2:31:50 PM PDT by Ennis85
On Sunday afternoon, a veto-proof majority of Minneapolis City Council members will announce their commitment to disbanding the city’s embattled police department, which has endured relentless criticism in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, on May 25.
“We’re here because we hear you. We are here today because George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis Police. We are here because here in Minneapolis and in cities across the United States it is clear that our existing system of policing and public safety is not keeping our communities safe,” Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender said Sunday. “Our efforts at incremental reform have failed. Period.”
The City Council’s decision follows those of several other high-profile partners, including Minneapolis Public Schools, and the University of Minnesota, and Minneapolis Parks and Recreation, to sever longstanding ties with the MPD.
The announcement today also arrives after several members of the Council have expressed a complete loss of confidence in the Minneapolis Police Department.
“We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” tweeted Council Member Jeremiah Ellison on June 4, pledging to “dramatically rethink” the city’s approach to emergency response. In a TIME op-ed published the next day, Council Member Steve Fletcher cited the MPD’s lengthy track record of misconduct and “decades-long history of violence and discrimination”—all of which are subjects of an ongoing Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigation—as compelling justifications for the department’s disbandment. “We can resolve confusion over a $20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon or pulling out handcuffs,” Fletcher wrote.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said last night that he opposed disbanding the police department at a protest organized and led by Black Visions Collective against police violence in the city. That answer earned him a thundering chorus of boos and chants of “Shame!” and “Go home, Jacob, go home!” The New York Times called the scene a “humiliation on a scale almost unimaginable outside of cinema or nightmare.”
“The last Democratic mayor, Betsy Hodges, handled the murder of Jamar [Clark] poorly. We told her she was going to lose her job. And she did,” Miski Noor, a Black Visions Collective organizer, said on Frey’s refusal to disband the Minneapolis Police Department.
Since taking office in January 2018, Frey has overseen reforms to the MPD’s body camera policy that impose harsher discipline on officers who fail to comply, and barred officers from participating in so-called “Bulletproof Warrior” training, which encourages law enforcement to use deadly force if they feel their lives are in jeopardy. The officer who shot and killed Philando Castile during a 2016 traffic stop had attended a seminar two years earlier.
More recently, however, Frey has faced criticism from community groups for supporting increases to the MPD’s budget, and for the city’s failure to invest significantly in community-based public safety programs during his tenure.
For years, activists have argued that MPD has failed to actually keep the city safe, and City Councilmembers echoed that sentiment today during their announcement. MPD’s record for solving serious crimes in the city is consistently low. For example, in 2019, Minneapolis police only cleared 56 percent of cases in which a person was killed. For rapes, the police department’s solve rate is abysmally low. In 2018, their clearance rate for rape was just 22 percent. In other words, four out of every five rapes go unsolved in Minneapolis. Further casting doubt on the department’s commitment to solving sexual assaults, MPD announced last year the discovery of 1,700 untested rape kits spanning 30 years, which officials said had been misplaced.
The Council’s move is consistent with rapidly-shifting public opinion regarding the urgency of overhauling the American model of law enforcement. Since Floyd’s killing and the protests that ensued, officials in Los Angeles and New York City have called for making deep cuts to swollen police budgets and reallocating those funds for education, affordable housing, and other social services. Law enforcement officers are not equipped to be experts in responding to mental health crises, often leading to tragic results—nationally, about half of police killings involve someone living with mental illness or disability. As a result, public health experts have long advocated for dispatching medical professionals and/or social workers, not armed police, to respond to calls related to substance use and mental health. Polling from Data for Progress indicates that more than two-thirds of voters—68 percent—support the creation of such programs, versions of which are already in place in other cities such as, Eugene, Oregon; Austin, Texas; and Denver, Colorado.
“Our commitment is to do what is necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the truth that the Minneapolis Police are not doing that,” Bender said Sunday. “Our commitment is to end our city’s toxic relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department, to end policing as we know it, and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.”
I would imagine there would be no info available regarding those stats.
““We can resolve confusion over a $20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon or pulling out handcuffs,” Fletcher wrote. “
Who eats cigarettes?
The people of the great city of Minneapolis are better than people in other cities. They don’t need no stinkin’ police.
Who may transform your little paradise into another TWSH!
Well, prepare for Hell on earth because the left are going to be doubling their efforts to create chaos every day until Nov. 4.
Option z for them is that Trump gets re-elected. Anything goes in furtherance of that effort.
Ping for later
Disbanding police will generate the following consequences probably more. But, these come to mind.
- further depopulation of these liberal cities.
- communities will organize and fund their own private PD’s.
- communities that can’t afford to organize their own private PD’s will form vigilante organizations for protection.
- Lastly, there will be further Balkanization of the country; possibly kinda similar to Canada, maybe more so. At any rate storm clouds are gathering.
If they thought they were going to get money from the Federal Government, they just insured they won’t. It’s incredible that a City Council gets to make this decision for the people paying the taxes. They think if they pay the hoodlums, they won’t create havoc. It’s so sad that it’s funny that this is the solution they came up with.
They can always vote them out come Nov. LOL! Did I actually write that down?
“....activists have argued that MPD has failed to actually keep the city safe...”
The City Council sure hasn’t.
You're about to see a protection racket spring up that will put the Mafia to shame. Every sane resident better get out of that ****hole NOW.
just when you think liberals can’t get any stupider they prove they can- iq approaching moron level, common sense -zero.
On my list of “places to never visit in the USA” (in my Chevrolet)
No cops to arrest the vigilantes who will be armed to the teeth and who will take no prisoners.
I assume policing will be left to gangs who will set up territories and protection rackets.
Have ready on hand, the Drug Cartels of Mexico waiting to come and help you keep your communities secure.....
So some people will die...get over it. They would have died from COVID-19 in a couple months anyway.
It isn’t actually that unpresidented for cities to disband police departments, but usually, I think it is because they can’t afford them. They then enter into a contract with another agency, state police, sheriff’s department, or a neighboring city for policing. The problem with that is, the contract city loses a lot of control over the policies governing the cops. The other thing is, the agency will often hire most of the cops from the city because they can’t fill the manpower need.
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