Minneapolis City Council Members Announce Intent To Disband The Police Department

The Appeal ^ | 7th June 2020 | Jay Willis

[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.”

[Syncro]

Plus for diaper boy Franken, they kept counting until SNL won.

[gogeo]

It sometimes appears to me that the degree of intelligence of an individual is inversely proportional to the amount of education (indoctrination) they have consumed.

I draw a distinction between education and schooling. Many are schooled but few are educated. The danger is that those merely schooled are nowhere near as smart as they believe.

[gogeo]

Libs break everything they touch.

[gogeo]

MINNESOTA YOU ARE STUPID BEYOND AVERAGE.

I think Washington deserves at least an honorable mention.

[max americana]

these clowns even make our leftard city council in L.A. look like a GOP convention..

[ThomasNettleton]

I grew up in Minneapolis, about a mile from where this all started. I currently live in a Mpls suburb and have an office downtown, although I’ve been working from home for the last 3 months because of the virus.
Right now my wife and I are in South Dakota looking for property in the Black Hills and NE Wyoming. Hearing this news changes our timetable from eventually to now. When I get back to work I plan to become a home-based worker and never set foot in Minneapolis again. We’ll be moving out of the state as quickly as possible, and taking as many family members with us as we can.
The city’s move is an invitation to criminals from all over the country to come and wreck what’s left of the city. It’s totally insane.

[RetiredArmy]

I still forget the stupid comedian’s name they elected as senator, but I DO remember that photo of him in a piss on yourself diaper. What a stupid person that fool was. Didn’t he have to resign or something? Seems that is what happened.

[Syncro]

That was Al Franken

Plus for diaper boy Franken, they kept counting until SNL won.

I posted that on another thread.

He had at least two instances of sexual harassment that we know of.

Pretty horrific IMO.

There was a woman sitting in a chair completely asleep

Franken went up to her and put his hands on her breasts, cupped them so to say.

He was grinning and had his picture taken.

there is also this one, but I think the victim was ok with it. One hand on her breast and the other on her butt.

Arianna Huffington.

There were a bunch of other accusations, and because of his record of sexually attacking women he was thrown out of office.

[Syncro]

Oh and the diaper pic was outed as a Photoshop.

He doesn’t wear a diaper, he just pees his pants I’m sure...

[attiladhun2]

I finally figured out whats behind Minnesota’s stupidity. Nordic genes. If you look at Scandinavia today, you see similar kinds of idiocy in some ways even worse than the North Star State.