So these crazy bastards are actually going to disband the PD? can they do that?
Sure, why not? This is their plan (seriously):
— County mental health professionals sent to mental health calls, not police officers.
– Using fire department EMTs to respond to opioid overdose calls.
– The use of “unarmed, community-oriented street teams” on weekend nights downtown “to focus on de-escalation.”
– Traffic enforcement turned over to cameras and potentially parking enforcement teams.
– And while there was no specific reference made to plans for handling violent crime, Fletcher says the council would “invest in cultural competency and mental health training, de-escalation and conflict resolution.”
...I wonder what the police union’s stance on this
will be.... I am not a labor lawyer or anything
like that but I just have to wonder how this is all
gonna play out....but the very fact that this idea
is at all being put forth it insanity - pure and
simple.....just proves that the inmates ARE running
the asylum ......
Yes
Will insurance companies write insurance for cars, businesses and homes in cities without police departments?
Police department organization, structure, functions, and authority are not accidental or haphazard. They are the products of several hundred years of law enforcement experience. You don’t just toss all that out and attempt to replace it with a bunch of untried alternatives thought up by academics who will cut and run back to their respective ivory towers when things get too hot.
But Yes, the council can abolish it. However, it will be back (perhaps with a different name, etc.) eventually when all those touchy feely social work types are required to come into direct and continuous contact with the hardened criminal element, the insane, the addicted, the spouse and child abusers, the store looters, etc. etc. at all hours of the day and night, 24/7/365.
However, if the council thinks the police department is expensive now, just wait until they have to negotiate with the union to staff their shiny new alternative in the middle of the crisis. Then there will be the clean up from disestablishing the police department; especially the breach of contract lawsuits (multiple) over pensions.
In the meantime, don’t expect any officer to be too willing to risk life and limb to serve and protect a city that has rejected them.
Of course, the taxpayers - of all colors - those who can read the way the wind is going to blow, are going to be heading to the safer suburbs taking their property and city income tax revenues with them. Real estate sales are going to boom in the commuting distance suburbs and collapse in the urban centers.
And that is just the start.
Poor Minneapolis.
The reaping should be a hoot.