MINNEAPOLIS officials will vote to disband the city’s beleaguered police department in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Nine of 12 city council members joined activists at a rally yesterday afternoon, vowing to end the current system of policing and invest in community-led safety instead.
This comes just as the state of Minnesota has launched a civil rights investigation into Floyd’s death
The 46-year-old black man died after officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25, prompting widespread outrage and four cops being charged.
“It is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe,” Lisa Bender, the council president, said. “Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period.”
Bender went on to say she and the eight other council members that joined the rally are committed to ending the city’s relationship with the police force.
She vowed to “end policing as we know it and recreate systems that actually keep us safe.”
The council president added: “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.
“Our efforts at incremental reform have failed. Period.”
“We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” tweeted Council Member Jeremiah Ellison on June 4, while pledging to “dramatically rethink” the city’s approach to emergency response.
Minneapolis Public Schools, the University of Minnesota and Minneapolis Parks and Recreation have all reportedly decided to cut ties with the police department.
Council Member Steve Fletcher also penned a TIME op-ed discussing the MPD’s record of misconduct and “decades-long history of violence and discrimination,” which are being investigated by the state’s Department of Human Rights.
Referring to the reason George Floyd was arrested – for allegedly using a bogus bank note – he wrote: “We can resolve confusion over a $20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon or pulling out handcuffs.”
On Saturday night, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he opposed disbanding the department at a protest, sparking loud boos and people chanting “shame” and “go home.”
The New York Times described it as “humiliation on a scale almost unimaginable outside of cinema or nightmare.”
Yesterday, the Minneapolis mayor tweeted his support of Police Chief Arradondo, saying he led the department with “integrity and compassion.”
“We need to seize this moment,” Frey wrote. “We need to tear down barriers that have prevented deeper reform and limited his work to fundamentally shift the culture within the MPD.”
The news comes after NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced he intended to take money from the NYPD’s $6 billion budget and allocate these funds to social services instead.
The amount has yet to be decided, he said on Sunday, as the pressure mounts on officials all across the country to reform law enforcement in the wake of Floyd’s killing.
Disbanding an entire police force has happened before.
In 2012, with crime rampant in Camden, New Jersey, the city disbanded its police department and replaced it with a new force that covered Camden County.
Compton, California, took the same step in 2000, shifting its policing to Los Angeles County.
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It was a step that then-Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department was considering for Ferguson, Missouri, after the death of Michael Brown.
The city eventually reached an agreement short of that but one that required massive reforms overseen by a court-appointed mediator.
The move to defund or abolish the Minneapolis department is far from assured, with the civil rights investigation likely to unfold over the next several months.
Since Floyd’s passing, the police department has endured relentless criticism amid protests, looting, riots and violent clashes between cops and demonstrators.
The protest movement has spread across the US and the globe with gatherings in Europe, South Africa and Australia.
