US city vows to ‘dismantle’ police force
COUNCILLORS in the US city of Minneapolis pledged late on Sunday to dismantle and rebuild the police department, after the death in custody of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests about racism in law enforcement, pushing the issue onto the national political agenda.
Floyd was killed on May 25 when white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on the unarmed black man’s neck for nearly nine minutes. Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder and is to appear in court on Monday.
After a majority of councillors committed to the effort, Council President Lisa Bender told CNN: “We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe.”
However, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is against getting rid of the department, and the head of the city’s powerful police union, Bob Kroll, appeared on stage last year with President Donald Trump.
The vow by the majority of councillors came a day after Frey was booed at and asked to leave a “Defund the Police” rally. He later told AFP he supported “massive structural reform to revise this structurally racist system” but not “abolishing the entire police department”.
Bystander video of the incident – which captured Floyd calling for his mother and saying he could not breathe – has sparked two weeks of mostly peaceful demonstrations across the country.
On Sunday, protesters in cities including Washington, New York and
Winter Park, Florida, began focusing their outrage over the death of the unarmed Floyd into demands for police reform and social justice.
Mitt Romney, a Republican senator from Utah, joined a group of Christian protesters marching toward the White House. He tweeted photos of himself in the procession, along with the simple caption, “Black Lives Matter”.
Trump’s tough approach to putting down protests continued to draw exceptional rebukes from top retired military officers, a group normally loath to criticise a civilian leader.
Former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Colin Powell joined them on Sunday, saying Trump had “drifted away” from the Constitution. Powell, a Republican moderate, said Trump had weakened the US’ position around the world and that in November’s presidential election he would support Democrat Joe Biden.
The president has ordered National Guard troops to begin withdrawing from the nation’s capital, whose Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat who jousted with Trump over the use of force in her city, told Fox News that there had been no arrests on Saturday despite the protests which saw thousands moving through the capital’s streets.
However, there were fires and vandalism a week earlier.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told ABC that Washington had been “a city out of control” and denied a problem of systemic racism among police.
The Trump administration has proposed no specific policy changes in response to the widespread outrage over Floyd’s death.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) said they would introduce legislation in the House of Representatives on Monday to make policing more accountable.
The legislation is expected to make it easier to sue police officers over deadly incidents, to ban the sort of choke holds that led to Floyd’s death, and to establish a national database to record police misconduct.
One member of the caucus, Representative Val Demings of Florida, a former police chief in the city of Orlando, told ABC that “systemic racism is always the ghost in the room”.
“What we have to do as a nation is hold police accountable,” said Demings, who has been mentioned as a possible running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
It is unclear what support the proposed reforms might find in the Republican-controlled Senate – or whether Trump might sign such legislation into law.
Some jurisdictions have moved already to embrace reforms – starting with bans on the use of tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters on Sunday that he would cut the city’s police budget and shift some funds to youth and social services, local media reported.
Trump seized on the call by some protesters to slash police funding to attack Biden, tweeting without evidence that “not only will Sleepy Joe Biden DEFUND THE POLICE, but he will DEFUND OUR MILITARY!”
The president is scheduled to host a roundtable with law enforcement on Monday.