IN MINNEAPOLIS, A VOW TO NIX POLICE FORCE
PLANS TO REPLACE THE DEPT WITH A COMMUNITY-BASED SAFETY SYSTEM
WASHINGTON/MINNEAPOLIS: Minneapolis city council members have pledged to abolish its police force whose officer knelt on the neck of a dying George Floyd, as the biggest civil rights protests in more than 50 years demanded a transformation of US criminal justice.
And Democrats, led by a group of African-American lawmakers, unveiled sweeping legislation on Monday to combat police violence and racial injustice. The 134-page bill would take numerous steps including allowing victims of misconduct to sue for police damages, ban chokeholds and require the use of body cameras by federal law enforcement officers, restrict the use of lethal force, and facilitate independent investigations of police departments with patterns of misconduct.
The Democrats announced details of the legislation on Capitol Hill after kneeling for 8 minute and 46 seconds in Floyd’s memory — the exact time a white police officer had held the African-American down on the ground with a knee to his neck.
The move for the legislation, which may not pass given the lack of majority for Democrats in the Senate, came after a ninemember majority of the 13-member Minneapolis council on Sunday announced their decision to defund police force at a rally.
They plan to replace the department with a communitybased safety system and reallocate its budget to social programmes.
“Our commitment is to end our city’s toxic relationship with the Minneapolis police department,” council president Lisa
Bender said to loud cheers. She added they want to “end policing as we know it. ”
President Donald Trump has been dismissive of the move. “LAW & ORDER, NOT DEFUND AND ABOLISH THE POLICE,” he tweeted on Monday. “The Radical Left Democrats have gone Crazy!”
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters he would shift some funds out of the city’s vast police budget and reallocate it to youth and social services.
Demonstrations have swept the country slowly emerging from the coronavirus lockdown in the two weeks since Floyd, 46, died after choking out the words “I can’t breathe”.
Derek Chauvin, the police officer due to appear in a Minneapolis court on Monday, has been charged with second-degree and third-degree murder as well as second-degree manslaughter.
Huge weekend crowds had gathered across the country and in Europe to protest racism.
But slowly, normalcy is returning to the US. Curfews were removed in New York and other major cities including Philadelphia and Chicago.