City to revamp cops after death

GEORGE FLOYD: REBUILD A NEW MODEL WITH COMMUNITY

Mayor, union boss against ‘abolishing the entire police department’.

Councillors in the US city of Minneapolis pledged 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 25 May, 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 was to appear in court yesterday.

“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,” council president Lisa Bender told CNN, after a majority of councillors committed to the effort.

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, however, 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 said 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 (see story below).

The president has since ordered National Guard troops to begin withdrawing from the nation’s capital – AFP

Revise this structurally racist system