Minneapolis pledges to abolish police force
Council in city where George Floyd was killed votes to replace it with a community-led alternative
THE Minneapolis City Council has pledged to abolish the city’s police department, as thousands of protesters across the US demand radical reforms to the country’s law enforcement.
Minneapolis has been at the centre of nationwide protests since the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who was pinned to the ground by a white police officer on May 25.
In response, nine members of the 13-person city council voted on Sunday to dismantle the police department and replace it with a community-led alternative, a move that would have seemed unthinkable just two weeks ago. Donald Trump, the US president, tweeted in response yesterday: “This year has seen the lowest crime numbers in our Country’s recorded history, and now the Radical Left Democrats want to Defund and Abandon our Police. Sorry, I want LAW & ORDER!”
But as the slogan “defund the police” becomes a rallying cry among the thousands taking to the streets to demand immediate action on policing, several other US cities, including Los Angeles and New York, have announced measures to scale back and reform their police departments.
Lisa Bender, the Minneapolis City Council president, said the vote was a recognition that the current policing system had failed despite repeated attempts at reform. “Our commitment is to end policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe,” she said.
The Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, has opposed moves to abolish the force, but the city council’s ninemember vote gives the measure a vetoproof majority which Mr Frey cannot override. The council has not yet detailed what the police force would be replaced with, but has suggested it could take the form of a broader public safety department.
Under pressure from protesters in New York, the city’s mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Sunday that the city would move funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services. Mr de Blasio said details of the cuts to the NYPD’S $6 billion annual budget would be announced by the end of the month.
In Los Angeles, mayor Eric Garcetti pledged to slash up to $150 million (£118 million) from the LAPD budget and reinvest the money into communities of colour.
Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who pinned Mr Floyd to the ground, made his first court appearance yesterday charged with the 46-year-old’s murder. Dressed in an orange prison suit, Mr Chauvin, 44, appeared by video from the Minnesota state prison. A judge set his bail at $1million with conditions or $1.25million without conditions.
Meanwhile, Democrats in the US House of Representatives unveiled sweeping legislation yesterday. The 134-page bill would allow 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 deadly force, and instigate independent investigations for police departments with patterns of misconduct.
“A profession where you have the power to kill should be a profession that requires highly trained officers who are accountable to the public,” said congresswoman Karen Bass, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus.
It comes as nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism stretched into their 14th day. In Seattle, a man drove a car headlong into a crowd of protesters on Sunday night, before shooting a demonstrator who attempted to confront him. The victim, a 27-year-old man, was shot in the arm and taken to a hospital in stable condition. The driver was later detained.
The incident contrasted with the largely peaceful protests elsewhere, which led officials to lift the curfews in
Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York.
Meanwhile Mr Trump has used the unrest to drum up support for his reelection battle, declaring himself the “law and order” president. Speaking at the White House, he said: “There won’t be defunding. There won’t be dismantling of our police. There’s not going to be any disbanding of our police.”
The president said he wanted to make sure “we don’t have any bad actors” in the police. He added: “Sometimes we’ll see some horrible things, like we witnessed recently, but I say 99.9 – let’s go with 99 per cent of them – great, great people and they’ve done jobs that are record setting.”
However, recent polls suggest Mr Trump’s campaign has taken the biggest hit from the recent unrest. An NBC/WALL Street Journal poll found 80 per cent of registered voters believe the country is “out of control”, which included 66 per cent of Republicans.
‘Our commitment is to end policing ... and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe’