City council wants police department abolished

A MAJORITY of city council members in Minneapolis have pledged to abolish the city’s police department after the death of an unarmed black man in custody last month led to some of the biggest protests seen in the US.

The outpouring of protests followed the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died after being pinned down by the neck for almost nine minutes by a white officer’s knee in Minneapolis.

A bystander’s cellphone captured the scene as Floyd pleaded with the officer, choking out the words “I can’t breathe.”

“I have cops in my family, I do believe in a police presence,” said Nikky Williams, a black Air Force veteran who marched in Washington on Sunday. “But I do think that reform has got to happen.”

Nine members of the 13-person Minneapolis City Council pledged on Sunday to do away with the police department in favour of a community-led safety model, a step that would have seemed unthinkable just two weeks ago.

“A veto-proof majority of the MPLS City Council just publicly agreed that the Minneapolis Police Department is not reformable and that we’re going to end the current policing system,” Alondra Cano, a member of the Minneapolis council said on Twitter.

Council members said such reforms would be a long, complex process and provided little detail on the way forward.

Minneapolis City Council president Lisa Bender told CNN “the idea of having no police department is certainly not in the short term.”

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a series of reforms he said were designed to build trust between city residents and the police department.

De Blasio told reporters he would shift an unspecified amount of money out of the police budget and reallocate it to youth and social services in communities of colour.

He said he would also take enforcement of rules on street vending out of the hands of police, who have been accused of using the regulations to harass minority communities.

Curfews were removed in New York and other major cities including Philadelphia and Chicago.