Minneapolis City Council members are now begrudgingly admitting that momentum has “slowed” on plans to defund the city’s police department and replace it with a “community-oriented” law enforcement solution, and it’s not likely the effort — backed largely by far-left progressive council members — will result in any movement on the issue.
The Minneapolis City Council immediately voted to dismantle and replace the Minneapolis Police Department after a video went viral showing Minneapolis police officers arresting and, eventually kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, who later died in their custody. The incident sparked national outrage and vast anti-police brutality and anti-racism marches that still continue in some cities.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that the abolition movement quickly fell apart after the city’s Charter Commission blocked a plan to put the proposal on the November ballot citing, as The Daily Wire reported last month, the City Council’s failure to complete a plan for replacing the police department with another law enforcement arm. The Charter Commission excoriated the council over its lack of foresight, and its inability to elaborate on a plan for a “holistic, public health-oriented” approach to policing.
And although some city council members were quick to suggest that wanting to keep police around to prevent violent crime was a form of “privilege,” city residents, finding themselves in the midst of a dramatic spike in violent crime, are certainly more hesitant, the paper suggests, to abolish the city’s law enforcement division.
“The Minneapolis City Council’s resolve to end the city’s police department has lost momentum, the result of the failure to get the question before voters in November and council members’ diverging ideas on the role of sworn officers in the future,” the Star-Tribune reported Tuesday. “In the three months since nine council members pledged to end the department following George Floyd’s killing, the city has experienced a surge in violent crime, another night of unrest and blowback from residents who felt they had been left out of the initial conversations about change.”
“Some council members have remained consistent in their statements about policing,” the outlet noted, “while others have softened their rhetoric, saying now that they do envision officers as part of any revamping of public safety.”
Even the City Council member, Liza Bender, who was quick to suggest that wanting protection from crimes like burglary was a form of “privilege” is now recanting, telling the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that the plan to dismantle and replace the Minneapolis Police Department is more “complicated” than she initially presumed.
“I think when you take a statement and then move into policy work, it gets more complicated,” Bender said.
Activists are disappointed, they tell the Star-Tribune, but do realize that, perhaps, the complete abolition of police was a lofty goal.
Minneapolis is still recovering from the aftermath of riots and looting that took place following Floyd’s death. The city anticipates paying out for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to some of the area’s hardest-hit communities.