Minneapolis city councilors on Sunday 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 died on May 25 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.
The prospect that Minneapolis could abolish its police force altogether would have seemed unthinkable just two weeks ago.
Photo: AFP
Nine members of the 13-person city council pledged to do away with the police department in favor of a community-led safety model, though they provided few details.
“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,” Minneapolis Councilor Alondra Cano said on Twitter.
“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,” Minneapolis Council President Lisa Bender told CNN, after a majority of councilors committed to the effort.
However, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is against getting rid of the department, and Bob Kroll, head of the city’s police union, appeared on stage last year with US President Donald Trump.
The vow by the majority of councilors came a day after Frey was booed at and asked to leave a “Defund the Police” rally.
He later told reporters he supported “massive structural reform to revise this structurally racist system,” but not “abolishing the entire police department.”
On Sunday, protesters in cities — including Washington, New York and Winter Park, Florida — began focusing their outrage over the death of Floyd onto demands for police reform and social justice.
In Seattle, a person was shot and wounded after a man armed with a gun drove into a crowd of protesters. The suspect was arrested, police said.
US congressional Democrats were yesterday to unveil a sweeping package of legislation to combat police violence and racial injustice.
The proposal is expected to ban police chokeholds and racial profiling, require nationwide use of body cameras, subject police to civilian review boards and abolish the legal doctrine known as qualified immunity, which protects police from civil litigation, sources said.
“It is time for police culture in many departments to change,” Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Representative Karen Bass told CNN on Sunday.
She added that she hoped the wave of largely peaceful protests seen across the US over the past two weeks would increase pressure on lawmakers to act.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
People can preregister to receive their NT$10,000 (US$325) cash distributed from the central government on Nov. 5 after President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday signed the Special Budget for Strengthening Economic, Social and National Security Resilience, the Executive Yuan told a news conference last night. The special budget, passed by the Legislative Yuan on Friday last week with a cash handout budget of NT$236 billion, was officially submitted to the Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon. People can register through the official Web site at https://10000.gov.tw to have the funds deposited into their bank accounts, withdraw the funds at automated teller
CONCESSION: A Shin Kong official said that the firm was ‘willing to contribute’ to the nation, as the move would enable Nvidia Crop to build its headquarters in Taiwan Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽) yesterday said it would relinquish land-use rights, or known as surface rights, for two plots in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投), paving the way for Nvidia Corp to expand its office footprint in Taiwan. The insurer said it made the decision “in the interest of the nation’s greater good” and would not seek compensation from taxpayers for potential future losses, calling the move a gesture to resolve a months-long impasse among the insurer, the Taipei City Government and the US chip giant. “The decision was made on the condition that the Taipei City Government reimburses the related
RSS