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.
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