Minneapolis City Council Adopts Resolution to Abolish Police Department
Richard Moorhead
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The Minneapolis City Council has formally adopted a resolution pledging to replace the city’s police department with a “transformative model of public safety” on Friday. All 13 members of the city council voted for the symbolic resolution, passing it unanimously.
Left-wing city council member Jeremiah Ellison, the son of Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison, originally proposed defunding the city’s police department last week, as widespread riots and looting engulfed the city in the wake of the death of George Floyd. The rest of the City Council was quick to follow him in endorsing the vague proposal.
Friday’s vote didn’t lay out a concrete plan to replace the city’s police department, instead broadly pledging to implement an alternative that’s yet to be fully imagined. The Council is planning to spend one year in a dialogue “with every willing community member in Minneapolis” to discern the structure of a new community-based model of public safety.
The city’s establishment Democrat mayor continues to oppose a wholesale abolition of the Minneapolis Police Department, but nine votes of the city council is sufficient to veto any attempt he would make to prevent the proposal. Mayor Jacob Frey was viciously booed away from a meeting of Black Lives Matter protestors after refusing to endorse the defunding of the police last week.
Minneapolis incurred more than $55 million in damages from the widespread race riots that engulfed the city in late May, and the city government is already hoping that the federal government will provide a generous bailout to mitigate the costs of the damages. Some of the businesses pillaged by rioters and looters in the chaos have announced that they don’t plan on returning, citing the utter disregard for their safety on the part of city government.
Nearly 20% of Minneapolis real estate listings have been placed for sale in the past seven days, as the city’s upper and middle class recognize that the once affluent city is increasingly slated to become the next Detroit or Chicago.
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