Minneapolis City Council Members Receiving $4,500 A Day Private Security From City After Voting to Abolish Police
Richard Moorhead
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Three Minneapolis City Council members- all of whom recently voted to defund and dismantle the city’s public police department- are receiving private security details at the expense at Minneapolis taxpayers, FOX 9 Minneapolis has reported on Saturday.
The three city council members, Phillipe Cunningham, Andrea Jenkins, and Alondra Cano, have incurred costs of more than $63,000 over the past three weeks through the use of the city-funded private security details.
Jenkins cited an alleged white nationalist threat within the city of Minneapolis as a justification for the expensive security detail in an email to FOX 9. “My concern is the large number of white nationalist(s) in our city and other threatening communications I’ve been receiving,” said the city council member.
Councilmember Cunningham also brushed off answering as to why he uses a taxpayer-funded private security detail, even though he supports abolishing the police.
“I don’t feel comfortable publicly discussing the death threats against me or the level of security I currently have protecting me from those threats,” said Cunningham in a text message.
An inquiry to the Minneapolis Police asking why the council members were using private security instead of police was answered with the explanation that police resources are required in the community. Police revealed that no public reports of alleged death threats to city council members were filed with the department, although it’s possible such reports could’ve been filed confidentially.
The Minneapolis City Council has adopted two resolutions since the killing of George Floyd to begin the abolition of the Minneapolis Police Department. Neoliberal Mayor Jacob Frey has expressed his opposition to the proposal, but the council has passed the resolution in a unanimous fashion, ensuring that the council could override a mayoral veto and fully abolish the police department, installing a “new transformative model of public safety.”
The hypocritical practices of the Minneapolis council members could be a premonition of their vision for the city, in which the political and economic elite are guaranteed personal safety and protection while the city’s middle class is left to the devices of mobs of aggrieved, violent, looters and rioters.
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