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disband the Minneapolis police
2020-Jun-07, Sunday 07:35 pmI saw an announcement for an event today from my city council representative, so I drove to the other side of town to attend. Almost everyone had masks already, but someone was handing out free masks to anyone who wanted one. We're still in the COVID-19 pandemic, after all.
The event was bigger than I expected, even for Powderhorn Park. I saw the coverage on the evening news, and they did a really poor job of showing just how many people were there. A cynic might think they were downplaying the significance of it. Here's my very poor attempt to make a panorama (more of a badly stitched collage) of the scene, and I still didn't capture a lot of people. The NY Times photo and Daily Mail photos are better for that.
I am in favor of disbanding the police. In spite of being woken countless times by gunshots, in spite of calling 911 too many times about gunshots, especially right beside my own house... I am in favor of disbanding the police. We will create something new to replace them. We will take their large budget and reallocate much of that money to funding systems that help prevent the escalation of crisis after crisis. I expect us to improve budgets in education, healthcare, mental healthcare, housing, and more. We will still have emergency services, but they will not approach every citizen while being armed like the military and viewing citizens as potential enemy combatants.
We have a 9-person veto-proof majority on the city council in favor of disbanding the Minneapolis police department. As somebody said on stage:
I would suggest reading the official city report on the budget, but all of the links are failing to load for me at the moment. For now, you'll just have to take my word for it that Police account for 12% of the city budget, overshadowing Health spending at only 1% and Regulatory Services at 2%. (Next we need to do something about 4% of the city budget going to the Convention Center. How about providing meaningful funding to local neighborhood councils?) Still, though, Minneapolis wasn't as out-of-balance as some other cities.
Discussions begin soon on what we want to replace it. Unlike Republicans who have ranted for a decade about eliminating "Obamacare" without any replacement, we'll have something ready to replace the harmful Minneapolis Police Department when it's finally time to end their reign.
The event was bigger than I expected, even for Powderhorn Park. I saw the coverage on the evening news, and they did a really poor job of showing just how many people were there. A cynic might think they were downplaying the significance of it. Here's my very poor attempt to make a panorama (more of a badly stitched collage) of the scene, and I still didn't capture a lot of people. The NY Times photo and Daily Mail photos are better for that.
I am in favor of disbanding the police. In spite of being woken countless times by gunshots, in spite of calling 911 too many times about gunshots, especially right beside my own house... I am in favor of disbanding the police. We will create something new to replace them. We will take their large budget and reallocate much of that money to funding systems that help prevent the escalation of crisis after crisis. I expect us to improve budgets in education, healthcare, mental healthcare, housing, and more. We will still have emergency services, but they will not approach every citizen while being armed like the military and viewing citizens as potential enemy combatants.
We have a 9-person veto-proof majority on the city council in favor of disbanding the Minneapolis police department. As somebody said on stage:
“Our efforts at incremental reform have failed. Period.”
I would suggest reading the official city report on the budget, but all of the links are failing to load for me at the moment. For now, you'll just have to take my word for it that Police account for 12% of the city budget, overshadowing Health spending at only 1% and Regulatory Services at 2%. (Next we need to do something about 4% of the city budget going to the Convention Center. How about providing meaningful funding to local neighborhood councils?) Still, though, Minneapolis wasn't as out-of-balance as some other cities.
Discussions begin soon on what we want to replace it. Unlike Republicans who have ranted for a decade about eliminating "Obamacare" without any replacement, we'll have something ready to replace the harmful Minneapolis Police Department when it's finally time to end their reign.
- It will treat rape crimes as priorities.
- It will address $20 complaints as minor issues.
- It will send appropriate resources to crisis calls, not SWAT teams decked out for combat and a "shoot them all, let God sort them out" mindset.
- It will regard black people as equal citizens, not lesser ones.
"I personally think it's really cool how we all went from learning how to make banana bread to learning how to abolish the police in a matter of weeks"
https://twitter.com/asmaresists/status/1269336348630102018
I am happy for Minneapolis today. We agreed to disband the Minneapolis police. Now, we plan to build something new to replace them. I expect it will take a year to formalize this replacement emergency service.