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Minneapolis ballot initiative
2021-Mar-21, Sunday 04:06 pmI drove to south Minneapolis (where the Together We Rise march started) today to sign one of the forms for the ballot initiative to reform how the city spends its money on community safety. There was a lot of news last year after the #DefundThePolice hashtag made national attention. Much of that news about Minneapolis was very misleading. Some of it was educational. I think the best overall story was this article by The New Yorker.
There were plenty of proposals for substantial cuts to the current Minneapolis Police Department as we know it. Contrary to some reports on social media, however, none of them were enacted. The best I can figure is about $14 million was removed from police budget due to overall covid austerity measures throughout the city departments due to budget shortfalls, not part of this controversy. The timing was coincidental, so I think people were conflating the two events for political points. It wasn't until December that the council voted to redirect about $8 million as a conciliatory gesture towards reform.
Minneapolis city charter requires staffing (and therefore funding) police at a minimum level. That's what the proposals aim to change, by funding other services at higher rates so they don't fall to "police" as a catch-all service category. For example, that's how a new initiative worked in Denver:
Let's revisit that last quoted sentence, because it's so important.
No violence-prone, unaccountable police killed anybody for minor issues. Instead, people who can de-escalate tensions worked with troubled residents, and nobody got hurt. That's community service as reformists in Minneapolis want it to be.
Instead, an unelected board of old and mostly-white people decided not to let the idea make it to ballot in 2020. So here we are again, still trying to get it on the city ballot.
There were plenty of proposals for substantial cuts to the current Minneapolis Police Department as we know it. Contrary to some reports on social media, however, none of them were enacted. The best I can figure is about $14 million was removed from police budget due to overall covid austerity measures throughout the city departments due to budget shortfalls, not part of this controversy. The timing was coincidental, so I think people were conflating the two events for political points. It wasn't until December that the council voted to redirect about $8 million as a conciliatory gesture towards reform.
Minneapolis city charter requires staffing (and therefore funding) police at a minimum level. That's what the proposals aim to change, by funding other services at higher rates so they don't fall to "police" as a catch-all service category. For example, that's how a new initiative worked in Denver:
"Since June 1, 2020, a mental health clinician and a paramedic have traveled around the city in a white van handling low-level incidents, like trespassing and mental health episodes, that would have otherwise fallen to patrol officers with badges and guns. In its first six months, the Support Team Assisted Response program, or STAR, has responded to 748 incidents. None required police or led to arrests or jail time."
https://denverite.com/2021/02/02/in-the-first-six-months-of-health-care-professionals-replacing-police-officers-no-one-they-encountered-was-arrested/
https://denverite.com/2021/02/02/in-the-first-six-months-of-health-care-professionals-replacing-police-officers-no-one-they-encountered-was-arrested/
Let's revisit that last quoted sentence, because it's so important."None required police or led to arrests or jail time."
No violence-prone, unaccountable police killed anybody for minor issues. Instead, people who can de-escalate tensions worked with troubled residents, and nobody got hurt. That's community service as reformists in Minneapolis want it to be.
Instead, an unelected board of old and mostly-white people decided not to let the idea make it to ballot in 2020. So here we are again, still trying to get it on the city ballot.