The city council of Minneapolis, Minnesota pledged by a veto-proof majority on Sunday to dissolve the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) as officers deploy teargas and rubber bullets to forcibly remove peaceful protesters from public spaces.
“Decades of police reform efforts have proved that the Minneapolis Police Department cannot be reformed, ad will never be accountable for its action,” the council said in a statement.
The city will “begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department and creating a new transformative model for cultivating safety in our city,” according to the council.
The decision comes as MPD officers use heavy-handed tactics, such as teargas and rubber bullets, to disperse peaceful protests against police brutality that have arisen after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of white officer Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on Floyd’s neck for almost 10 minutes.
In one viral video, MPD officers are seen walking through a neighborhood and firing paint canisters at residents:
Share widely: National guard and MPD sweeping our residential street. Shooting paint canisters at us on our own front porch. Yelling “light em up” #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd #JusticeForGeorge #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/bW48imyt55
— Tanya Kerssen (@tkerssen) May 31, 2020
Hopefully the first of many city council’s to take this step. Kudos.
Why not call it rebooting or something. The Left Activists are tone-deaf on framing for middle America.
Ending, defunding, all sound scary.
Rebooting, that’s appealing language. Tone deaf talking-to-the-converted slogans is how the Activists keep losing compared to the Right astro-turfing.
What exactly does “disband” mean? Cities still need PDs to deal with actual crime, especially the violent kind. Is this going to be like the Iraqi army, which was disbanded, with disastrous results? Don’t disband, reform, drastically. No point in reinventing that wheel. Keep what works and is good and build on that, get rid of what doesn’t or is bad.
That’s gonna leave a mark.
Meanwhile, Trump’s numbers are cratering.
Just now at 538: 54.4% Disapprove / 41.2% Approve
It’s now a 13.2% D-A spread, first time it’s been over 13% in some time.
I don’t see how he recovers from this. But, then again, voters’ attention span is measured in seconds and Trump does bright shiny objects well, so who knows. Nothing’s certain these days.