Council members Steve Fletcher, Phillipe Cunningham and Jeremy Schroeder withdrew the proposal they had written to replace the police force with a new agency, a Department of Public Safety. The City Council members withdrew their proposal after a community group also came forward with a similar proposal that made it onto the November ballot which would replace police with a community-led group.
The competing proposal put forward by Yes 4 Minneapolis, a coalition of local groups, would fulfill the same purpose as the proposal initially suggested by Fletcher, Cunningham, and Schroeder. The city has been looking into reworking their policing system after the death of George Floyd in May 2020.
One of the initiatives that has already been taken was an audit of the Minneapolis Police Department. As reported by The Minnesota Sun, “the four specific issues that the report found within the Minneapolis Police Department included the field training officer staffing and structure, communication and information flow within the field training officer program, field training officer selection and oversight process and enhancement to the officers-in-training evaluation process.”
Police reforms were also recently passed at a state level, with a new public safety bill. As reported by The Sun, “The bill will put limits on no-knock warrants and on how the police use informants. It was also amended on the floor to leave room for “sign-and-release” warrants which would no longer require police to arrest low-level offenders just for missing a court appearance.”
The group pushing for the replacement of police in Minneapolis created a petition that garnered over 20,000 signatures. Their goal would be to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a Department of Public Safety and to shift oversight of the police from the mayor to the city council. They also stated that they would employ police, “as necessary, to fulfill responsibilities for community safety.”
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Hayley Tschetter is a reporter with The Minnesota Sun | Star News Network and The College Fix. She graduated with a degree in Communications from the University of Northwestern-St. Paul. Send news tips to [email protected].
Photo “Minneapolis Police Officer” by Tony Webster. CC BY 2.0.
