A Majority of Minneapolis Councilmembers Vowed to Dismantle the City’s Police Department

A large crowd gathered for a community meeting in Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis on Sunday.Julia Lurie/Mother Jones

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

At a community rally at Powderhorn Park this afternoon, 9 of Minneapolis’ 12 city councilmembers showed up and pledged to dismantle the city’s police department, marking a significant shift toward overhauling a force that’s under intense scrutiny following the killing of George Floyd on May 25. Mother Jones reporter Julia Lurie was there:

Since Floyd’s death, calls for defunding and downsizing police agencies as a way to curtail police brutality and the overpolicing of communities of color have spread. The intent signaled by the veto-proof majority of Minneapolis lawmakers will be a significant test of how a city can overhaul its police department. Within the last week, Minneapolis Public Schools, the University of Minnesota, and the Minneapolis Park Service broke ties with the city police department, which is being investigated by the state’s Department of Human Rights to determine whether its current protocols amount “to unlawful race-based policing, which deprives people of color, particularly Black community members, of their civil rights.” 

City Council President Lisa Bender tweeted on June 4 that the city would work to replace the department with a “transformative new model of public safety.” In a statement to the Appeal, which first reported the move, Bender noted that the city’s “efforts at incremental reform have failed.” In Minneapolis and elsewhere in the United States, Bender wrote, “it is clear that our existing system of policing and public safety isn’t working for so many of our neighbors.”

On Saturday, Mayor Jacob Frey faced was rebuked by demonstrators after he rejected calls to abolishi the police department and instead proposed reforming it.

It’s unclear what dismantling the Minneapolis police department will look like going forward. Steve Fletcher, a City Council member in Minneapolis’ Third Ward, wrote in an op-ed for Time that he among others supported an effort to “disband our police department and start fresh with a community-oriented, non-violent public safety and outreach capacity.” “Our city needs a public safety capacity that doesn’t fear our residents,” Fletcher wrote. “That doesn’t need a gun at a community meeting. That considers itself part of our community. That doesn’t resort quickly to pepper spray when people are understandably angry. That doesn’t murder black people.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate