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Fox News reported on the recent change in direction for the Minneapolis City Council after they initially showed signs that they were going to completely dismantle the police department.
The Minneapolis Charter Commission decided by vote not to allow citzens of Minneapolis the opportunity to abolish the police department by ballot in November. The question was if the city should separate from the requirement to keep the police department growing in relation to the population of the city.
The second proposal that is scheduled to be voted on by the Minneapolis Charter Commission next week addresses whether the entire Minneapolis Police Department should be replaced with a community safety department.
Commissioner Dan Cohen criticized the proposals that put his department out of existence.
“I believe that if one of these measures were to pass the voters of Minneapolis, the result would be a giant self-inflicted wound,” according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
The Commissioner believes that Minneapolis citizens would “flee the city” and “crime would soar, property values on our homes would fall,” if either proposal succeeded in November.
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Meanwhile, in Seattle, hundreds of residents pushed back against the notion of defunding the police, making their voices heard at a city council budget meeting on Wednesday, according to local reports.
“Defunding the police is a radical experiment that will hurt the vulnerable,” one member of the public, calling in to the phone-in meeting, told the council, according to Q13 FOX.
The council is considering a plan that could slash the budget of the city’s police department by 50 percent – resulting in layoffs for hundreds of officers – all as Seattle deals with the coronavirus outbreak and frequent riots and unrest since Floyd’s death.
