Who saw this coming?
The Minneapolis City Council voted to dismantle the police department after the death of George Floyd. Now the city is seeing an uptick in crime and shootings.
I mean…
The city council began to dismantle the department in July. They voted to remove $1 million from the police department and transfer “it toward the health department to hire ‘violence interrupters’ who are intended to defuse potentially violent situations.”
So do you want the police or no, bro?
The city council aired frustrations at the latest meeting:
But for much of the two-hour meeting, council members told police Chief Medaria Arradondo that their constituents are seeing and hearing street racing which sometimes results in crashes, brazen daylight carjackings, robberies, assaults and shootings. And they asked Arradondo what the department is doing about it.”Residents are asking, ‘Where are the police’?” said Jamal Osman, newly elected council member of Ward 6. He said he’s already been inundated with complaints from residents that calls for police aren’t being answered.“That is the only public safety option they have at the moment. MPD. They rely on MPD. And they are saying they are nowhere to be seen,” Osman said.
Riots and violence erupted after Floyd’s death. The city council and other politicians added fuel to the fire by targeting police, which no doubt caused more distrust.
Arradondo pointed that out to the council:
Noting that some residents feel apprehensive about calling police and that others have said they felt they were being held hostage by the current environment, Arradondo said, many people will need to make compromises while they work to reimagine public safety. That could, he said, include council members.“That may mean you making commitments that might be uncomfortable for some of those constituents that you represent, but if your ultimate goal is to have true community safety, I will tell you right now, we have to work together in that effort,” he said.
One city council member noted his colleagues’ hypocrisy:
As the discussion about crime continued, Council Member Phillipe Cunningham pointed out that some of his colleagues appeared to be contradicting earlier statements in favor of ending the department.“What I am sort of flabbergasted by is … colleagues who a very short time ago who were calling for abolition, who are now suggesting that we should be putting more funding and resources into MPD,” said Cunningham, whose ward includes North Side neighborhoods that have been among the hardest hit by the recent violence. “We know that this is not producing different outcomes.”
Minneapolis has 55 homicides so far this year. It only had 48 all of 2019. Arradondo said there have been 400 shooting victims.
Arradondo also informed the council that 100 cops have left the job, which is “more than double the 40-45 normal separations in a given year.” No doubt Minneapolis will see more cops leave.
You could get the sense that Arradondo wanted to tell the city council that their actions the last few months led to the increase in violence.
Lacy Johnson, the Republican trying to unseat Rep. Ilhan Omar (D), did not hold back:
“The hypocrisy and failure that we’re seeing from this City Council is astounding and deeply troubling,” Lacy Johnson told “Fox & Friends.”Johnson, who is bidding to unseat Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., said the council was calling for the” dismantling or demilitarizing or the disarming of police” all summer.“Now they’re turning around and blaming these brave officers for a situation that they have created,” Johnson said, citing the rise in home invasions, robberies, murders and carjacking.—“All of those things have gone up and it is something that should have been expected, but it just shows you how out of touch our City Council is and our liberal government leadership here in Minnesota is,” Johnson said.
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