On 6/16/23 16:00, Biased Journalism wrote:
>
> <http://nytimes.com>
> What Happened to 'Defund the Police' Efforts in Minneapolis and Other
> Cities?
> Ernesto Londono
>
> How 'Defund the Police' Failed
>
> In Minneapolis and elsewhere, the movement faltered after crime surged
> and activists failed to build broad support for a goal that lacked a
> clear definition.
>
> George Floyd Square is seen through the windshield of a police cruiser
> as the police chief and a sergeant drove around
> Minneapolis.Credit...Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times
>
> June 16, 2023
>
> More than three years after the murder of George Floyd focused the
> nation's attention on racism in law enforcement, Minneapolis's Third
> Precinct police station, which was set ablaze and looted during the
> tumultuous days after Mr. Floyd's death, remains abandoned.
>
> Once the city's most modern police station, the building is now
> boarded up, tagged with graffiti and ringed with concertina wire - an
> unintentional monument to the national debate over public safety that
> led Minneapolis officials to consider disbanding the Police
> Department.
>
> But three years after "defund the police" became a rallying cry across
> the nation, efforts to dramatically divert resources from police or do
> away with conventional policing entirely have largely been abandoned,
> too, in Minneapolis and beyond.
>
> The movement faltered in Minneapolis after activists failed to build
> broad support for a goal that lacked a clear definition, and an
> actionable plan. As crime surged during the early years of the
> coronavirus pandemic and officers left the police force in droves,
> Republicans seized on the debate to paint Democrats as being
> recklessly soft on crime.
>
> "The language and the politics prevented folks from delving more
> deeply into the core conversation some activists were trying to have,"
> said Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer in Minneapolis who
> has been a critic of the Police Department.
>
> The movement to abolish conventional police departments predates the
> murder of Mr. Floyd. In the years before his death, a Minneapolis
> group called MPD150 had been building grass roots support for a
> "police-free future" - a vision that contemplated a phased end to
> conventional policing by making dramatic investments in housing and
> social services.
>
> Its leaders expected it would take many years for that transformation
> to gain significant political traction. But after Mr. Floyd's killing,
> when parts of the city descended into anarchy, a group of young
> activists called Black Visions Collective, saw an opportunity.
>
> Its first move was to corner Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis outside
> his home in June 2020, and demand that he commit to abolishing the
> Police Department. As cameras rolled, one of the movement's leaders
> made clear that they were seeking the outright disbandment of the
> Police Department, not a reallocation of resources.
>
> "We don't want no more police," she said. "We don't want people with
> guns toting around in our community."
>
> Mr. Frey, a civil rights lawyer in his first term as mayor, said he
> favored sweeping changes but not disbanding the police. As he walked
> away, demonstrators erupted in chants of "Go home, Jacob!" Mr. Frey
> described it as a "Game of Thrones-style public shaming."
>
> The next day, Black Visions Collective held an event near the site
> where Mr. Floyd was killed. They persuaded nine of the city's 13
> council members - a veto-proof majority - to commit to defunding the
> police.
>
> Neither the activists nor the elected officials clearly articulated
> what disbanding the police would entail. Within days, several City
> Council members pulled their support, saying they had misunderstood
> the radical pledge that they had endorsed.
>
> Black Visions Collective and several other groups that favored
> sweeping changes eventually set their sights on a more modest and
> attainable goal: a ballot amendment known as "Yes 4 Minneapolis." It
> called for the establishment of a new department of public safety that
> would absorb some police functions while bolstering interventions that
> didn't involve the police. The measure also would have scrapped the
> minimum police staffing level set by the city charter.
>
> It was a debate that veteran police officers in Minneapolis followed
> with a mix of dread and outrage, said Sgt. Andrew Schroeder, who has
> worked for the department since 2014. Many of his colleagues left for
> other jobs or retired early.
>
> "Who wants to put their lives on the line and make some split-second
> decision that may be the right one, and be crucified for it?" he said
> while patrolling the city late on a recent Saturday night. "It's a
> heavy thing to think about."
>
> Black residents were divided over the calls to defund the police.
> Charlotte Hall, 62, who was born and raised in south Minneapolis, said
> she understood the outrage galvanizing young activists. But the vision
> struck her as utopian, she said.
>
> "You can't defund the police; you have to have police," she said.
> "There's bad police officers out here, but all of them aren't bad."
>
> When voters had their say in November 2021, the measure to dismantle
> the Police Department failed by roughly 12 percentage points. Mr. Frey
> won a second term, handily beating opponents who favored defunding the
> police.
>
> Mr. Frey said his administration had adopted a plethora of measures to
> increase transparency, reduce abuses and restore trust. They include
> consistent use of body cameras while on patrol, limiting the criteria
> for traffic stops, improving training and updating procedures to
> discipline officers.
>
> "But that's just reform, that's on paper," he said in an interview.
> "The harder part is having those reforms embedded throughout the
> department in a way that people actually feel the change in the
> street."
>
> And three years after Mr. Floyd's murder, public safety issues remain
> raw and unresolved.
>
> As city leaders debated the fate of the Police Department, officers
> left the department, many walking away with medical disability
> payments after seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
> As of early June, the Minneapolis Police Department had 585 officers,
> down from 912 in 2019.
>
> As police ranks thinned out, violent crime soared. Gang violence, once
> a modest problem in Minneapolis, became such a challenge that federal
> prosecutors charged 45 people suspected of being gang members in a
> pair of racketeering indictments in May, a first in the city.
>
> Many residents have given up on the local public transportation
> system, where some stations increasingly have become gathering points
> for people who openly smoke fentanyl and other drugs. The number of
> car thefts and carjackings skyrocketed. As of early June, more than
> 4,100 vehicles had been stolen in the city this year, nearly twice as
> many as during the same period last year.
>
> Even as its payroll dropped amid the flood of departures, the
> department's budget actually increased in recent years. And the
> hollowed-out force has been a boon for private security companies, as
> more business have hired them. As of June, there were 181 private
> security companies in Minnesota licensed by the state, up from 155 in
> 2020.
>
> Mr. Frey said that formidable challenges stood in the way of
> meaningful reform. Key among them is a patchwork of deals that the
> city has negotiated with the police union over decades that makes it
> difficult to hold officers accountable when they break rules or commit
> abuses.
>
> In addition to those self-imposed policy changes, the city has agreed
> to adopt more far-reaching changes as part of negotiations with the
> Minnesota Department of Human Rights and the U.S. Justice Department.
>
> Ricardo Levins Morales, an activist who supports shuttering the Police
> Department, said those measures would not lead to a meaningful change
> in the culture. He said new abuses inevitably would reignite calls for
> the kind of drastic action that the defund movement sought.
>
> "I liken the emergence of movements to an incoming tide and the first
> wave comes up the beach and recedes," he said. "It's opportunity to
> look back and say, 'Well, what were the constraints of the landscape
> that caused the wave to crash?'"
>
> Last year, when city officials were looking for an experienced leader
> to take the reins of the understaffed and embattled police force, they
> zeroed in on Brian O'Hara, who was then a deputy mayor in Newark, N.J.
> The job was a minefield, but Mr. O'Hara said he was instantly
> interested.
>
> "Everyone thought I was nuts," he said.
>
> Mr. O'Hara had played a leading role overseeing a period of
> transformation that followed a 2014 Justice Department report that
> found that officers in Newark routinely violated people's civil
> rights. In a deeply polarized city, he saw an opportunity to rebuild
> trust by healing wounds that had been festering for generations.
>
> "People think you either unleash the cops and deal with crime or you
> respect human rights," Mr. O'Hara said. "I know from what I lived
> through in Newark that you can do both at the same time."
>
> But few doubt the difficulty of that balancing act and the depth of
> the chasm that remains between minority communities and the police.
>
> Sheriff Dawanna S. Witt of Hennepin County, which includes
> Minneapolis, is the most senior Black law enforcement official in the
> city. But when she's on the road in an unmarked car, the sight of a
> patrol car behind her fills her with fear, she said. She may be the
> sheriff, but in those moments she feels the city's troubled past
> viscerally.
>
> "If a squad car gets behind me, to this day, I get nervous," she said.
>
> Ernesto Londoño is a national correspondent based in the Midwest who
> keeps a close eye on drug u @londonoese and counternarcotics policy in
> the United States.
>
>
>
Amazing.