Plan to replace Minneapolis PD worries many Black residents

Steve Fletcher, a white City Council member who supports replacing the police department, said there's both support and opposition to the plan from all areas of the city.

“I think a lot of people are just recognizing that we cannot be the city that killed George Floyd and didn’t grow or change," he said.

The ballot question calls for a new Department of Public Safety to take “a comprehensive public health approach to the delivery of functions” that would be determined by the mayor and City Council. Fletcher and other supporters argue it's a chance to reimagine what public safety can be and how money gets spent. A frequent example from supporters is funding programs that don't send armed officers to call on people in crisis.

“Nobody is proposing to reduce our investment in public safety," Fletcher said. "We are proposing to change the way that we make those investments, and ultimately I think in the end, investing more in public safety than we ever have.”

The change is being proposed as violent crime in the city is spiking. There have been roughly 80 homicides in Minneapolis so far this year – 35 on the north side, according to online police department crime data. Three victims were children, including one who was shot while jumping on a trampoline at a birthday party. The city could near the record 97 homicides of 1995, when it drew the nickname “Murderapolis.”

That trend is compounded by the fact the city is down about 300 officers from its authorized force of 888, partly due to officers claiming post-traumatic stress disorder after Floyd’s death and the unrest in the city that followed.

Jerome Rankine, a Black resident in the Kingfield neighborhood on the city’s more affluent southwest side, strongly backs the amendment. Rankine, who also sits on his neighborhood association board, says dropping the city’s requirement for a minimum number of officers would open the way to innovative ideas to change policing.

“Unfortunately, the way that our city charter is set up, we lack the power to turn those ideas into reality,“ he said. “I’m voting yes because a yes vote is a vote for taking the barrier to change out of the equation and taking these imaginative ideas of how our policing system can be better.”

Rankine's board last week endorsed a vote in support of the public safety question. He said his own neighborhood is divided on the question, and that's fine: "There are no monoliths that cut cleanly across lines, there’s no opinion that cuts cleanly across lines of race,” he said.

“If we are in a movement against police brutality then I feel like all should be welcome in that movement,” he said. “We have seen Minneapolis police take lives over the last several years and they’ve taken the lives of all races and backgrounds, so I feel like there should be no barriers to entry when it comes to being part of the movement.”

Bishop Divar Kemp of New Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, back on the city's north side, said the ballot question comes up every day at his church. He said the police department needs to be changed, but the current proposal is dangerous.

“We need the police -- there’s no other way I can say that,” he said.