The Minneapolis police force is overwhelmingly made up of suburban White men. These guys voted for Bob Kroll, a White supremacist and Trump fan to head their union. These are the heavily armed people that the city keeps hiring to “protect” us. 1/
Calling the police for help in Minneapolis has long been a sick game of chance, especially for POC. You might get a decent professional. Or you might get a jacked-up, heavily-armed Deplorable with 12 previous complaints like the guy who killed George Floyd. 2/
I fear Kroll & Mpls police are playing a cynical game to “punish” Frey, Walz and other DFL elected officials. The police escalate the situation; watch looting & burning break out; then stand down and not do much to protect the city. Like the mob used to say..3/
“Nice little city here....shame if something happened to it.” The goal is to make people so fearful they will “welcome” back the police and say, well, I guess the cops do have to break heads to keep order.” 4/
It’s a pretty classic police playbook. It’s especially effective with White people, who seem unaware of this play and are taught by White culture to fear Black people and trust the cops, who usually treat us much better. 5/
This is why we need to radically overhaul our police force, so citizens can call for help and not fear getting a bunch of jacked up armed White Deplorables who decide to kill a Black man for sport on camera. Just because they can. 6/
We need more honest-to-God peace officers, who don’t carry guns and are trained to de-escalate, like many other countries have. MPLS police should also hire only Black women for the next say, 10 years. But in short, we need a very different idea of “policing” in this city. 7/end
