1/ Is police abolition "on the table" in Minneapolis? Last week, I thought "no," but people told me that it was. So I decided to dig into this a bit and see what is actually on the table. Spoiler: Still "no," but there are people on the city council who are serious about it.
2/ Summary - police abolition is the belief that police departments should be eliminated or drastically reduced. Public safety would then be provided through other mechanisms. The question: Is Minneapolis really about to "pull the plug" on its police?
3/ I found at least two Minn city council members and the council president saying that on record that would "disband" or "dismantle." Councilmember Fletcher even has an op-ed in Time promoting the idea. Read it here. time.com/5848705/disban…
4/ Then, there were some folks on Twitter who suggested that it was going to happen on Friday, at an emergency meeting of the Minn City Council. This really took me by surprise, since voters tend to like the police. Reform is usually on the table, not abolition.
5/ Luckily, every one can listen to the entire hour long emergency session of the city council. I will add comments below. But don't trust me - listen to it yourself.
6/ First, it is incredibly horrible that we even have to be here and witness this horrible loss of life. Many council members lamented how this type of violence has happened before and the city simply failed to act.
7/ The meeting itself has two parts. This will get technical, so bear with me. To understand what is happening you have to get a handle on the legal process that has now been triggered by George Floyd's murder.
8/ The first part of the meeting has to do with a restraining order pushed by the Minn State dept of Human Rights. In other words, police reform has been activated by a complaint from state agencies.
9/ The restraining order itself is detailed, so I will mention key points:
10/ The biggest thing is to ban choke holds. These are actually permissible under the previous rules. The city council has now banned them.
11/ Then, the restraining order actually affirms, deepens, and modifies existing regulation: officers now have an *affirmative* duty to report police violence and an *affirmative* duty to intervene when police violence happens.
12/ The order also orders the city to comply with the lawsuit issues by the state government and to assist the city's civil rights office.
13/ Everything I just wrote was unanimously approved by the city council. The second half of the meeting was for comments from the council. This is where abolition was raised and discussed. It wasn't the only topic, but it was discussed.
14/ Council member Fletcher made it clear that the public was confused about the emergency meeting. He supports dismantling/abolition but he made it clear that the meeting itself was not meant to vote on that.
15/ I thought another interesting thing was that I counted about two more council members who were clearly pro-abolition. For example, Council member Cunningham noted that he was radical and pro-abolition but that it was tough to make that work.
16/ Council member Cano sounded sympathetic and rather than directly talk abolition, focused on the need to extended community dialogues.
17/ Overall, my subjective impression that that the entire council thinks the city has failed and that reform is needed. The immediate issue is not abolition, however. The issue today's is the state's investigation of the city and reforming the police today.
18/ My other impression is that should abolitionism occur, it may happen through a long and complicated "community engagement" process. If you think that is a possibility, you also have to expect an outcome that may be far from what abolitionists have in mind.
18/ Bottom line: While activists and some elected leaders believe in the idea of police abolition, the city of Minneapolis is probably closer to a track of reform and they will spend a lot of time and energy on processing legal actions at the state level.
