MINNEAPOLIS — Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council — a veto-proof majority — pledged Sunday to dismantle the city’s police department, promising to create a new system of public safety in a city where law enforcement has long been accused of racism.
Saying that the city’s policing system could not be reformed, the council members stood before hundreds of people gathered late in the day on a grassy hill and promised to begin the process of taking apart the Minneapolis Police Department as it now exists.
“It is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe,” council President Lisa Bender said. “Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period.”
Ms. Bender went on to say she and the eight other council members that joined the rally are committed to ending the city’s relationship with the police force and “to end policing as we know it and recreate systems that actually keep us safe.”
For activists who have been pushing for years for drastic changes to policing, the move represented a turning point that they hope will lead to a transformation of public safety in the city.
“It shouldn’t have taken so much death to get us here,” Kandace Montgomery, the director of Black Visions Collective, said from the stage at the rally. “We’re safer without armed, unaccountable patrols supported by the state hunting black people.”
The pledge in Minneapolis, where George Floyd died 13 days ago after being pinned to the ground by a white police officer’s knee, reflected calls across America to rethink what policing looks like. Protesters have taken to the streets with demands to shrink or abolish police departments, and “defund the police” has become a frequent rallying cry.
Officials in other cities, including New York, have begun to talk of diverting some money and responsibilities from police forces to social services agencies, but no other major city has gone as far in reaction to the protests as the Minneapolis officials have promised to do.
Council members said in interviews Sunday that they did not yet have specific plans to announce for what a new public safety system for the city would look like. They promised to develop plans by working with the community and said they would draw on past studies, consent decrees and reforms to policing across the nation and the world.
Protesters who gathered at the windswept rally, with a view of Powderhorn Lake, said what mattered most was that elected officials had finally committed to a sweeping overhaul of policing, even though they had not offered specifics of how a dismantling would work.
“There needs to be change,” said Paola Lehman, a 23-year-old actor and educator in Minneapolis.
As the council members each read a line of the pledge to the crowd, Wintana Melekin, 32, clasped her hands above her head wrap, her mouth open in stunned silence beneath a sagging mask with the inscription “Defund Police.”
“I knew it was happening, but I didn’t believe it,” she said.
When the final portion was read, a roar went up among the hundreds in the crowd. Many people raised their fists in the air and chanted, “Defund MPD!”
Though the City Council controls the police budget, the department answers to Mayor Jacob Frey, who has a veto over the council’s actions. Council members said they had enough votes to override a veto by Mr. Frey, who was booed out of a rally by hundreds of people Saturday after he said he did not believe in abolishing the police department. Mr. Frey quietly exited through an angry crowd as many shouted “Go home, Jacob!” and “Shame! Shame!”
Councilwoman Alondra Cano, who leads the council’s public safety committee, said that scene made her think about the need to create space for discussions — a truth and reconciliation commission of sorts — to develop solutions to the city’s policing issues.
“Protesting is good and needed, press conferences are good and needed,” she said. “That third space is needed where we are committed to each other, and not the camera.”
Mr. Frey said Sunday that while he opposed dismantling the police department, he would “work relentlessly” with the city’s police chief and the community “toward deep, structural reform and addressing systemic racism in police culture.” He added that he was “ready to dig in and enact more community-led public safety strategies.”
Protesters’ cries to defund or abolish the police are often not meant literally. Rather, they are demands to rethink a law enforcement system from the ground up and to grapple with deeply ingrained issues, including employing officers who do not live in the city they police — as is done in Minneapolis — and sending armed officers to respond to situations that turn out not to be crimes, as when a mentally ill person is in distress.
Some proposals have focused on ending heavy-handed police tactics, like no-knock search warrants and military-style raids on the homes of suspects; restricting the flow of military gear to police departments; and banning the use of military equipment on protesters.
A common thread has been the tendency of police departments to consume ever larger shares of city budgets.
“We’re really saying we want to grow our community, and we want to invest in the things we actually need,” said Ms. Montgomery, who led the protest Saturday and grilled Mr. Frey on his views, leading to the chants that prompted him to leave the scene.
Council members and activists pointed to examples of different styles of policing in places like Austin, Texas, where the operators who answer 911 calls inquire whether a caller needs police, fire or mental health services before dispatching a response, and in Eugene, Ore., where a medic and a crisis worker with mental health training are dispatched to emergency calls.
Disbanding an entire department has happened before. In 2012, with crime rampant in Camden, N.J., the city disbanded its police department and replaced it with a new force that covered Camden County. Compton, Calif., took the same step in 2000, shifting its policing to Los Angeles County.
Many have called for relying more on self-policing by the community, in the way attendees often do at events like music festivals, with the police stepping in only when a true emergency arises. Some cited as an example how, in the days after the killing of Floyd, teams made up of dozens of members of the American Indian Movement patrolled streets and directed traffic in the Little Earth housing community in Minneapolis.
Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter and chair of Reform L.A. Jails, said the move by the Minneapolis City Council members had shifted the movement to rethink policing from the fringe to the mainstream.
“This is massive,” Ms. Cullors said. “This is the first time we are seeing, in our country’s history, a conversation about defunding, and some people having a conversation about abolishing the police and prison state. This must be what it felt like when people were talking about abolishing slavery.”
Lt. Bob Kroll, the president of the Minneapolis Police Union, did not respond to requests for comment.
Andy Skoogman, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, said he supported reforming rather than defunding the police. While he welcomed additional investment in social services for mental health, domestic violence and homelessness, he said, the traditional police force “is an essential service and must still be funded.”
“When someone is in immediate danger, fearing for his or her life, would these victims still have a place to call and a person who is willing and able to help?” he asked. “If so, then we’re open to more discussions.”
The Associated Press and (Minneapolis) Star Tribune contributed.
Updated at 9:55 p.m., Sunday, June 7, 2020.
First Published June 7, 2020, 11:23pm
