MINNEAPOLIS – Marques Armstrong had just got out of the shower one fall morning when he heard gunfire that appeared to come from his backyard in Minneapolis. After ducking, he ran upstairs to check on his wife and daughter, then looked out to see a car pull away.
“Everyone says we want the police to be held accountable and we want fair policing. Nobody said we had to get rid of the police, ”said Armstrong, a black activist who owns a mental health practice and clothing store. “There needs to be a major overhaul from the ground up, but we need some form of community security because gunshots are going on over here day and night.”
The election proposal, which goes to voters on Tuesday, has its roots in the abolition of the police movement that broke out after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer last year. It has received strong support from younger black activists mobilized by Floyd’s death, as well as from some black and white residents of this liberal city.
Many people of color living in the city’s most criminally criminal areas fear that a sharp drop in the number of police officers will make them more vulnerable in the face of a dramatic increase in violent crime.
The debate over racial justice in the police force that erupted after Floyd’s death has drawn national attention to Tuesday’s vote as well as a stream of funds outside the state trying to influence an outcome that could shape change elsewhere.
Raeisha Williams, a Guns Down Love Up activist, said she believes the plan’s supporters are mostly white residents who have not experienced any police wrongdoing or the violence black residents see on the north side. Her brother Tyrone died there in 2018 in a shootout.
“It’s like our voices aren’t being heard – they’re hijacking a movement again and adopting it,” said Williams, who is black.
JaNaé Bates, one of the young black activists who led the movement to pass the nomination, said her group worked hard to ensure that all votes were taken into account. Bates said more than 1,400 of the roughly 20,000 signatures on the petitions to get the measure on the ballot came from residents of the north side.
Bates said her efforts to educate people about what the initiative would do included knocking on the doors of homes in northern Minneapolis to hear the voices of those hardest hit by public safety issues.
“We were extremely deliberate because people in these neighborhoods are tired of accepting the status quo, both in terms of police brutality and community violence,” Bates said.
Steve Fletcher, a white city council member who supports the detachment of the police force, said there was both support and opposition to the plan from across the city.
“I think a lot of people just realize that we can’t be the town that George Floyd killed and didn’t grow or change,” he said.
The vote request calls for a new Ministry of Public Safety to “take a comprehensive approach to public health in the performance of functions” to be determined by the mayor and the city council. Fletcher and other supporters said it was a chance to re-imagine what public safety can be and how money is spent. A common example of supporters are funding programs that do not send armed officers to summon people in crisis.
“Nobody is suggesting reducing our investment in public safety,” said Fletcher. “We propose to change the way we make these investments, and in the end I think we end up investing more in public safety than ever before.”
The change is proposed as violent crime increases in the city. There have been around 80 homicides in Minneapolis so far this year – 35 on the north side, according to online police crime data. Three victims were children, including one who was shot while jumping on a trampoline at a birthday party. The city came close to the 1995 record of 97 murders when it drew the nickname “Murderapolis”.
This trend is exacerbated by the fact that the city has cut about 300 civil servants from its authorized force of 888, in part due to officials alleging post-traumatic stress disorder following Floyd’s death and the subsequent riots in the city.
Jerome Rankine, a black resident of Kingfield in the more affluent southwest of the city, strongly supports the change. Rankine, who also sits on the board of his neighborhood association, says lifting the city’s requirement for a minimum number of officers would pave the way for innovative ideas to transform policing.
“Unfortunately, our city charter lacks the strength to put these ideas into practice,” he said. “I vote yes because a yes is a vote for taking the barrier to change out of the equation and adopting these imaginative ideas on how our police system can get better.”
Rankine’s board last week approved a vote in support of the public safety issue. He said his own neighborhood was divided on this issue, and that was okay: “There are no monoliths that cross borders cleanly, there is no opinion that crosses racial lines cleanly,” he said.
“If we are in a movement against police brutality then I think everyone should be welcome in this movement,” he said. “We have seen the Minneapolis Police Department take lives in the past few years, and they have taken lives of all races and backgrounds, so I think 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 on the north side of town said the voting question comes up every day in his church. He said the police needed to be changed but the current proposal was dangerous.
“We need the police – I can’t put it any other way,” he said.
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