The EconomistJuly 25th 2020 United States 27T
he intersection of 38th Street and
Chicago Avenue has, since George
Floyd was killed there on May 25th, become
a shrine, pilgrimage destination and pub-
lic-art exhibition. A huge raised fist sur-
rounded by flowers stands at the intersec-
tion’s centre. “You Changed the World,
George,” with sunflowers beneath and
clouds above, is painted on the purple side
of a squat building across the street. Amid
all the expressions of grief and resolve
stands an imperative: at the centre of a row
of roses pinned to a clothesline, a laminat-
ed sheet of paper asks people to “Creatively
imagine a world without police.” For two
months, many in Minneapolis have been
doing just that—and discovering just how
wide the gulf between creative imagina-
tion and running a city is.
At a rally on June 6th Jacob Frey, Minne-
apolis’s mayor, was jeered after telling the
crowd that he did not support abolishing
the police department. At another rally the
next afternoon in Powderhorn Park, not far
from where Mr Floyd was killed, nine city
councillors pledged to do just that. The city
council voted unanimously to abolish the
department later that month.
They have proposed amending the city’s
charter to replace the police department
with a “Department of Community Safety
and Violence Prevention, which will have
responsibility for public safety services
prioritising a holistic, public health-ori-
ented approach.” Their proposal also re-
moves the mayor’s “complete power over
the establishment, maintenance and com-
mand over the police department,” and
gives the City Council shared oversight
over the new department.
Their proposal is before the city’s Char-
ter Commission (analogous to a constitu-
tional court) for review, and the council
wants it on the ballot in November. Even if
it passes, state labour law could intrude.
Public employers cannot “interfere with
the existence of employee organisations,”
such as a union. Abolishing the police de-
partment would presumably entail abol-
ishing the union, and the union would pre-
sumably fight abolition in court.
Whether the plan has the appeal to pass
remains unclear, but one thing almost
everyone in the city agrees on is that the
status quo is not working. Raeisha Wil-
liams, an activist and entrepreneur who
ran for City Council in 2017, says that “there
is a huge disproportion in how [African-
Americans] are treated” by the city’s police
force. Steven Belton, a lifelong Minnesotan
who heads the Urban League Twin Cities,
says that “standard operating procedure”
among city police officers “assumes that
African-Americans generally and black
men in particular are hostile, dangerous
and require maximum force and must be
subdued for the most ordinary and mun-
dane encounters with police.” BeforeGeorge Floyd, there were Philando Castile,
Jamar Clark and Christopher Burns, all
black men killed by police in the Minne-
apolis area. Many black Minnesotans have
stories about mistreatment by officers. Po-
lice abolitionists believe that systemic bias
means that the force is beyond saving, and
must be scrapped and reinvented.
Not everyone is so sure. Some object to
the amendment’s vagueness about what
comes next. Will there still be armed offi-
cers to respond to serious emergencies?
How many? Not every mental-health crisis
or overdose requires a heavily armed re-
sponse, but what happens when an un-
armed mental-health or addiction profes-
sional insists on an armed officer as
backup? Currently, the police chief has to
answer to the mayor. What happens when
he has to answer to the mayor and 13 city
councillors? Who makes the final deci-
sion? Where does the buck stop?
Others object to how replacing the po-
lice department was proposed. Nekima
Levy Armstrong, a civil-rights lawyer and
founder of the Racial Justice Network, an
activist group, believes the councillors
made their pledge “to pander to the crowd-
...They didn’t come to the black community
to engage us.” She has pushed the city
council for years to do something about the
police department, to no avail, and they are
now just “pretending to take action with re-
gard to police accountability.”
Ms Levy Armstrong also argues that
council has undermined Medaria Arra-
dondo, the city’s current and first black po-
lice chief, who swiftly fired Derek Chauvin,
the officer who killed Mr Floyd, and the
three others with him—something few
previous chiefs would have done. Unlike
many big-city chiefs, who get poached
from other departments, Mr Arradondo is a
Minneapolis native who came up through
the ranks. In 2007, while he was still a lieu-
tenant, he sued the department for racial
discrimination (the suit was settled out of
court). Ms Williams—who like Ms Levy
Armstrong supports reform but opposes
the charter amendment—calls Mr Arra-
dondo “our best hope...He treats us with
humanity and dignity.”
Others worry about the effects on public
safety. Brian Herron, the pastor of Zion
Missionary Baptist Church in north Min-
neapolis, says the city council has “created
a climate where people believe that the po-
lice have no power...That creates lawless-
ness.” And indeed Minneapolis has seen a
jarring spike in gun violence since the prot-
ests began. “We’re not in Shangri-La where
every issue is about people not having
housing or opportunity,” Mr Herron ex-
plains. “We have to come to grips with the
fact that people are committed and dedi-
cated to this lifestyle. It’s a very small num-
ber, [but] none of the people pushing this
will stand in front of the bullets.” 7MINNEAPOLIS
A city at odds over what it wants from its cops
Police reform
Now for the hard part
Where it ended and where it all began