UN-DEFUNDED

Minneapolis Voters Don’t Want to Defund the Police After All

They voted down a measure that would have replaced the police department with a Department of Public Safety.

Voters in Minneapolis, the city where George Floyd was murdered, came out Tuesday against a ballot proposal to ax their police department in favor of creating a new public-safety agency. The measure would have done away with a clause in the city charter that necessitates that the city maintain a police department with a certain number of officers, opting instead for a Department of Public Safety. The measure would have required the creation of the new department, and for it and the mayor and city council to take “a comprehensive public health approach to the delivery of functions” of law enforcement and other agencies. The proposal emerged from calls to abolish police departments entirely to enact racial justice reform after Floyd’s murder by a police officer last year.