MINNEAPOLIS, — Minneapolis voters were deciding Tuesday if they would replace the city’s Police Department with a Department of Public Safety. This is more than a year since George Floyd died at the knee of a white officer and launched a movement to abolish or defund police in the country.
Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey also faced a difficult fight for a second term. He was facing a host of opponents who have criticized him for his leadership after Floyd’s death. Frey was against the policing reform. Sheila Nezhad (his leading challenger) and Kate Knuth (his opponent in the 17-candidate field strongly supported the proposal.
Minneapolis voters also decided whether to replace Minneapolis’s “weak mayor, strong city council” system with a more traditional distribution of executive-legislative powers. This would give the mayor greater control over the day-to-day operations of government.
Although results from Tuesday’s ballot questions were expected, there was some uncertainty about the mayoral race because it uses ranked-choice voting. The winner would be determined if no candidate achieves 50% in the first round.
The future of policing in the city where Floyd died in May 2020 sparked a national reckoning on racial Justice that overshadowed everything else on the municipal ballot. The debate attracted national attention, and a flood of outside-state money trying to influence a contest that could also affect policing in other countries.
Rishi Khanna (31-year-old tech worker) voted for replacing the police department. He said he didn’t believe that police officers have the necessary skills to handle many situations such as mental health crises. He stated that he believes both residents and officers will be better off if there are professionals who can deal with a variety of public safety issues within the same department.
He said, “I am aware that law enforcement needs to be represented at the table. But I believe in our community, and across the country, too many times law enforcement is the only one at the table.” “I don’t believe that’s the right solution.”
The city charter amendment proposed to be amended would eliminate language that requires that Minneapolis has a minimum number police officers, based on the population. The new Department of Public Safety would replace it with a comprehensive public health approach to the delivery of functions that could include police officers, “if necessary,” to meet its public safety responsibilities.
To stop police violence, supporters of the change suggested that there must be a complete overhaul in policing. They described it as an opportunity to reimagine public safety and to allocate more funds toward new approaches that do not rely on the sending of armed officers to help people in crisis.
Opponents argued that the ballot proposal did not contain a plan for the operation of the new department and expressed concern about the possibility that it could make already-affected communities more vulnerable to rising crime. The mayor and the City Council would decide the details and who would head the new agency.
Nationally prominent progressive Democratic leaders, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Olmar (who represents the Minneapolis region) and state Attorney General Keith Ellison, both supported the amendment to the police department. However, some prominent mainstream liberals including Governor. Tim Walz, U.S. Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar, were against it and feared that the backlash might lead to Democratic losses throughout the country by 2022.
Support did not follow racial lines. Opponents also included prominent Black leaders, some of whom have been leading voices in the police accountability movement.
Minister JaNaeBates, a spokesperson for the pro-amendment campaign told reporters Monday that even though the proposal failed, the activists behind the campaign had changed the conversation about public safety.
“No matter what, the city is going to need to move forward and really grapple with what we can’t unknow: That the Minneapolis Police Department has been operating with impunity and has done quite some harm and the city needs to take serious steps to rectify this,” Bates stated.
