On a recent Saturday, MJ Carpio knocked on the door of a single-story home not far from where George Floyd was killed by a police officer last year. She’s working with Yes 4 Minneapolis, a coalition that wants to pass a ballot initiative to replace the city’s police department. If voters agree on Nov. 2, the initiative promises a “comprehensive, public health approach” to public safety — one that could include police officers “if necessary.”
What constitutes “necessary” when it comes to policing? The debate stretches back decades, but rarely surfaced in the mainstream before last June, when a veto-proof majority of Minneapolis City Council members gathered on a stage in the city’s Powderhorn Park, decorated with the words “ DEFUND POLICE.” Most had in mind a more nuanced approach, but the slogan stuck, becoming a shorthand for any effort to re-imagine public safety.
Carpio lives the debate on doorsteps. At this home, a late middle-aged Black man appeared in the doorway. Carpio launched into her pitch. “Have you heard of the public-safety amendment?” He had. “Will you be supporting it?” He pursed his lips, then shook his head. “I’m for public safety. But I’m not voting for defunding the police. We need police.”
Carpio had heard this before, and didn’t hesitate. “We’re not about defund,” she said, and explained how the initiative would help officers do their jobs by, for example, pairing them with mental-health professionals. That piqued his interest. “If a cop sees a guy fidgeting the wrong way, they’ll kill him,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Carpio nodded: “Now they’ll have a ride-along.”
He crossed his arms. “I’m going to vote on Nov. 2,” he said. “But I’m not voting to defund. I’ll vote for what you just said.” As she walked to the next house, Carpio opened voter-tracking software on her phone and marked the man as “leaning” her way.
I wasn’t so sure. Polite Minneapolitans aren’t the type to disappoint a friendly canvasser at their door. But as residents mull how to vote, bitterness and distrust toward the defund movement is always just below the surface — potentially threatening the city’s best shot at police reform in decades.
*****
It’s never been easy to be Black in Minneapolis. In the early 20th century, developers attached restrictive racial covenants to new homes in the city’s most desirable areas, creating all-white enclaves. Employment bias was rife. The largely white police force engaged in rampant discrimination. By 1946, the problem was so stark that Mayor Hubert Humphrey required the police to undergo race-relations training, a national first.
Many efforts to overhaul the police department would follow over the decades. Yet more than 70 years of training and reform have largely failed to produce results acceptable to Black residents. Since 2015, Minneapolis police have used force against Blacks at least seven times more often than against whites. This year, even after the vast protests that followed Floyd’s death, the police have stopped Black drivers for minor violations nine times more often than whites. Multiple studies suggest that racial bias is largely responsible for these disparities.
Plenty of reasons can be cited for the police department’s dysfunction, including poor hiring and promotion decisions, ineffective training, and a lack of enforceable oversight. But each of these problems is an outgrowth of a deeper distortion in the city’s politics.
Historically, the police department was just another city agency, funded by regular appropriations. That changed in 1961, when the Police Officers Federation convinced voters to support an amendment to the city charter mandating at least 1.7 police officers per 1,000 residents. It was an arbitrary ratio, created partly to remove politics from funding decisions. Yet 60 years later, it’s clear that the mandate has had a pernicious effect.
“It really does take away our leverage,” said Steve Fletcher, one of three council members who introduced the charter amendment. “Because when we’re sitting at the bargaining table, and we’re telling police you’re going to have to change, they say: ‘What are you going to do about it? You can’t cut us. Even if we’re not producing any outcomes that you like, you can’t cut us.’”
The amendment, which must be approved by voters on Tuesday, would eliminate the police department from the city charter. In its place, it would establish a department of public safety led by a commissioner nominated by the mayor and appointed by the council. Few other details are spelled out, including whether the city would still employ police officers.
In theory, it must. State law requires that certain duties, such as responding to a crime in progress, can only be carried out by police. How that would be accomplished with a new public-safety agency would be left to the council to decide later. Further complicating matters, the city’s labor agreements with police officers will remain in effect even if the amendment passes. Fletcher told me he envisions reducing staffing to 400 or 500 officers ( down from 730) over a “planful, gradual, probably 10-year process.”
The alternative approach described by the amendment’s backers involves relatively mainstream reforms — such as using social workers and mental-health professionals to respond to nonviolent situations — that enjoy broad support in Minneapolis. The council, in concert with a progressive mayor, could well enact some of them.
But that’s far from certain. This year, the entire council is up for re-election, with some members, including Fletcher, facing strong competitors who oppose the charter amendment and the progressive public-safety agenda. There’s a reason for that.
*****
It feels like ancient history now, but in the days following Floyd’s death, a serious debate about police reform broke out. Op-eds and columns offered up new ideas; so did experts on radio call-ins and TV talk shows. Congress began a bipartisan effort to impose accountability. Even President Donald Trump conceded that video of Floyd’s arrest was “ a very shocking sight.”
That moment of reflection soon passed, however, as normal politics resumed. A photo of the “DEFUND POLICE” rally at Powderhorn Park began circulating widely. At the time, no council member had a legislative plan for what a reformed police department might look like, even though most if not all agreed it would still include armed officers. But Republican candidates nationwide suddenly had a slogan they could use against Democrats — and they did, with some success.
Many council members hesitated to distance themselves from the rally, even as the political damage accumulated. Several had emerged from city’s thriving activist network, and continued to rely on it for support. In the process, they tended to create a kind of echo chamber that drowned out the concerns of other constituencies, including the Black community.
After the riots that followed Floyd’s death, the last thing many Black and East African residents wanted was a reduction in police protection. The city was already experiencing a surge in violent crime. After the protests, some officers quit or took leave; others, it’s rumored, simply stopped doing their jobs. Whatever the case, many Black communities have felt abandoned by the police in recent months, and that has translated into demands for more — not less — funding.
“People will definitely say, ‘Hey, we don’t like the way police have been patrolling us,’” said Teto Wilson, a Black entrepreneur who works with a group opposing the charter amendment, in his North Minneapolis barbershop. “But it would be absolutely insane with the level of crime that we deal with on a daily basis, to defund and dismantle the police department.”
Wilson is far from alone in that opinion. A September poll of registered Minneapolis voters found that 75% of Black respondents opposed reducing the size of the police, compared to 51% of white voters. Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Black civil-rights lawyer and activist who has long pushed for police reform in Minneapolis, explained her opposition to the charter amendment as, in part, a reaction to out-of-touch progressive council members.
“I thought it was inappropriate for them to go to Powderhorn Park and cater to a predominantly white group of residents who consider themselves to be progressive, and sadly some who are out of touch with what happens in communities of color,” she said in a video posted on Oct. 19. “In particular, the Black community.”
*****
A day before the Powderhorn rally, Mayor Jacob Frey was confronted by thousands of protestors outside his home, demanding that he commit to abolishing the police. He refused, and was berated as he walked away. At the time, many thought that would mark the end of his political career. It doesn’t look that way now. As of mid-September, 52% of Black voters viewed Frey favorably; the city council was viewed favorably by 36%.
Nationwide, support for defunding has plummeted over the past year, with only 15% of adults favoring it, down from 25%. Among Black adults, the decline has been especially stark: 23% now support decreased funding, compared to 42% last year. In fact, significantly more Black respondents (38%) said they support a net increase in police spending.
Ultimately, that’s a gap that canvassers like MJ Carpio must try to address, door by door, if they want the amendment to pass on Tuesday. As I walked with her, she didn’t seem to mind the challenge. Although the vote will be close, her group has clearly made progress with its message that the charter amendment will enhance public safety, not “defund” it. Recent polling suggests the measure is supported by nearly half of Minneapolis voters — though only 42% of Black ones.
As we walked past a house with a homemade “Abolish MPD” banner draped across it, I thought back on something Steve Fletcher told me. “I think this year is our window. It’s our best chance to do this for a very long time.”
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