Minneapolis City Council is seriously weighing disbanding the police

Several Minneapolis council members are reportedly considering altogether "disbanding" the city's police department in the wake of George Floyd's death and the subsequent protests and riots that have erupted across the country in recent days.

"I don't know yet, though several of us on the council are working on finding out, what it would take to disband the [Minneapolis Police Department] and start fresh with a community-oriented, non-violent public safety and outreach capacity," said Steve Fletcher, a council member who represents the city's Ward 3, which covers parts of downtown, on Twitter.

It became clear by day two that people were marching for much more than that – the response to George Floyd’s death needed to be much more than any prosecution could offer. What people in the streets have won is a permanent, generational change to the mainstream view of policing.

— Steve Fletcher - Minneapolis Ward 3 (@MplsWard3) June 2, 2020

Elsewhere in the lengthy thread, Fletcher argues that the city's police department is "irredeemably beyond reform," and that the community needs a new type of pubic safety that doesn't "fear our residents" and doesn't "murder black men."

"The whole world is watching, and we can declare policing as we know it a thing of the past," he wrote.

-READ MORE