Minneapolis, Minnesota is the city where the tragic final moments of George Floyd’s life played out for the world to see when he was placed under arrest. Since then, the city has also had the unfortunate distinction of being the staging grounds for the Far Left’s war on American Law Enforcement.
In the summer of 2020, the city was rocked with waves of violent riots and protests and the city’s Leftist politicians and activists were keen to seize the moment to further their agendas.
Minneapolis was the first city in the nation to “defund” their police department and violent crime subsequently spiked in the months to follow. Now, a new, perhaps even more dangerous initiative is being proposed by the city in its upcoming November local elections.
As we reported in August, the Yes 4 Minneapolis activist group has successfully lobbied for a ballot measure to be included which would remove language from the city’s charter requiring minimum police forces to be maintained by the city, effectively disbanding the police department. In its place would be installed the “Department of Public Safety.”
While we have been campaigning against the measure, disturbing new polling implies that the measure may very well have more support than we hoped among the voting public.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune recently conducted surveys in September with 800 likely voters in Minneapolis regarding several questions related to the city’s police department. The following are some of the findings of the poll:
When asked if the respondent had a favorable view of the Minneapolis Police Department, 46% of men and 59% of women said “no.”
But when asked if the city should reduce the size of its police department, 55% of men and 57% women said that they should not.
Where the surveys are concerned is where respondents were asked if they would support replacing the police department with the new “Department of Public Safety.” In these respondents, the majority with an opinion answered that they would support it. 48% of men and 49% of women. Roughly 10% were undecided.
It is concerning that the electorate appears to be split on whether this initiative would be good for the city. Despite the majority of those surveyed believing crime has been increasing in the city and that reducing the size of the police department would have negative consequences for the city as well, they appeared to be open to installing this new alternative.
Just as the “defund” sales pitch argued that diverted resources would help strengthen the community and lessen crime, in practice the opposite was true.
The proposed “Department of Public Safety” is promoted with all the same talking points as the defund movement and will likely lead to the same tragic outcome. All these measures have accomplished thus far in Minneapolis is concentrating even more power into the hands of local politicians and making the community more dangerous as law enforcement officers are marginalized and prevented from doing their jobs.
We are at the home stretch before the city’s elections in November. This ballot measure must be defeated before it can be used as a model to destroy American Law Enforcement in other cities and we must do even more to raise awareness for the citizens of Minneapolis so that the consequences of this decision can be fully understood.
Image Credit: Photo by Tom Conway on Unsplash
