Minneapolis voters reject replacing police force 18 months after George Floyd murder – National
Minneapolis voters selected Tuesday to not replace their police force with a brand new division that may have taken a holistic strategy to crime, 18 months after the homicide of George Floyd within the metropolis sparked world protests for racial justice.
With 133 of 136 precincts reporting tallies, over 56% of voters rejected a poll query asking residents in the event that they needed to create a brand new Division of Public Security to take the place of the police division. The Washington Put up projected that the measure wouldn’t go.
“This proposal left us with this huge vacuum of what policing and public security ought to appear to be,” Leili Fatehi, marketing campaign supervisor for All of Mpls, which campaigned towards dissolving the police division, mentioned forward of the vote. “It’s simply not one thing that many members of the general public are snug with.”
Minneapolis was thrust to the middle of the U.S. racial justice debate in Could 2020 when officer Derek Chauvin pinned his knee towards the neck of Floyd, a Black man, for greater than 9 minutes. Chauvin was sentenced in June to 22 1/2 years in jail.
Three different officers charged in Floyd’s dying face trial in March.
Democrats, usually allies within the largely progressive Midwestern metropolis, cut up over the poll query. Many feared dissolving the division would offer easy election fodder for Republicans nationwide forward of November 2022 congressional elections.
Against the measure had been Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo; Mayor Jacob Frey, who’s up for reelection on Tuesday; U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Governor Tim Walz.
A number of the state’s best-known progressives — resembling U.S. Consultant Ilhan Omar and Minnesota Lawyer Normal Keith Ellison, who oversaw Chauvin’s prosecution — supported the change.
Almost all of dozens of Minneapolis residents interviewed final week mentioned they had been confused about how a brand new public security division would function, even those that supported it.
At a watch get together for the Yes4Minneapolis marketing campaign that supported changing the police division, supporter Sandra Williams mentioned these searching for reforms would press on.
“We’re going to maintain transferring on to get this handed finally,” Williams mentioned. “The battle continues, the battle continues.”
(Reporting by Brad Brooks; Further reporting by Nicole Neri in Minneapolis; Modifying by Howard Goller and Stephen Coates)
