Black Leaders Criticize Minneapolis City Council’s Plan For Defunding Police
Michael Cantrell
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With all of the race riots exploding across the country — oops, my bad, the “protests” — local governments are trying to find ways they can appease the violent crowds who are destroying whole blocks and stealing everything in sight to bring an end to police brutality and racism.
How does stealing stuff, ruining people’s businesses, and burning down buildings help fight racism? No idea. But that’s what these people say they’re doing, so we should just go ahead and buy into it for the sake of political correctness, right? Questioning them would be racist or something.
Anyway, one of the solution the city of Minneapolis has come up with, the place where all of this started, is to defund the police. What this really translates to is a lack of police presence on the streets, able to respond to calls for help when criminals strike.
As it turns out, a number of black leaders are totally against this plan and are making their voices heard.
Via The Daily Wire:
On June 12, the Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a “community-led public safety system” that will involve “healers, elders, youth, artists, and organizers,” who will “lead deep community engagement on race and public safety” and will offer “transformative justice in partnerships informed by the needs of every block in our city.”
Last Friday, the city council voted unanimously in approval of an amendment that would eliminate the city’s charter requirement to fund a police department, replacing it with their new “Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention,” which would be managed by the council and headed up by a “non-law enforcement experience in community safety services, including but not limited to public health and/or restorative justice approaches.” The council also voted to remove the minimum number of officers required for their “transformative new model for cultivating safety.” The moves will allow the issue to be put to voters in November.
The Star Tribune reported that several black leaders within the Minneapolis area are angry with how the Democrat-controlled city council is going forward with the plan to defund the police.
“Egregious, grotesque, absurd, crazy, ridiculous. These are a handful of the words that some local African American leaders are using to rebuke the Minneapolis City Council’s moves toward dismantling the Police Department, even as they demand an overhaul of law enforcement,” the Tribune reported Thursday. “While the movement to defund the police has been driven by Black activists, others say that city politicians rushed the process and failed to include a police chief who has the backing of many Black residents.”
Another black leader, who was at one time the president of the Minneapolis NAACP, said the city council is showing a “complete disregard for the voices and perspectives of many members of the African American community.”
Former NAACP leader Nekima Levy Armstrong went on to tell the Star Tribune, “We have not been consulted as the city makes its decisions, even though our community is the one most heavily impacted by both police violence and community violence.”
Armstrong accused the council of “seizing upon the national spotlight to look as if they’re making a difference.”
A similar accusation came from Pastor Brian Herron who claims the council is simply “pandering.”
One of the mandates that seems to be concerning folks about this plan is the rule that an individual with “non-law enforcement experience” must be the one to head up the new public safety department as the current chief of police is African-American.
This is pure insanity, folks. Let’s hope we get to judging each other by the content of our character and not the color of our skin.
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