The city council of Minneapolis, Minnesota pledged by a veto-proof majority on Sunday to dissolve the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) as officers deploy teargas and rubber bullets to forcibly remove peaceful protesters from public spaces.
Hopefully the first of many city council’s to take this step. Kudos.
Why not call it rebooting or something. The Left Activists are tone-deaf on framing for middle America.
Ending, defunding, all sound scary.
Rebooting, that’s appealing language. Tone deaf talking-to-the-converted slogans is how the Activists keep losing compared to the Right astro-turfing.
What exactly does “disband” mean? Cities still need PDs to deal with actual crime, especially the violent kind. Is this going to be like the Iraqi army, which was disbanded, with disastrous results? Don’t disband, reform, drastically. No point in reinventing that wheel. Keep what works and is good and build on that, get rid of what doesn’t or is bad.
That’s gonna leave a mark.
Meanwhile, Trump’s numbers are cratering.
Just now at 538: 54.4% Disapprove / 41.2% Approve
It’s now a 13.2% D-A spread, first time it’s been over 13% in some time.
I don’t see how he recovers from this. But, then again, voters’ attention span is measured in seconds and Trump does bright shiny objects well, so who knows. Nothing’s certain these days.
Something like the Camden model, hopefully.
Yeah this is PR gift to the Right.
Reboot, same effect better language.
Marketing reform to middle America is necessary to have buy-in and sustainable traction. Or this all is pouring water into the sand.
This may feel good at the moment, but unless they get rid of Bob Kroll nothing will change.
Officers who are charged and convicted with assault should get automatic loss of all pension benefits.
And call it reform, not disband. Not only is that idiotic and dangerous, it looks bad. Don’t throw out the baby. PDs should embrace the communities they police, not treat them as the enemy.
He recovers via Lefty activist over-reach in language and pushing for things that sound extreme - giving him
Of course his incompetence means he’s as likely to ruin an opportunity as to profit it from it in the long-run (if long-run = 3months in election politics time).
I think that seems to be part of the plan if you take their statement at face value.
All it would take to undo much of the political gain to the left and loss to Trump would be for an attractive young white woman to be murdered by a POC, which would quickly make a whole bunch of white swing voters reconsider their support for police reform and rejection of Trump. People like Central Park lady. They value their perceived personal safety way over social justice.
That would be nice but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. 4 officers were involved in the death of George Floyd, and the department lied about what happened immediately afterwards. Your comment is like telling a PC user to remove the parts of Windows 10 that he/she doesn’t like and keep the rest. Try that and see how it goes! 
. Relatively recently hired officers may be OK, but it is likely that the entire top and middle management layers of the department need to be replaced in order to realize meaningful change.
That’s still, technically, reform.
Police departments were initially created to do exactly what they did. They were created to quell unrest by minority groups. While I applaud the sentiment of the Minneapolis City Council, it lacks the commitment and consciousness to carry it out.
Human beings generally. There is nothing particularly special about white ladies.
Humans are humans. Over-clocked chimpanzees. We have to struggle to be better of course and can be but it’s the baseline. People value their own safety over others except often close family so we have to work with such base to push outwards and shouldn’t underestimate how hard or unstable that can be.
They make the point in their statement that reform hasn’t brought remedy
That video was enough to suggest that starting from scratch, no matter what you call it, is needed. First an armored vehicle. There doesn’t appear to be anything requiring police happening - no protesters, no yelling in the background, no sounds of shots. Next a group of heavily armed police come down this residential street and without cause start yelling at the people on their own front steps to get inside. Then the order is given to “Light them up” and a paint ball is shot and hits one person on the thigh.
It was like a military operation in enemy territory. I’ve seen that conduct in reports on actions in the Middle East or Vietnam. That was totally out of line. If that is considered SOP by the PD there, they need to go. Now.
Also keep in mind, MPD has a horrendous clearance rate. Which means, despite being overfunded, they do a really bad job of actually solving and preventing crimes.
I get the reaction here, and in many more places. The messaging is problematic. Alternative solutions need to be offered up simultaneously.