Police Reform in the United States: The Story of Two Minnesota Cities | Dark Life Issue News

Police Reform in the United States: The Story of Two Minnesota Cities | Dark Life Issue News

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Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. – Last month, the world watched the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former police officer in Minneapolis, is convicted murder George FloydMinnesota police officer Kim Potter is a black man in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, just a few miles from the courthouse Daunte Wright, Also black.

Porter claimed that in the 26 years of using force, she mistakenly thought that Taser had come with a gun and that she was facing a second-class degree. Manslaughter.

As the events after Wright’s death developed, Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott began work.

After listening to the meeting, he started a week-long community involvement activity, and finally proposed a resolution that will completely reform the way the city handles police affairs. Elliott is a Liberian American who immigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old. The scene introduced the resolution on May 8. Less than a month after Wright was shot and killed. Next Saturday, it was passed by the city council with a 4-1 vote.

Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott speaks to the media at a press conference held at the Daunte Wright vigil in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, April 20, 2021. [Nicholas Pfosi/Reuters]

The rapid adoption of police reforms in the suburbs of Minneapolis is in stark contrast with the situation a few miles to the south, where Minneapolis has been conducting public relations work to influence public opinion to support the police department and its budget. Contribute to the formation of Jacob Mayor Frey’s public order speech “both in.

Less than two weeks after George Floyd was murdered, most members of the Minneapolis City Council demanded a refund for the city’s police department. Since then, the parliament has changed their position from reducing police funding to transferring departmental supervision from the mayor to the parliament.

Mayor Frey criticized the proposals of the city council and other entities aimed at reforming policing. The surge in crime includes homicides, shooting victims and carjackings, with multiple dead or injured children on the north side of the city, and even shooting near the memorial that commemorates Freud’s first anniversary on Tuesday. In response, Frey announced his office’s plan for departmental reforms from within in a speech in upstate New York City last week.

But some local activists are skeptical.

“I don’t think the Minneapolis City Council really wants [police reform]. Frankly speaking, what they want is law and order, so this is a seizure of power.

Gross said: “On the other hand,” the actions of the Mayor of Brooklyn Center and the City Council are indeed an example to be followed by other communities and a good example. Gross called it “impressive.” She said: “In the end, they realized that public safety would not be ups and downs at the police station. “

Transfer duties from the police to other places

Daunte Wright and Kobe Dimock-Heisler Security and Violence Prevention Resolution-named after Wright and another 21-year-old man who was shot and killed by Brooklyn Center police in 2019-established several new departments in the city to limit the intervention of armed law enforcement Police officers in situations where they are not needed.

The resolution reads: “In this case, relying on our armed law enforcement personnel as first responders has led to escalation, causing harm, and bringing tragic and possibly avoided loss of life to our residents, including Daunte Wright And the life of Kobe Drimock-Heisler,” the resolution reads.

“Multiple methods will improve overall public safety, better address the root causes of many problems, promote racial justice, better protect the disadvantaged in our communities, and allocate public resources more effectively.”

The comprehensive resolution calls for the establishment of an unarmed community response department to address medical, mental health, or other social or behavioral incidents. Traffic violations involving immobile vehicles will also be resolved by a new unarmed civilian group traffic enforcement agency.

These changes also include restricting police activities, requiring the police to exhaust other options before using lethal force, and prohibiting the use of lethal force in some cases.

At the same time, with the establishment of the new department, the resolution also implemented a city-wide “quotation and subpoena” policy, requiring officials to publish only quotations, and prohibiting the arrest or search of people and vehicles under most non-feeling circumstances.

Elected in 2018, Elliott was the city’s first black mayor, combining the demands of Wright’s mother and Dimock-Heisler’s parents to credit the city’s police reforms To its residents.

He told Al Jazeera: “We heard our communities say very loudly and clearly that they want more mental health resources, and they want unarmed traffic enforcement.” “We have the ability to start making these changes immediately, so This is why we move forward and develop solutions.”

For Elliott, these changes have been a long time. He said: “I have always known that we need to carry out public safety reforms… to ensure the safety of all our community members.”

“I believe that our communities are elected leaders in a diverse manner, and they have a wealth of experience in the sense of being affected by law enforcement,” Elliott explained. He called the resolution “a common-sense approach to public safety that everyone can fall behind.”

Jim Mortenson, executive director of the Labor Enforcement Bureau of the Minnesota Police Union, said the decision was hasty.

Mortensen told the local news media CCX Media: “The mayor seems to have gone out according to his own wishes and drafted this resolution, but he did not actually have a lot of discussions with the people who are engaged in this work.”

Elliott said that since Floyd was murdered last year, he has been working hard to pass some of the police reform elements proposed by this resolution, but Wright’s death made the problem even more serious. It was near and made it past the finish line of the City Council.

Elliott said of the protests that took place days after Wright’s death: “The key difference is that the community mobilizes and demands change.”

Elliott said: “Statistically, a police officer is killed every 18 months in the Brooklyn Center.” When he took office, he asked the police department to provide information.

“The time between Kobe’s killing and Daunte’s killing was 19 months and a week. Of course we want to get these systems up and running so that we can prevent any deaths in the future.”



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