Minneapolis, MN. – Minneapolis voters rejected the insane proposal to eliminate the city’s police department and to replace it with a vaguely defined “Department of Public Safety.” That Department of Public Safety would not have been required to employ any actual police officers.
The question failed with 57 percent of voters rejecting the proposal.
City Question #2 asked voters if they wished to replace the city’s police department with a public safety department that would employ “a comprehensive public health approach.”
The amendment would have gotten rid of the funding formula to determine a minimum number of officers in the city, and it would have removed the police chief’s job from the city charter. The new department would have been headed instead by a civilian commissioner reporting not only to the mayor, but to the 13-member city council.
According to National Review, the ballot initiative was pushed by Yes 4 Minneapolis, a coalition of more than 50 liberal and leftist groups, including racial justice and black-liberation organizations, labor unions, advocates for sex workers and the homeless, the American Civil Liberties Union, a young Democrats group, and at least two local socialist organizations.