Minneapolis voters will be offered a chance to amend their city charter on Nov. 2, by ending the Minneapolis Police Department, creating a new Minneapolis Department of Public Safety.
Most important, according to an NPR story on July 28, “If the ballot question passes, the charter would no longer prescribe a minimum number of officers” in the city charter. That requirement is the funding of a police force of at least 1.7 employees per 1,000 residents.
Minneapolis has been coming to grips with the aftermath of the senseless, illegal, and unconscionable killing of George Floyd in May 2020.
Important reforms have come from his tragic death, including many police departments banning the use of chokeholds, and a national law enforcement consensus on the require that police officers render aid.
Some activists have used Floyd’s death to pursue a more radical agenda, which has fallen under their umbrella term, “Defund the Police.” Initially that term was a rallying cry. Now, it is seen as an extreme idea, with even national Democrats in Washington decrying its use.
But the words are not the problem. The policy is the problem.
As Minneapolis voters consider whether to vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ on this charter amendment, perhaps my hometown of Austin, Texas, can offer a cautionary tale.
In August 2020, our mayor and City Council voted 11-0 to cut up to one-third of the police budget ($150 million of a $450 million budget). They immediately cut $20 million and gave themselves the authority to move the rest of the $130 million to any program they wished. They’ve moved at least $65 million so far.
While it is undeniable that some funding went to good purposes like domestic abuse prevention, the deeper consequences of this policy shift on our city have been dramatic.
Our police department had an authorized strength of 1,959 two years ago, with around 1,800 officers active. Today we are under 1,600. As one of the fastest growing major cities in the U.S, our population is just under 1 million, according to the latest census.
But these numbers do not tell the entire story. According to our police department, 96% of scheduled shifts are not fully staffed. We are losing 15-22 officers a month to retirement and attrition, and we will not have another graduated cadet class until next spring.
Currently we have the same number of officers that our city did in 2008, when we were 45% as large a city as today. By the end of the year, we will be at 1998 staffing levels (when we were 25% as large).
The consequence of this staffing crisis, which has caused priority one 911 call response times to jump 20% since January, is a violent crime wave unlike anything Austin has ever seen.
Some claim violent crime is increasing everywhere. That’s not true. Large cities like Miami and Nashville increased their police budgets and they have seen violent crime drop.
Last year Austin set an all-time record with 48 homicides. We are currently at 52 homicides with 4½ months left in the year. Aggravated assault, robbery, battery, stabbings, rapes and arson are all up at least 20 percent year over year.
[image_caption]Matt Mackowiak[/image_caption]
It began with an effort to reinstate the public camping ban, which was in place for 23 years and had a 93 percent voluntary compliance record, according to the Austin Police Association. On May 1, 2021, we passed Prop B 58%-42%, with nearly 91,000 voters concluding that unregulated public camping was bad for the residents and the homeless.
For context, our homeless population likely tripled in the two years that camping ordinance was in effect.
After collecting nearly 28,000 signed petitions in 55 days, Save Austin Now PAC has successfully put another ordinance on the Nov. 2, 2021 ballot.
Our #MakeAustinSafe ordinance ensures adequate police staffing (2.0 police officers per 1,000 residents plus a minimum of 35 percent community engagement time for eligible officers), doubles police training to the most of any major U.S. city (from 40 hours annually to 80 hours), and enacts important police reforms (minority hiring incentives, retention pay for officers with no serious complaints).
Every city is different.
Austin and Minnesota voters face different choices in November.
Minneapolis will open the door to #DefundThePolice if its measure passes.
Austin will be the first city to overturn #DefundThePolice if our ordinance passes.
I believe Minneapolis can learn from Austin’s experience and avoid the mistake we are now trying to correct.
Matt Mackowiak is the co-founder of Save Austin Now PAC, a nonpartisan political action committee that advocates for policies and candidates that support quality of life issues and public safety. Learn more at http://www.SaveAustinNowPAC.com.
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Austin used to be a wonderful town, so did Minneapolis.
They both were changed, and not for the better, by the same thing. Can you guess what that is?
Trump supporters determined to ruin the economy and extend a public health crisis as long as possible? Is that the correct guess?
The problem isn’t the defunding of the police so much as it is that the police are melting away. It’s getting to the point where there is nothing left to defund.
“96% of scheduled shifts are not fully staffed. We are losing 15-22 officers a month to retirement and attrition, and we will not have another graduated cadet class until next spring.”
Based on these figures, it’s unclear whether Austin’s police staffing problems are tied to budget cuts or attrition. It actually sounds a lot like a current problem in Minneapolis: cops are leaving faster than they can be replaced. This isn’t a funding problem – Minneapolis hasn’t cut police funding.
Further, the author ignores the root problem that Minneapolis is trying to address: the existing police structure protects officers that use excessive force, and codifies systemic racism. It is quite possible that the proposed charter amendment will not do what it’s proponents promise. But we know for sure that the system we have is broken, and has been for decades.
Some people might think we can learn from the experiences we’ve had MPLS. The idea that increased violence is caused by decreased officer numbers is a claim that needs to be proven, correlation is not causation after all, and Austen isn’t the only city to see crime increases in the country.
It’s not my dog race because I don’t live in MPLS, but I can point out the fact that all those cops and all that equipment didn’t prevent or control the riots. In fact one can easily show that cops caused the riots in a lot of ways from killing black men to shooting people eyes out with “rubber” bullets.
I can see all these important people like Walz and Craig coming out against “defunding” the police. But these are the same people who sat around and admired the problem of deadly racism in America for decades, and I don’t see them offering any solutions or policies of their own. When the status quo is literally killing your constituents, you need to actually do something, how many decades and how many dead black people does it take to figure that out?
One of the major issues with yes Mpls is the lack of a realistic detailed plan. Currently the city of Mpls is spending lots of money on research/consulting. Most of those receiving the funds don’t live here or know much of the history. The reality is many of the services such as social workers, co responders, public health are already provided by the county not the city. So if Mpls duplicates the services/has entirely their own, expect taxes to go way up. Why not do what Chief Rondo wants which is to increase and build on those services already in place. This could include expanding joint work between MPD and social services and communication. Another reality is that even with a social service/public health approach, there will be a significant number of people not wanting to engage in offered services; you also need to at times to be able to bring people in on maybe a more minor issue and divert them to services with oversight–such as mental health or veteran’s court. Again I would encourage people to talk to those who do the actual work, not just policy makers or those in manager jobs with heavy power point presentations.
Yep, read that Austin article a couple of days ago, had a spotlight on PBS News hour the other day as well. Great intentions disastrous results. It isn’t just a NO on no, on question 2, its a HELL NO. Yes we can learn and relate with our fellow citizens in Austin! Good folk, good food, good environment, been there a fair amount of times in the past.
Hey look, another white guy telling minority folks that the only way to solve crime is to accept that members of their populations are going to be killed indiscriminately by police, they’re going to be targeted disproportionately by those same police, and the police that commit these acts are going to face no consequences whatsoever. “But by God we’re gonna crack some skulls like the rest of our Southern brethren and get ORDER back in here”
Evidently you don’t know any of our neighbors here on the North Side? What should we say? hey look another excessively progressive white guy telling us folks in the eye of the crime hurricane, what we do and don’t need in police?
I’m sure they love your concern, when THEIR friends and family are killed indiscriminately by the police. I’m sure they love it when YOU say what THEY’RE “thinking” (because of course, who better to speak for the entire North side than a grumpy, old, white guy).
There was some polling awhile back that showed Minneapolis’s black residents were more opposed to defunding the police than white residents. And I expect that reflects the fact that most of the victims of gun violence are black. Its their children that are dying.
Frankly, the defund the police people should just change their slogan to “vote Republican” or “re-elect Trump” because this nonsense is a gift to Republicans.
I read something recently, perhaps at the atlantic, about some activists who are trying to replace “defund the police” with “solve all murders.” The former has the problems you cite, while the latter addresses a fundamental imbalance in the justice system that essentially devalues black lives, by not treating black murders as worth solving.
At this point, abandoning the phrase “defund the police” makes sense. But we cannot abandon the principle that police reform is necessary to rebuild community trust. And some calls should likely be addressed by people with more background in social services and mental health.
I absolutely believe the police need a lot of fixing. But “defund the police” is a marketing disaster, and the amendment in Minneapolis is a political one. Walz is opposing this because he knows it will probably lead to a Republican takeover of the state.