LAWSUIT SEEKS TO PRESERVE MINNEAPOLIS POLICE DEPARTMENT

[PeteS in CA]

LAWSUIT SEEKS TO PRESERVE MINNEAPOLIS POLICE DEPARTMENT

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/lawsuit-seeks-to-preserve-minneapolis-police-department.php

Defunding and abolishing police departments is an absurd idea that nevertheless has gained currency in some extremely liberal cities. One of those is Minneapolis, whose City Council has actually voted to put defunding its own police department on the ballot in November. This is because the Minneapolis City Charter includes a requirement that the city maintain a police department of a specified size. Happily, an obscure group called the Minneapolis Charter Commission has voted to study the issue further rather than putting it on the ballot.

In the meantime, however, the City Council has been de facto shrinking the police department to the point where it is now smaller than the legally required minimum. A group of Minneapolis residents, all or mostly black, are now suing the Mayor and City Council to force them to comply with the City Charter. They are represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center, a public interest law firm on whose board I serve.

This is the press release that the UMLC published yesterday:

Eight residents and community leaders in Minneapolis, represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center, filed a lawsuit Monday to require the Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Frey take action to secure the safety of citizens amid an exodus of MPD officers.

The petition alleges Minneapolis’s leaders have violated their duties to fund, employ and manage a police force as required by the City Charter. Rather than work to improve public safety, the City Council and Mayor Jacob Frey are making the city a more dangerous place through defunding, imposing a hiring freeze, cancelling training, and public disparagement of the MPD, causing police officers to retire, quit, take medical leave and make disability claims in unprecedented numbers without replacements. This has led to fewer officers employed than required by the City Charter ...