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Police Reform Is On The Ballot In Minneapolis. But It’s About More Than
Defunding The Police.
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Nov. 1, 2021, at 6:00 AM


POLICE REFORM IS ON THE BALLOT IN MINNEAPOLIS. BUT IT’S ABOUT MORE THAN
DEFUNDING THE POLICE.

By Maggie Koerth and Nathaniel Rakich

Filed under Police Reform

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Stephen Maturen / Getty Images

On June 7, 2020, in the wake of the high-profile murder of George Floyd by
Minneapolis police, nine members of the City Council made a public statement:
The police department couldn’t just be “reformed” — public safety in the city
would have to be drastically altered. On that summer afternoon, large white
letters leaning against the stage spelled out “Defund Police.”

Since Floyd’s murder, “defund the police” has become a political catchphrase
used to rally supporters and opponents of a policy that is far more complex than
the rhetoric suggests. Unpopular among the American public, it has been used as
a bogeyman by Republicans — and some moderate Democrats — to scare voters away
from electing progressives as violent crime rates have risen nationwide.
(Despite the fears of some Democrats, though, it’s unclear whether it has
actually hurt the broader party at the ballot box.) But the slogan can take many
forms in practice, from reallocating part of the police budget to social
services to setting up accountability structures. Often it’s an outright
misnomer, simply a way for criminal-justice activists to express their anguish
and frustration with the repeated killings of people of color at the hands of
police.

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Such is the case now in Minneapolis, where on Tuesday voters will decide the
fate of City Question 2, a municipal ballot measure that would replace the
Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety under the
City Council’s control. The debate leading up to the vote shows just how much
one idea can take on wildly different meanings. Just like “defund the police,”
Question 2 is more than the sum of its parts.

Black activists who want to protect their communities from violence look at
Question 2 and don’t always see the same risks and opportunities. The Rev. JaNaé
Bates, director of communications for Isaiah, a faith-based nonprofit that
advocates for social and economic justice, is working with the nonprofit
coalition that got Question 2 on the ballot. She’s frustrated that Black
Minneapolitans are consolidated into neighborhoods that are underserved and
overpoliced and wants to see both of those problems change.

But Audua Pugh, the board chair of the Jordan Area Community Council, a
neighborhood association on the city’s predominantly Black Northside, said she
saw the City Council’s announcement back in the summer of 2020 as a betrayal. To
her, Question 2 amounts to a signal that her neighborhood, long ignored by the
city and denied infrastructure common in other parts of town, would lose more
and not gain anything new. Since Floyd’s death, she has successfully sued the
city to demand more police and is a fierce advocate against the ballot question.

That Bates and Pugh — two Black women who share very similar concerns about the
dangers posed to their community by both police and criminal gun violence —
could end up on opposite sides of a public safety plan says a lot about the
divisiveness of Question 2 and the “defund the police” movement generally. The
question has roughly split the city in half: Major figures on the left, such as
Rep. Ilhan Omar and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, support it; major
figures of the establishment, such as Mayor Jacob Frey and Sen. Amy Klobuchar,
oppose it.

But the debate around it has less to do with the actual content of the question
than it does with the symbolism. Question 2 is a “defund the police” proposal
that doesn’t actually defund the police. Instead, it hopes to make police more
accountable by creating a broader approach to public safety. Except it might not
do that either, depending on how other city races pan out. In a contentious
election year marked by a citywide increase in gun violence, the proposal has
become a way for citizens to express their feelings on a whole range of issues.
As Pugh put it, “It’s not what you say. It’s what people hear.”

Related: Everything You Need To Know About The 2021 Elections Read more. »

At its core, Question 2 wouldn’t eliminate the police department, but the city
would no longer be required to have a formal police department or minimum police
staffing levels that have been mandated since 1961. The question would also
create a new Department of Public Safety that could include both police and
other kinds of safety officers, such as therapists, social workers or violence
interrupters. And the city’s hierarchy would change, too. Right now the MPD is
accountable to their chief and the mayor; the new system would have police
answering to the head of the Department of Public Safety, who would answer to
both the mayor and City Council.



Those are the broad strokes, but the fine details remain difficult to pin down,
said Jon Collins, a senior reporter for Minnesota Public Radio who has been
covering the question and debates around it. The City Council has not been able
to publicly discuss plans for implementing the question should it pass, in part
because the city attorney has warned that doing so would violate campaign laws.

On top of that, other elections may affect the way the initiative is enacted if
it passes. If a lot of the current City Council members lose their seats, that
could result in a Department of Public Safety that’s really just the police
department, unchanged, under another name. Meanwhile, a separate proposal, City
Question 1, would give the mayor more power than the City Council. These
measures are incompatible, because the council wouldn’t be able to be in charge
of the Department of Public Safety under the so-called “strong mayor” system.
But it’s very possible both could pass. If so, the issue would likely have to be
settled by the state Supreme Court, Collins said.

This is all intensely technical and wonkish, but it has inspired equally intense
division. A September poll conducted by Mason-Dixon on behalf of the Minneapolis
Star Tribune, Minnesota Public Radio, KARE-TV and the PBS series “Frontline”
found that, at the time, 49 percent of likely voters supported Question 2, while
41 percent were opposed.

The poll gave supporters a lead to go along with their financial advantage — as
of Oct. 19, they had raised $3.0 million versus opponents’ $1.6 million. But the
poll also showed opponents within striking distance and showed Question 2 still
doesn’t have majority support in the city. That’s important because support for
ballot measures often decreases over the course of a campaign, as change-averse
voters default to the status quo.

Meanwhile, it also showed that divisions over the question are particularly
strong within the Black community. The poll oversampled Black voters in an
effort to get a more accurate read on their feelings about public safety in the
city. Black voters said they opposed replacing the MPD with a Department of
Public Safety, 47 percent to 42 percent (white voters supported it 51 percent to
40 percent). Bates, Pugh and Collins all said they had seen divisions within the
Black community along generational lines, with younger people being more likely
to support the question and older people (even individuals who have long been
involved in campaigns for police reform and accountability) opposing.

Those numbers reflect years of problems between the MPD and Black and brown
Minneapolitans. A decade ago, the city shut down its Metro Gang Strike Force
after discovering misconduct by police in the elite unit that included theft and
battery. Over the past 20 years, the city has paid out more than $70 million in
misconduct settlements, even as city records show that the vast majority of
misconduct complaints against MPD results in no internal discipline. Officers
killed three other Black men in the five years leading up to Floyd’s death. And
in 2007, five high-ranking Black police officers, including the current Chief
Medaria Arradondo, sued the city over racism within the department.

The city, particularly the Northside, is also in the midst of a rapid increase
in gun violence. As in most of the country, violent crime rose across the state
of Minnesota in 2020. There were 48 murders in Minneapolis in 2019 and 84 in
2020, with some parts of the Northside seeing a 200 percent increase in gunfire.
Three Black Northside children have died and one remains critically hospitalized
after surviving a head wound. 

Both Pugh and Bates told me they see their community trapped between these two
dangers. “This is two sides of the same coin,” Bates said, explaining why she
was advocating for Question 2. “What folks are feeling in terms of the uptick in
violence and also not feeling protected by police officers … watching the
response time from police get slower and slower and slower. There has to be an
off ramp to that.” 

Pugh, in explaining why she opposed the question, echoed the same ideas: “The
system that was made wasn’t designed for us, for Black people. Make sure you put
that. Because the system wasn’t made for us, and it continues to oppress us.”

As a whole, the polling shows Minneapolis voters have seemingly paradoxical
feelings about their police force. It found that voters have an unfavorable
opinion of the MPD, 53 percent to 33 percent — but oppose reducing its size, 55
percent to 29 percent. The message is as clear as it is conflicting: Police are
not doing a good job, and people are worried about what happens if there are
fewer of them.

That dynamic is especially pronounced among Black voters. They view the
department unfavorably by a 58 percent to 28 percent margin, yet they oppose
reducing its size by a whopping 75 percent to 14 percent.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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It’s a messy pile of conflicting feelings that can’t really be clarified by
science. There’s never been a similar measure anywhere to study in order to
understand the likely outcomes of Question 2, said Aaron Chalfin, a professor of
criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. And while research shows that the
presence of police and spending on police decreases crime, the question doesn’t
actually call for fewer police. Likewise, the research also suggests the
availability of good, legal jobs reduces crime and doesn’t show a connection
between the severity of punishment and crime reduction. It’s not clear how
non-police public safety officers — their presence and spending on them — would
fit into these documented trends.

When we spoke to Bates and Pugh, they both talked about their own hope and
cynicism, but they put those feelings in different places. Pugh had hope that
the police department could be reformed into something that did serve the Black
community, and she had a hard time believing the City Council could create a
completely new and effective safety program. Bates, on the other hand, had a lot
of hopes for the Department of Public Safety and reserved her cynicism for the
possibility of change within the MPD culture.

Which leaves another big question besides just “will the question pass?” After
this much division, can people who agree on nearly everything come back and work
together again? “We all want the same thing,” Bates said. “We all want people in
Minneapolis to be safe. We all want people in Minneapolis to be able to have the
resources they need. And in the event that a crisis happens, that they can pick
up the phone and trust that the right response will show up.”

Maggie Koerth is a senior science writer for FiveThirtyEight. @maggiekb1

Nathaniel Rakich is a senior elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight. @baseballot


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