
Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department - smaili
https://theappeal.org/minneapolis-city-council-members-announce-intent-to-disband-the-police-department-invest-in-proven-community-led-public-safety/
======
TrevorAustin
"Dissolve the organization and start over from scratch" is an under-used
solution in American life, even in the private sector.

Apparently Camden, NJ did a version of this in 2013 with a fair amount of
success: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/how-
camde...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/how-camden-new-
jersey-reformed-its-police-department)

~~~
mikekhusid
The Camden thing is going around a lot but to me it seems like they did a
reorg and actually ended up hiring more police.

[https://www.tapinto.net/towns/camden/sections/law-and-
justic...](https://www.tapinto.net/towns/camden/sections/law-and-
justice/articles/camden-sees-crime-drop-over-past-decade)

~~~
tomnipotent
I don't think anyone is against _more_ police, but rather the tactics used and
how that money is spent. Twenty years ago, police deploying tasers was an
outlier. In 2020, it's become normalized and happens thousands of times a
year. There's no reason we can't have better trained, restrained police at the
same or greater budget. It's the _tactics_ that are in question, and qualified
immunity which allows bad actors to do as they please with little-to-no impact
to themselves (thanks to local governments picking up the tab).

Let's not pretend we didn't just see 57 police officers resign from a
volunteer position because two of their own were caught on camera pushing a
75-year old man to the ground and held accountable because "just following
orders".

~~~
d2v
Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm against more police. I think communities
would be better served by an increase in social workers in most cases. Drug
usage and homelessness won't be solved by imprisoning people and forever
branding them as criminals. You need bridge housing, treatment programs, and
services for these people. And an educational system that is well funded,
regardless of the community it serves. I think criminalizing social issues has
proven to be pretty ineffective, generally harmful, and really expensive. I'd
recommend checking out "The End of Policing" for a thoughtful, well-reasoned
argument for decreasing the number of police. The ebook is free:
[https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-
policing](https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing)

~~~
malnourish
I am fine with more police if we entirely redefine police to mean social
workers, counselors, community assistants, etc.

And if they didn't carry guns nor drive unmarked cars. Police should be _seen_
and they should be seen interacting positively with the community, not
patrolling in a gradient of (un)identifiable vehicles.

~~~
Myce
I live in a country where most of this is true.

Unfortunately, there are now so many care workers that many people with issues
are getting fed up with all the people that come to their house for all kinds
of help (think a care worker for finance, one for mental issues,one for
physical issues,one to help the person get back to work, one for the kids etc.
etc.)

So if there will be a shift from 'police as is', to more like a care worker
system, this would be something to consider.

But other than that, it seems to work well. The police is considered your
friend. They pretty know each of the people that have issues or who ever
committed crime.

They continue to offer help to them,but will make sure they also get off the
streets when they become a potential threat.

There continues to be a lot of criticism from certain groups within our
country that wants the police act tougher, but I think the majority of people
are happy with how the police does it's job here.

~~~
yread
There is also a wijkagent - "neighborhood cop". Actual policeperson (with gun
and all) that has "office hours" when they are walking around the neighborhood
talking to people (even just for a chat) at the playgrounds, business owners
and so on. People come to them with problems. There is a website where you can
look up wijkagent for each neighborhood. Sometimes they're also active on
Twitter, FB... Works quite well

~~~
mcv
It's very important that police is connected to the community they police, and
cares about that community. My impression of police in the US is that that is
rarely the case in cases where this police brutality occurs.

I'm fairly happy with Dutch police. They're visible and approachable. They're
not perfect; there was a case in the 1990s where they cracked down
unreasonably hard on a peaceful student protest. And in that case, it turned
out that many of those cops were indeed looking forward to a fight, which is a
dangerous and harmful attitude. Those instances are fairly rare, though.

~~~
yread
Yes, no one is perfect
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plCdrFYm5b8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plCdrFYm5b8)

~~~
mcv
Even so, no tear gas, no beatings, and despite the protesters resisting as
much as they non-violently can, the police are not using any violence beyond
pulling and shoving them into the bus.

I was thinking more of this one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIwrdriLiZc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIwrdriLiZc)

(It's surprisingly hard to find anything online about events before 2004. This
was all over the news at the time, but now it looks like it never happened. My
quality newspaper lacks proper archive functionality for searching more than a
year ago. Search engines and Youtube have never heard of this, frequently
returning 0 results.)

------
matwood
I mentioned this solution in a comment the other day. The NCAA gives sports
programs the 'death penalty' when the 'loss of institutional control' [0] is
so great the only fix is to disband and start over. Having it as an option is
a good thing. The people in charge can't use an 'I didn't know' defense,
because that itself is evidence of loss of institutional control.

[0] [https://www.ncaa.org/governance/institutional-
control](https://www.ncaa.org/governance/institutional-control)

~~~
TrevorAustin
You'll see that sometimes too with Greek organizations at colleges.

I argued at the time the the "corporate death penalty" was the only
appropriate remedy for the Equifax breach:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_dissolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_dissolution)

~~~
giancarlostoro
Or broken up and forced to sell to other orgs that can handle improving things
from a security standpoint.

~~~
blackflame7000
Decentralizing data rarely makes it more secure.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Not so much the data probably, but some of the services. I was thinking more
business / consumer sides split. Of course given what sort of data shows up in
my credit report (annoyingly outdated) I'd be okay with them being shut down
too.

------
11thEarlOfMar
"...MPD announced last year the discovery of 1,700 untested rape kits spanning
30 years, which officials said had been misplaced."

This leads me to think that there are some objective metrics by which a police
department's performance can be measured. For a department to have 1,700
untested rape kits (vs. nearly 2500 rapes reported in 2019) seems outrageous,
even if it represents a low percentage of total reported. Why wouldn't a
police department ensure that every reported rape with evidence collected is
properly followed up? They say many or all of these kits were misplaced, which
simply leads to more questions about procedures, policies, and internal
discipline.

It seems that a standardized approach to department evaluation and oversight
is needed. Corporations employ internal accounting personnel, external
auditing personnel, and then submit to audits by the IRS. If there were a
similar approach to oversight for police departments, with data made
transparent as it is for public companies, perhaps most those 1,700 women
would have justice.

~~~
thu2111
The rape thing is tricky though. Very unlikely they were really "misplaced".
That answer sounds like an attempt to avoid the real, much harder discussions
about the rape case pipeline.

Go investigate this for yourself if you don't believe me, but there are good
and difficult reasons why very few rape cases go to prosecution. It's not a US
problem or a Minneapolis problem, the same things are found throughout the
world.

Core problem: a huge number of rape allegations are false compared to other
crimes. It all starts from there. In anonymous interviews police will normally
claim about 50% are false. There have been academic studies that reach similar
numbers. There are also a lot of rather motivated studies that try to claim
it's much lower, but when you dig into the methodology there are usually big
problems and it's clear they've started with a pre-determined conclusion.

So how can a PD end up with 1,700 untested rape kits? Easy. A woman walks in
and claims she's been raped. The police administer a kit. They also do a bit
of investigation, probe her testimony a bit. She changes her story and
renounces the claim. This happens all the time, it's an extremely frequent way
for these cases to end. There are even pie chart breakdowns in some of these
studies for the top reasons for renouncing an allegation, for example, it's
often a tactic used as part of a fight, when the couple make up she goes and
admits it wasn't true. Or the claims fall apart under investigation and she
admits she was lying.

So the police shelve the kit. It's not worth sending it off to the lab when
the claimant already did something that ensures no successful prosecution will
ever occur. At the same time it's evidence so they don't destroy it.

One day someone finds the big pile of untested rape kits and goes crazy. OMG
evidence of institutional sexism at the police, how can this be justified.
Some police manager looks at the data for the reasons and decides "the kits
are untested because we think 1,700 women lied to us" isn't going to go down
well and doesn't want to start that argument, because a whole lot of very
angry people, wrongly and delusionally, believe women never lie about rape. So
they come out with this nonsense about them being "misplaced" and hope it'll
blow over.

Low rape clearance rates are mentioned in the article as evidence of poor
performance at this PD, but it's a bit vague as to what they mean. What you
see though is that this particular crime has very low clearance and
prosecution rates globally. When people drilled into loss rates at different
parts of the case pipeline, they found there are no easy answers and no ways
to change things beyond the obvious one of relaxing standards of proof to make
it easier to put men in jail.

------
nkrisc
It sounds kind of crazy on the surface but it makes sense - what else would
you do if you completely lost faith in the police force to do its job
effectively? It would probably seen easier to disband it and replace it with
something else than to try and reform such an organization.

~~~
nosuchthing
There's a severe financial side to it all as well...

The city budget funds the police, which funds the union, and they donate their
money to the attorney general, mayor, and city council members. Often when
they don't get the budget they demand, police will openly retaliate against
local businesses and residents who did not support their budget.

~~~
jjeaff
Which is also exactly what the mob does.

------
Consultant32452
I highly recommend Jane Coaston of Vox for a follow. Her recommendations are:

1\. End qualified immunity

2\. Curtail the power of police unions

3\. We need fewer laws

I don't think I could agree harder with this. It sounds like the "disband the
police" movement is an elaborate implementation of #2. Now we just need #1 and
#3.

[https://twitter.com/cjane87/status/1267898762845880321](https://twitter.com/cjane87/status/1267898762845880321)

~~~
JackFr
Patrolmen shouldn’t carry guns. I know that wouldn’t have helped George Floyd,
but we need to ratchet down societal acceptance of violence.

If a situation warrants firearms, it should at least warrant a radio call to
the station for armed backup.

~~~
d2v
I don't think taking weapons away is enough. Police aren't trained to provide
long-term solutions to domestic violence, homelessness, mental illness, or
drug addiction, which are often tasked with solving. The typical solution law
enforcement offers to these situations is to jail someone. Rightly, people
don't want to go to jail and the situation escalates. And as we're witnessing
all over the US, the police are often responsible for this escalation, and
that escalation leads to violence.

I think we need people trained in non-violent intervention who can offer long-
term solutions to the problems these people are experiencing. Why not just
replace a patrolman with a social worker who can call the actual police should
the situation escalate?

~~~
JackFr
I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think a lot of the situations you describe
need a peace officer with legal authority to arrest. They mostly don’t need
deadly force, and I think the walking threat of deadly force that gun carrying
cops represent changes the situation often for the worse.

------
wbharding
This has sufficient public momentum to prove that a plurality believes the
current system does the public more harm than good. Of course, removing cops
will reduce harm done by cops to the public. But it will also reduce harm done
by cops to law breakers. Intuitively, I would expect the law breakers to
benefit disproportionately, since the cops stated mission was to prevent law
breaking and all.

Statistics I've read suggest that US cities have been getting progressively
safer over the past generation. It's interesting to wonder if our generation
of safety has allowed us to forget that "order" and "justice" are not
intrinsic qualities of humanity (nor any other animal group). Looking forward
to seeing how Minneapolis will go about delivering consistent justice with no
bad actors enforcing it. Will also be interesting to see which types of law
breakers emerge as the winner from decimation of their traditional adversary.

~~~
fastball
"Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create
weak men. And, weak men create hard times."

– G. Michael Hopf

~~~
nojvek
What are you trying to imply by Hard times create strong men. Hard times also
create broken men.

Weak is not always bad. I don’t want “supposedly strong men” being so trigger
happy , their happy dropping nukes on civilian because they couldn’t let go of
their “strong” ego.

~~~
fastball
My comment was intended to be an agreement with GC’s second paragraph, which
postulated that maybe these problems are partially caused by what is
effectively complacency.

I did not come up with the phrasing of the quote. That being said, I'm fairly
certain you are taking "weak" and "strong" more literally than the quotee
intended.

------
ufmace
I don't live in Minneapolis, and I don't know if this is the right solution or
not. But what bothers me about what I've read so far, is they seem to have
remarkably little details about exactly what they want to replace the
department with. Exactly what does "community-led public safety" mean?

~~~
pickpuck
My understanding, based mostly on what I’ve seen on Twitter:

911 call -> Dispatch unarmed City employee, typically a social worker, who
specializes in the relevant situation, population or neighborhood.

Goal is to assist the individuals involved, to be compassionate instead of
punitive, to get to the root cause of the issue.

There is still some kind of armed security backup for the social worker’s
protection in situations that do escalate.

~~~
downerending
That's admirable in theory, but sounds like a recipe for getting your head
blown off. There really _are_ unrepentantly awful people in the world, and
sometimes we need to save innocents from them.

~~~
mjburgess
Community policing has been the basis of UK policing for the last 200 years.

The violent US model of presuming crime is about "saving innocents" is
dramatically at odds with the US's exceptional mental health crisis -- which
forms the basis of most of its community policing issues.

The lack of universal healthcare around mental health is a catastrophe. It's
remarkable how tolerant US society is to overwhelming amounts of untreated
mental health problems.

~~~
downerending
I used to regard UK policing, founded on the unarmed bobbie (sp?), with awe.
The Rotherham scandal changed my thinking on that entirely. It's the worst
failure of policing I've ever heard of, and seems to have caused by this sort
of "light touch above all" trend.

Yes, "saving innocents" is the whole point of policing.

~~~
mjburgess
We may need to wait for the report to be clear on where the failures were, but
there's lots going on there.

Part of the context of that has to be a pretty systemic UK-wide issue
affecting public institutions where child-abuse was ignored. It's not clear
that heavy-handed policing, in that context, would lead to a different result.
It certainly wouldn't in many high profile cases, where police had been
strongly encouraged to ignore the issue.

~~~
downerending
A lot going on, yes, but impossible to believe the police were not aware. In
the US, if higher-ups tried to suppress this, it'd be leaked to the press, and
all hell would break loose.

~~~
mjburgess
That's true and goes to my point. There's a classism at work here that isn't
about the style of policing.

For the UK, class is the defining structural issue, not race. Journalists and
the police have typically protected and respected the upper-middle.

That's interacting here with a police oversight in an usual way

------
skissane
The US has lots of different police forces – city police, county police, state
police. Many other countries have more centralised policing with fewer levels.
I think, a smaller number of bigger police forces might promote more
professionalism, more professional management, oversight by more experienced
politicians (state political leaders tend to be more experienced and capable
than local political leaders, especially when talking about smaller cities).
That would suggest abolishing city-level police forces and merging them into
the county-level police force, even abolishing county-level police forces and
merging it all into state police.

~~~
sneak
The problem is that there is no organization that is incentivized to uncover
or investigate police crimes.

All other portions of government have cross-checks to stop people breaking the
law. The police don't, and cover for one another.

There needs to be an organization that has clear and direct incentive to
prosecute abuses by the police, that doesn't have a century+ long tradition of
violence, selective enforcement, racism, and murder.

~~~
elil17
For the FBI, there is such an organization. The FBI Inspector General
investigates malpractice committed by FBI officers. However, the scope of
their ability to fix problems in the FBI is limited because prosecutors rarely
take up cases against law enforcement. They also hold FBI officers accountable
by writing reports for congress. Again, the usefulness of this is limited by
the unwillingness of Congress to act on this information.

(Inspectors General exist for for every federal agency)

~~~
novok
It has to be an organization separate from any specific police agency, with
prosecutors solely devoted to prosecuting police crimes, complete with their
bonuses and careers linked to convictions complete with scummy plea bargaining
behavior.

There also has to be new crimes of negligence for things like 'body cam turned
off' or 'records suddenly missing' and so on.

------
Melting_Harps
Congratulations to all who have fought against Police brutality, I hope this
sets a new precedent. I'm not for abject destruction of people's property that
we saw from a minority during these protests, but I'm in full support of
People exercising their fundamental Human Right to protest.

> But if you want to say "No more of that. Now we're doing this" then a
> rebuild isn't a bad idea.

I just hope they have the foresight to put concrete measures that will deter
Police from going back to the way things were, Andrew Yang proposed a bonus
that departments gets pulled on the entire department if they get complaints
of police abuse, therefore giving other officers the incentive to not put up
with the 'blue shield' BS narrative that leads to corruption and violence.

I don't think its over until thus applies to the entire US police departments.
I have not participated in these demonstrations, but I will play my part, too.

------
vvpan
Another example of a relatively successful go at this but for a whole country
- Georgia. [https://www.u4.no/publications/police-reform-in-georgia-
crac...](https://www.u4.no/publications/police-reform-in-georgia-cracks-in-an-
anti-corruption-success-story/)

------
gerardnll
"Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis retreated on Saturday through a sea of
protesters yelling, “Go home, Jacob, go home!” and “Shame! Shame!” after he
refused to commit to _defunding_ the Police Department."

He says no to the abolition of the PD, not defunding.

~~~
Reedx
Shame mobs, bending the knee... it's like an episode of Game of Thrones.

------
frosted-flakes
What, exactly, does it mean to disband a police department? Fire everyone and
hand over policing responsibilities to the state? Permanently or temporarily?

~~~
guerrilla
No, that's not the goal of police abolitionists: [1]

1\. [https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/06/police-
abo...](https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/06/police-abolition-
george-floyd/)

Some more references:

1\. [https://www.8toabolition.com/](https://www.8toabolition.com/)

2\.
[https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1268547515038806018](https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1268547515038806018)

3\.
[https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1268510966116954114](https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1268510966116954114)

~~~
frosted-flakes
I can understand the sentiment of the people behind those writings, but it
doesn't really answer my question. What will replace the Minneapolis police
department if it's disbanded?

Many (most?) of its current responsibilities and funding can be given to
social workers, traffic wardens, and other people not armed with guns, but
that doesn't obviate the need for officers of the government to enforce the
law. Laws can change and become less strict, but we will _always_ need some
form of police.

~~~
guerrilla
Abolishing the police means abolishing it. Nothing will replace it. Crime will
be prevented by eliminating its causes and there will be some mechanisms to
deal with last resort cases. The articles explain this.

~~~
crimsoneer
I sure hope the mechanism for last resort cases isn't men and women in uniform
with guns, because then social workers will be very unwilling to approach any
potentially violent situation without the not-police-uniform-gun-men there.

Sorry to be cynical, just the experience of a police officer in a place where
social services are funded far, far better than the US - police don't _want_
to deal with mental health all the time, but being the agency of last resort
makes it very easy to abdicate responsibility to.

~~~
guerrilla
Indeed, I think it helps to understand what police authority and
responsibility is exactly and then one can more easily see what variations are
possible. See my response to the comment sibling to yours.

------
slickrick216
A model for this is the PSNI in Northern Ireland. Irish catholic’s faced
arguably worse racist violence from the Royal Ulster constabulary. Faith and
trust was lost on both sides within the community. Seems to be working given
that there’s been 19 years of peace over there.

~~~
randompwd
To attribute the RUC->PSNI change(2001) as the reason for peace is wrong.

That change was on the back of a much larger, much broader set of changes
brought in as a result of Good Friday Agreement in 98:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement)

> Issues relating to sovereignty, civil and cultural rights, decommissioning
> of weapons, demilitarisation, justice and policing were central to the
> agreement.

~~~
slickrick216
Didn’t suggest it was one thing. I just didn’t think in the context of this
thread that the background was relevant. Can it not be a combination of
things.? The good Friday agreement started the ball rolling the change to PSNI
was one of the measures.

~~~
randompwd
You implied it by omission

> A model for this is the PSNI in Northern Ireland

> Seems to be working given that there’s been 19 years of peace over there.

------
_bxg1
a) I'm incredibly happy to see that the masses still have a voice

b) I'm not positive this is the right solution, but it could be, and it will
be fascinating to see how it plays out and whether it's something that could
work everywhere

~~~
javajosh
The masses have a voice in proportion to the degree to which they control
where their taxes go. The power of the purse is remarkable, because you can
destroy (almost) any instutition by simply defunding it (which is also why any
attempt to circumvent that power, e.g. Executive re-purposing of funds, should
set off huge blaring alarms.)

And when it comes to "what congress can do" I'd argue that it's 90% about
allocation of funds -- because it doesn't matter what the law is if there is
no money to enforce it.

~~~
almost_usual
You could argue the US has a debt as large as it does because it has the
strongest military on Earth. Who is going to enforce the debt collection?

Using this logic and the destabilization of US military the natural answer is
another highly militarized government.

So where there is lawlessness there is opportunity for authoritarianism
whether that’s a gang, police, US military, or foreign adversary.

We need to be smart about change and boil the frog, not get into a fight we
cannot win, otherwise society will descend into authoritarianism likely ran by
the most experienced and powerful authoritarian.

~~~
jjeaff
The fact that the debt is deliniated in US controlled currency is what
protects us. Now, our stability, partially due to our military allows that to
happen. But it isn't necessary to avoid being collected on.

------
pryce
I hope this happens, and that Minneapolis citizens can build an institution of
their own that they can actually have faith in.

My main concern around this is the array of outside systemic forces that would
want to see this project fail: Make no mistake, if Minneapolis goes through
with this, and if it succeeds, there are a massive numer of other police
departments in other cities who will see this as an existential threat, and
and will almost certainly act to see that it fails

------
drunkpotato
Interesting and surprising if this happens. Note that they're just announcing
their intent to disband, it's not an actual vote, but there's some pretty
strong language here. The article also notes the mayor is opposed to
disbanding.

I would rather see police reforms and a rethinking of priorities than
disbanding police altogether. But if it happens (a big if) perhaps Minneapolis
will provide a rare natural experiment.

~~~
BrianHenryIE
> I would rather see police reforms and a rethinking of priorities

Why? Surely any new policing entity will entail the philosophy of reform and
keeping the rotten part around would be detrimental.

~~~
rightbyte
I would argue that it is hard to have a much less rotten police force than the
city in general. It seems quite crime ridden from the statistics. Maybe if you
draft the policemen from other areas or cities?

~~~
babygoat
Roughly 5% of the Minneapolis police actually live in Minneapolis.

Maybe they should have hired from within the community instead.

------
droptablemain
As others have said, I think "burn it to the ground and start over" is highly
underrated.

My concern is that policing could be taken over by private entities, which I
suspect would be decidedly worse.

~~~
pnako
What is pretty obviously going to happen is that police will simply move from
areas that want to get rid of them to areas that support them.

I don't think the Minneapolis PD cops will have to move to Australia to find a
job. They'll just find work a few miles further away, whether it's public or
private security.

------
at_a_remove
I doubt anyone will adopt a scientific approach, namely, before the experiment
begins, figure out what it is you're going to measure, how you're going to
measure it, and then announce a threshold for "this got us what we wanted"
versus "this was a mistake."

------
stuzenz
I can't help but wonder if the aggressive nature of U.S. police officers are
out of fear that people might have guns - and that it just starts a cycle of
escalation along with citizen rights being ignored. It is a real contrast to
NZ where officers are smiling, friendly and disarming when they approach you -
this would be the norm here even if you are a patched gang member.

We do have issues, here in NZ (racial profiling being one of them) but I am
glad we don't have any additional issues brought about by the police having an
overriding default concern that citizens could be armed.

I may be over simplifying it - but it is the biggest difference I can see.

To try to add some perspective for myself I compared some stats last week
between NZ and the US.

You are __97x__ more likely to be killed by U.S police than you are by NZ
police.

I came to this conclusion through looking at 5 years of NZ data and 6 years of
U.S data. As a side note it seems to be agreed that the U.S deaths by police
is under-reported due to there being no National database and processes in
place to collect the data. On the flip side, keep in mind that NZ only had a
sample of one police caused death over 5 years, so the NZ stats would change
drastically with any increase in deaths.

I really hope the conversation can move to gun control - assuming the U.S.
police professional standards to the public would more easily change if guns
were off your streets.

The stats were derived from this following links: Sources

[https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publication/tactical-
opt...](https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publication/tactical-options-
research-reports)

[https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/](https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/)

I also wonder if that the high number of ex-military in the U.S. police force
also plays into the military-mindset of 'us versus them' approach towards the
community.

~~~
blastonico
Don't think it's fair to compare US to NZ. The New York -> City <\- is more
populated and complex than New Zealand.

~~~
stuzenz
Does population size really matter? We are talking about interactions at most
of a few people to a few people. Whether it be Auckland with a population of
circa a million or NY with their population - I don't think it matters when
you are talking about the interactions of a few people.

I am a kiwi, but have lived in Japan for two decades as well. You could just
about swap out my mentions of NZ for Japan as a second example, but I can see
some comparison there not being considered fair either

I think it is fair to look for comparisons in other countries - my main point
is that racial profiling happens in other countries too - but the acceptable
professional standards for police engagement with the community are vastly
different to what seems to be the norm in the States.

For where most of my life experience lies, whether it be Japan, Australia or
New Zealand, people are not afraid or nervous of interacting with the police.

Some root cause analysis to shine the light on where the issues are would be
helpful I think. I think racial issues are a partial-cause - but there are
racial issues in NZ, Japan and Australia where you don't have anything like
the same aggressive nature of police interaction.

It just feels like the U.S. discourse on the subject is on the side effects
versus the root cause. I could be wrong - but would love to see it discussed.

~~~
blastonico
Points that I see different are:

\- there're terrorists, they have attacked the US and might try to attack
again. Police is the 1st line of defense.

\- Both Japan and NZ are island s. Border control is easier to some extent.
There criminals crossing borders with drugs and other illegal stuff - and
illegal immigrants as well.

\- Social differences: hundreds of billionaires, billions of poor people.

\- Race differences: people from every part of the world wants to live there.
So there's a considerable number of Latins, Asians, Middle East, Africans,
plus the racial issues with afro descents. It's not easy to provide security
to all those differences, each has their own culture.

~~~
stuzenz
I think the article linked by @antoncohen sums up the situation nicely:

[https://medium.com/s/story/fearing-for-our-
lives-82ad7eb7d75...](https://medium.com/s/story/fearing-for-our-
lives-82ad7eb7d75f)

I don't think the reasons you have given should give the U.S police license to
default act aggressively towards others - due to being in fear of their lives.

From my perspective, the U.S. police are not in fear of their lives through
fear of immigrants or terrorists. They are trained to be in fear of someone
having a gun pointed at them.

------
aasasd
Not really comparable, but related still:

> _In 2005 Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili fired "the entire traffic
> police force" of the Georgian National Police due to corruption, numbering
> around 30,000 police officers. A new force was built around new recruits.
> The United States State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and
> Law-Enforcement Affairs has provided assistance to the training efforts._

Haven't heard any reports of traffic mayhem in those months. Afaik after that
traffic police went from post-Soviet bandits and bureaucrats to polite
workforce and their DMV started handling routine procedures in ten minutes
instead of ‘file your request, go home and wait for a response’.

------
jpxw
What are they proposing to replace the police force with, exactly?

~~~
yardie
Probably a police force not represented by a racist union president.

------
flyinglizard
That's actually great. All the power to them for willing to risk it, and a net
benefit for everyone else watching how that experiment turns out.

I share the sentiment that police doesn't eradicate crime; it's a way to
manage chronic crime, but not a solution in itself. However, take the chronic
management away without solving the problem at the core and you're in for a
much bigger problem.

------
michaelbuddy
The idea that a city council can make a rash decision that will drastically
impact the safety of citizens, I'm sorry requires a vote.

This is virtue signalling based on terrible statistics and it's also an
invitiation to harm citizens and businesses.

Every council person's competience is called into question at this point.

------
MilnerRoute
More information on CNN:

[https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/minneapolis-city-
council-m...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/minneapolis-city-council-
members-announce-intent-to-defund-and-dismantle-the-citys-police-
department/ar-BB159oYB)

------
Lazare
The headline is accurate, but perhaps a bit misleading. A synopsis:

The Minneapolis Police Department has had a long string of scandals, and
gradual reform doesn't seem to be working. A majority of the city council seem
to have decided to rebuild/replace the department in its entirety.

This seems pretty reasonable. It's not some wild eyed anarcho-libertarian plan
to try and build a society without coercive force (perhaps sadly, if you lean
that way...); it's just an announcement that a dysfunctional government
department is going to be reorganised slightly more thoroughly than was
previously planned.

------
maest
What are the chances this is a bluff?

------
wayupthere
Georgia (country) did this with great success in 2003.
[https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/siezing-
mom...](https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/siezing-moment-
rebuilding-georgias-police/)

------
PaulWaldman
Is this equivalent to a software rewrite? Let's just throw the whole thing out
and start over.

Throwing out a system and starting afresh would likey introduce new
bugs/systemic failures that aren't currently present.

Is addressing and correcting each specific feature/SOP not an option?

~~~
morgante
That's been tried for years and clearly hasn't worked. Incremental reform has
failed when you have corrupt unions and entrenched cultures.

Yes, you should usually try to incrementally fix bugs in a codebase. But
sometimes it's so mired in technical debt that you're better off throwing the
whole thing out and starting from scratch.

~~~
rjkennedy98
> That's been tried for years and clearly hasn't worked.

Are you implying there haven't been improvements at all? Seriously, if you say
things like this, you should need to provide some statistics. I'm pretty sure
we're at all time lows for police killing unarmed people (don't know where I
saw the statistic but this is why I'm so skeptical of the above statement).

~~~
morgante
Looking at the police brutality over the past 2 weeks, including blatant
attacks on journalists and peaceful protestors, makes it clear that they have
not been "reformed."

------
nojvek
Wow. This is what I call action from those who hold office. Thank you.

I hope the new iteration of MPD is more effective at keeping everyone safe and
preserving order that in a manner that is fair to everyone regardless of race.

------
f137
Great. This will be a very instructive experiment. I hope it would teach those
people a good lesson, and not too many innocent people would die for it.

------
daodedickinson
Happened in Baltimore after Freddie Gary and the result is over 100 more
murders of black men per year than before, just not by police.

------
antoncohen
This is what needs to happen to all police departments. Slow reform won't
work. What police in America do is wrong at its core. We don't need thousands
of armed people roaming the streets looking for crime. Only 5% of arrests
involve violence. Being a cop isn't a dangerous job, it isn't even in the top
10 deadliest jobs in America. Even when only looking at death by violence,
cops aren't the most likely to die on the job (taxi/limo drivers are). We need
people solving actual problems, not people trained to fear the public while
also being armed armed with guns.

Some examples of why police departments should be dissolved and something new
created:

Ever day when I walk to work (pre-COVID) I pass the same two police officers.
They walk along the same stretch of sidewalk waking up homeless people. Ever
day the walk up the same homeless people, while being armed with firearms and
wearing bulletproof vests. They aren't solving a problem. The people they wake
up are still homeless the next day. If instead San Francisco had a dedicated
homeless department that solved end-to-end problems, they could actually solve
problems. They could wake up the homeless people and talk to them, understand
the root problems, and work to come up with solutions to the underlying causes
of homelessness. While also finding compassionate short term help for them.

Another example is from couple days ago, when the Alameda police arrested a
man, throw him to the ground and handcuffing him -- for dancing in the street
outside his home[1]. Someone called called the police because they thought he
might be drunk or have mental problems. But because it was police that
responded, instead of community focused mental health professionals, they
arrested him and used excessive force. That is when police do.

This morning I saw and recorded[2] a white women sitting on the ground have
two AR-15 style rifles, two handguns, and a shotgun pointed at her. That is
routine level excessive force used by cops in America. It is the type of force
that escalates to killings when the white women is replaced with a black man.

At the same time the police don't investigate actual crimes. Every year tens
of thousand of cars are broken into in San Francisco, and the police do
nothing about it.

Here is what I want:

\- No armed police officers on the street.

\- Dedicated non-police departments to solve common problems, having end-to-
end responsibility, with real solutions. Homeless, mental health, whatever is
a big enough problem to have a dedicated departments.

\- Investigators that investigate and solve crimes that impact people. They
don't go looking for crime. They don't carry guns. They don't roam the
streets.

\- Armed response teams at stations and sub-stations. Like fire departments
don't roam the street looking for fires, instead they respond from their
stations. Armed police can do the same. They will _only_ response to calls
involving firearms or other imminent threats to human life. They will be
highly trained, and unlike current police they will not be trained to fear the
public[3]. They will be trained to stay calm, deescalate, and not use force
unless truly required to save another life.

\- Community liaisons. This will be like current police, but they will not be
unarmed and maybe not be sworn officers (i.e., maybe not have arrest powers).
Their job is to walk around and talk to the community, get to know them,
understand their problems, and be a face for the government.

[1] [https://abc7news.com/society/exclusive-unarmed-black-man-
han...](https://abc7news.com/society/exclusive-unarmed-black-man-handcuffed-
by-alameda-police-for-dancing-in-the-street/6234241/)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NnvPJnRAl0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NnvPJnRAl0)

[3] [https://medium.com/s/story/fearing-for-our-
lives-82ad7eb7d75...](https://medium.com/s/story/fearing-for-our-
lives-82ad7eb7d75f)

------
csense
Wait a minute. If you're not gonna have police, how will you handle things
like murders, rapes, robberies, or kidnappings? Do criminals just get to do
their thing without fear of the law?

Maybe we're supposed to form a citizens' posse to hunt 'em down like they did
back in the Wild West?

------
coronadisaster
wow... if they change the power structure for the better, that is great news

------
enitihas
Not an American, but seeing the current divide in the US makes me curious.
What would happen if Trump wins again in 2020?

~~~
coronadisaster
it would probably ensure that all police departments get dissolved and
restructured (because the situation would be too bad)

------
iso947
Have you tried turning it off and on again?

------
bawana
It will be interesting to see what crime does in response? Or more
significantly, how other societal functions affected by police ( like traffic,
MVA management,etc) change.

------
kryogen1c
im not sure how i feel about this. "fire everyone" is too large a scope, but
"charge 1-4 officers with murder" is too small a scope.

both measures are too extreme. firing everyone is only useful if you
restructure the training pipeline and system of accountability, but if you do
that you dont need to fire everyone.

i suppose a nuanced approach is outside public reactionary purview so this is
probably the better option. charging 1-4 officers with murder without changing
the leadership accountability, culture, or anything really will have very
negative impacts on policing.

~~~
elil17
Where are you getting the idea that they will fire everyone? That is how the
nation of Georgia handled it but it doesn’t mean that’s how Minneapolis will.
They said rebuild they system from the ground up, which means restructuring
the system of accountability, not necessarily everyone loses their job.

------
ARandomerDude
> For rapes, the police department’s solve rate is abysmally low. In 2018,
> their clearance rate for rape was just 22 percent.

Getting rid of the police will ensure it goes to zero.

------
macspoofing
I don't think it will work. Minneapolis has one of the highest crime rates in
the country, just as Baltimore did, and that city saw crime rates rise even
higher after protests led to tighter regulations on the Police ... but I don't
live in Minneapolis and so I'm curious to see how it will turn out. I support
this as a great social experiment.

~~~
remarkEon
My sense is that most (but not all) of the people cheering this on are like
you. They don't live there, they have no family there, and they have no ties
to the city or the state. Spoke with a childhood friend last night, and he's
leaving the city and moving to Minnetonka once his lease is up in August.
Everyone else he knows is doing something similar. Obviously this is all
anecdotal, and like you said we get to watch a massive experiment play out in
real time. With the advent of more virtual work, people are going to bail on
places where they see risk as too high. I don't live there anymore, was born
in Iowa, but grew up in Minneapolis and moved there when I was 5. People,
especially in tech it seems, have an element of optimism that's useful in most
situations. I don't share that in this case. We've approached a sort of social
contagion where if you don't support the most extreme positions you are shamed
(literally, like the Mayor was).

~~~
leanstartupnoob
I still live in Minneapolis and most people that I know want to stay.

Everyone who watched the video knows George Floyd was murdered, but the MPD
and its union still want to fight their termination and all charges.

MPD response to protesters has been incompetent, callous, and malicious. The
majority of MPD are suburban Trump supporters and like all Trump supporters
they can't stand progressive places like Minneapolis. The last straw for me
was when the MPD police arrested a reporter in broad daylight on live TV.

~~~
remarkEon
All public sector unions should be banned, I'm not going to fight you on that
one. But, again, I just don't share this optimism.

>The majority of MPD are suburban Trump supporters and like all Trump
supporters they can't stand progressive places like Minneapolis.

Maybe things have changed since I moved away in 2013, but this wasn't true
back then. Both parents of one of my classmates in elementary school were cops
and lived in South Minneapolis. If it is true today, that seems to suggest an
interesting selection bias no? Either MPD only hires surburban Trump
supporters or only these suburban Trump supporters want to sign up to be cops
in the city. In either case, and like I mentioned above, we get to watch a
neat little experiment play out in real time if we're going to disband the MPD
and rebuild it.

~~~
gsk22
It was true, even back then. In 2015, only 5.4% of the MPD lived within city
limits. [1] This isn't a recent change, and IMO it's a major driver of the
"occupier"/"us vs them" mindset many cops in the MPD appear to have. (example:
[2])

[1] [https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/03/20/police-officer-
resi...](https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/03/20/police-officer-residency)
[2] [http://www.citypages.com/news/minneapolis-police-officer-
urg...](http://www.citypages.com/news/minneapolis-police-officer-urges-
looting-of-cedar-riverside-arresting-press/571046391)

------
igammarays
A lot of commenters are questioning this in disbelief, wondering if a city
could actually live without a police department. However, few are noticing
that the council's decision is now largely irrelevant, as police departments
in America are quickly falling apart on the inside, regardless of what the
city council does. A few days ago 57 Buffalo police officers quit the force in
protest[1]. If you think about it, of course they would, as they are now
unable to do their job (in their usual manner) without the risk of either
getting taken to court, or attacked by the public in ambushes and personal
attacks[2]. In such an environment, it's no wonder that police officers
themselves are refusing to show up to work. And just a few minutes ago during
NYC Mayor Blasio's announcement to cut funding to the NYPD [3], a staunch
police supporter, I couldn't help thinking: "what sort of collapse must Blasio
be seeing, on the inside of the NYPD, in terms of morale." I can only imagine
that individual police officers are now genuinely fearing for their lives and
their career.

[1] [https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/us/buffalo-police-
suspension-...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/us/buffalo-police-suspension-
shoving-man-trnd/index.html)

[2] [https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-ambush-
leaves-1-deputy...](https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-ambush-
leaves-1-deputy-dead-2-officers-hurt)

[3] [https://www.foxnews.com/us/de-blasio-nyc-to-cut-nypd-
funding...](https://www.foxnews.com/us/de-blasio-nyc-to-cut-nypd-funding-
shift-it-to-social-services)

~~~
NotSammyHagar
They quit a special task force (around riots) but still have their normal
police jobs.

------
siliconc0w
The problem is American gun culture and the probability that any call might
turn into a violent one. Other countries don't have that problem so they can
send unarmed social workers with higher confidence, over a life time of calls,
they're going to see retirement. In America that isn't the case and responders
need a gun because everyone has guns and you need to have sustainable system
for keeping order that ensures, over the long tail, peace keepers stay alive.
This is probably an unpopular opinion in a time of police abuses but it's
orthogonal, it just means our police need to be extremely well trained and
disciplined because we built a society that is inherently more dangerous (and
this costs a lot of money which we're now defunding).

~~~
umvi
Would it help if murdering unarmed peace keepers or whatever had extreme
punishment attached? Even criminals can be trained. Kill an unarmed peace
keeper, your life is effectively over.

~~~
SamReidHughes
That would require a constitutional amendment, because right now that’s first
degree murder, usually a capital crime, and making the punishment worse than
that would violate the 8th amendment.

------
sunseb
What could go wrong? Lunatics are running the asylum it seems. Authority is
always here. Disband the police and you will get another arbitrary authority
(being gangs, some kind of political repression, and so). There already are
no-go zones in Europa where the police don't go anymore, believe me, you
wouldn't want to live there.

If you don't want the official police anymore, why not starting with your
place, your home and your family?

~~~
scarface74
How is that any different than the lawless gangs that have the force of
government behind them?

~~~
chrisco255
There exists a decent real world example of "a tale of two police strategies"
in two demographically similar cities: Juarez and El Paso. Juarez and El Paso
are situated across from each other along the U.S.-Mexico border. In some ways
they are the same city, with many residents traveling across the border each
day. Juarez is the second most deadly city in the world, at over 100 murders
per 100K population [1]. El Paso has just 3.3 murders per 100K population [2].
The difference is that the police and legal system work better in the U.S.
compared to Mexico. In many parts of Mexico, gangs run the streets, and
officials are either in bed with gangs or often intimidated by gangs [3].
That's what fills the power vacuum in the absence of effective policing.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate)
[2] [https://www.areavibes.com/el+paso-
tx/crime/](https://www.areavibes.com/el+paso-tx/crime/) [3]
[https://apnews.com/231aec4552f040e49095f77968e6345c](https://apnews.com/231aec4552f040e49095f77968e6345c)

~~~
dehrmann
The power of Mexican drug cartels is scary. Someone like El Chapo is
essentially above the law. The only reason he's still in prison is because he
as extradited to the US.

