The police abolition movement gained momentum in the U.S. city of Minneapolis during protests of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and culminated in the failed Question 2 ballot measure in 2021 to replace the city's police department with a public safety department. The measure would have removed minimum staffing levels for sworn officers, renamed the Minneapolis Police Department as the Minneapolis Department of Public Safety, and shifted oversight of the new agency from the mayor's office to the city council. It required the support of 51 percent of voters in order to pass. In the Minneapolis municipal election held on November 2, 2021, the measure failed with 43.8 percent voting for it and 56.2 percent voting against it.
The ballot measure was part of the political movement in the aftermath of Floyd's murder by local political activists that sought to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with another system of public safety and divert its budget towards social services programs in the city, such as affordable housing, violence prevention, education, and food security. A public pledge by nine of the 13 elected members of the Minneapolis City Council on June 7, 2020, to "defund police" garnered significant attention for the police abolition movement, as well as considerable political backlash. The goals of the "defund police" pledge were never fully defined by city council members at the time of the pledge and the effort largely collapsed in the following months. Polling in August 2020 revealed that even though 73% of respondents supported defunding the police, only 40% supported reducing the size of the police force while 44% opposed.Rao, Maya (2 July 2020). "Some Minneapolis Black leaders speak out against City Council's moves to defund police" . Star Tribune
Public discussion in late 2020 about changing the city's policing policies came during a surge in violent crime. At the end of 2020, city council shifted 4.5 percent of the city's annual police budget to violence prevention programs, despite activists and local lawmakers wanting more. Though the city council committed to maintaining the same number of police officer positions, attrition and disability claims left the department with 200 fewer police officers. Complaints about slower response times to 911 calls increased, and during a City Council meeting Council Member Andrea Jenkins questioned officers' apparent refusal to respond to certain parts of the city.
After the failed vote, public attention shifted away from ambitious police reform measures and towards crime reduction and more incremental reform strategies.
Background
Police abolition movement
Across the United States, community groups advocated for reducing government budgets and “public safety” spending on police and prisons and reallocating funding towards services like housing, employment, community health, and education. In Minneapolis, the local advocacy group MPD150 published a report in 2017 recommending the Minneapolis Police Department be abolished, argued that "the people who respond to crises in our community should be the people who are best-equipped to deal with those crises" and that first responders should be social workers and mental health providers.
George Floyd protests
Following the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin and the resulting civil unrest, Minneapolis Public Schools, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, multiple private businesses and venues, and the University of Minnesota severed ties with the Minneapolis Police Department. Civil leaders in Minneapolis and elsewhere began calling for reforms of the city's police force, including the defunding, downsizing, or abolishing of departments. During heavy rioting in Minneapolis the night of May 28, 2020, demonstrators set the third police precinct station ablaze as police forces retreated from the area of East Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue.
Timeline 2020
March to Mayor Frey's home On June 6, 2020, thousands of protesters marched in Minneapolis in an event led by local organization Black Visions Collective. Protesters gathered at the city's Bottineau Field Park, marched past the Minneapolis Police Federation's union headquarters, and ended at Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey's private home. The march featured chants of "George Floyd!" and "Black Lives Matter!" and pleas to defund the police.
At Frey's home, the crowd demanded that he come outside, and then when Frey appeared asked if he supported abolishing the city's police force. After Frey responded that he did not, the crowd ordered him to leave and booed him away. At the rally, United States Representative Ilhan Omar, whose Minnesota's 5th congressional district encompassed Minneapolis, denounced the city's police force as "inherently beyond reform".
Powderhorn Park rally On June 7, 2020, at a Powderhorn Park rally organized by Black Visions Collective and several other black-led social justice organizations, nine of the 13 members of the Minneapolis City Council vowed before a large crowd to dismantle the city's police department.
Onstage taking the pledge were Council President Lisa Bender, Vice President Andrea Jenkins and Council Members Alondra Cano, Phillipe Cunningham, Jeremiah Ellison, Steve Fletcher, Cam Gordon, Andrew Johnson, and Jeremy Schroeder. At the rally, Bender said of the pledge to abolish the city's police force, "Our efforts at incremental reform have failed. Period." Council Member Linea Palmisano attended the rally as an audience member, but did not go on stage or take the pledge, and Council Members Lisa Goodman and Kevin Reich did not attend nor agree to the pledge.
The June 7 pledge by nine city council members, though it represented a veto-proof majority, did not actually disband the Minneapolis police force and details about the next steps in the process were not defined at the time. Some activists wanted to consider the idea of unarmed crisis response personnel and re-purposing the police department's $193 million annual budget for education, food, housing, and health care.
Council approves city charter referendum The city council voted unanimously in late June 2020 to place the option of revising the city's charter to permit removing the minimum staffing requirement from the City Charter, renaming the Police Department and shifting oversight from the Mayor to the City Council. The charter required the city to “fund a police force of at least 0.0017 employees per resident”.
Private security hired for city councilors Several city council members received death threats in the wake of the pledge to defund the city's police. It was revealed in July 2020 that on June 7, 2020, the same day that they pledged to "begin the process of ending" the police department, Council Members Cano, Cunningham, and Jenkins used $152,400 in city funds to hire private security guards. All three had pledged on stage to "defund police" in the city. Several activists felt it was it was hypocritical for councilors to have extra security when the same privilege was not extended to other residents of the city. According to the mayor's office, the three council members had not asked for a Minneapolis police vehicle to park outside their home to maintain a security presence.
Opposition from Black leaders In June 2020, the council's move to amend the city charter drew opposition from some Black leaders and activists who felt that the council was "pandering" to activists, in the words of a local pastor. Others felt that the council had not adequately included voices from the Black community in the process and expressed the need to address public safety concerns as black residents were disproportionately victims of crime and witnesses of crime in the city, just as they were disproportionately victims of excessive police force.
City charter referendum blocked In August 2020, the Minneapolis City Charter Commission voted to block plans to hold a vote on the proposed city charter amendment in November 2020, citing a need to for longer review and greater public input. The charter amendment still had the potential to be put before voters in November 2021 with the city's mayor and city council seats up for re-election.
"Defund police" pledge reinterpreted The June 7, 2020, pledge by nine of the 13 Minneapolis Council Members to abolish the police department generated substantial media coverage initially, but the pledge largely collapsed in the following months. Council members who took it had different interpretations about its meaning when reflecting back on it several months later. Council Member Andrew Johnson, for example, said the pledge was meant "in spirit" and not to be taken literally. Some advocates, however, were expecting complete abolition of the police force, or a substantial reduction in the department's budget. When asked directly in October 2020 by Minnesota Public Radio if they still supported abolishing the police department, no Minneapolis council member directly answered "yes", and Council Members Ellison and Goodman declined to respond to the survey at all. During his reelection campaign in 2021, Minneapolis City Council Member Phillipe Cunningham said that he did not see the "defund police" sign at the June 7, 2020, rally before going on stage, and that he did not support the aim of the Black Visions Collective, an organizer of the event, to abolish the police.
Municipal election results and aftermath With 86% of the vote in the election on November 3, 2020, Minneapolis voters approved a referendum about the timing of municipal elections, putting city council seats temporarily under two-year terms with the next election scheduled for 2021. Of the nine Council Members that made the pledge, seven ran for reelection. Minneapolis Council President Lisa Bender announced that she would not seek reelection to her tenth ward seat. Bender said her decision was made before the period of prolonged unrest in the city sparked by George Floyd's murder. In December 2020, Council Member Alondra Cano declined to seek reelection to her seat representing the city's ninth ward that sustained heavy damage during the May 2020 riots. Bender and Cano were among the nine city councilors that pledged to abolish the city's police department. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey announced his intention to run for re-election in 2021 also.
Violence prevention pilot programs established
By late 2020, public polling revealed mixed views among Minneapolis residents about reduced funding for the police, with more than half of the city's residents opposing a reduction in the size of the police force. Decisions about the allocation of city resources and size of the police department came as Minneapolis had tallied its highest levels of violent crime in decades.
Because there were more unfilled positions than could be filled in one year in 2021, it was possible to both retain positions (that could be filled in future years) and reallocate funds to other projects. In December, the Minneapolis city council voted to redirect $7.7 million of the police department's proposed $179 million budget to mental health crisis teams, violence prevention programs, and for civilian employees to handle non-emergency theft and property damage reports. The council placed $11.4 million of the police budget in a reserve fund that requires ad hoc council approval for police recruitment and overtime. By a 7–6 margin, the council voted to keep in place the police department target level of 888 officers for 2022 and beyond.
The debate to reduce police funding in Minneapolis occurred as the city contended with persistently elevated levels of violent crime following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. On June 17, 2021, the city council unanimously approved the release of $5 million in emergency funds to cover police overtime, which partially offset the budget reductions in December 2020.
2021