What Started the Nation's PD Defunding Movement
"All Eyes Are On Minneapolis" PD Reform Vote in Two Weeks
A ballot initiative on reforming the police after George Floyd’s death is tearing Minneapolis apart

While some progressive activists support the measure, others — including many Black leaders — say it’s too vague and will only exacerbate the city’s violent crime spike.

But even as Floyd’s murder sparked urgent calls for police reform, the question of how to get there has exposed deep divides across Minneapolis, exacerbated by a spike in violent crime. A Nov. 2 ballot question that would dramatically reshape the size and scope of the Minneapolis police force has fractured the city even more in the first major electoral test of the police reform movement since Floyd’s death.

City Question Two, as it is known, would amend the Minneapolis charter to allow the police department to be replaced by a Department of Public Safety overseen by both the mayor and city council. The Department would take a “comprehensive public health approach” to safety, including the dispatch of mental health workers to certain calls and more investment in violence prevention efforts.

If approved by voters, the initiative would remove decades-old language from the charter requiring a minimum number of police officers based on the city’s population. The new department “could include” police officers “if necessary” — wording that has left some residents afraid the city would descend into lawlessness.

Authors of the proposed charter amendment insist armed officers wouldn’t entirely go away, because they are mandated by Minnesota law to respond to specific calls. “We’re still going to have police,” said JaNaé Bates, a Black reverend and leader of Yes 4 Minneapolis, a coalition of labor, religious and racial justice groups that wrote the question and gathered more than 20,000 signatures to get it on the ballot. “What this does is give the city more flexibility in how we approach safety.”

But the measure’s critics say the initiative’s wording is intentionally vague, leaving out the words “defund” or “abolish” to obscure its true meaning. “This amendment is about abolishing the police,” said Sondra Samuels, a Black activist from north Minneapolis who was part of a group that unsuccessfully sued to get the question off the ballot. “It has nothing to do with safety and systemic change.”

The ballot question comes after a majority of the Minneapolis City Council took the stage at a rally days after Floyd’s death and pledged to dismantle the police department — a dramatic statement that reverberated across the country, becoming an issue in political races big and small.

“All eyes are on Minneapolis,” said Mayor Jacob Frey, who is simultaneously running for a second term in office and against the charter amendment on policing, which he argues will send a city already struggling with violent crime into further distress.

“We need deep structural reform and change … But here in Minneapolis, we have the fewest officers per capita than just about any major city in the entire country,” said Frey, who currently has sole oversight of the police department as mayor. “The notion of further reducing our officer count just does not make sense.”

The debate has also drawn attention from outside the city — sharply dividing state and national Democrats along ideological lines in an election that could have implications far beyond Minneapolis as the party looks to the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential race.

Less than two weeks before Election Day, people on both sides of the ballot question say things remain unpredictable, pointing to private polling and data from citywide canvassing that suggests residents are deeply split on the question — with many still undecided even as early voting has begun.

In one of the few public surveys on the issue, a September poll of 800 Minneapolis likely voters by the Star Tribune, Minnesota Public Radio, KARE 11 and PBS’s FRONTLINE found that 49 percent of those surveyed supported replacing the MPD with a new department of public safety; 41 percent were opposed while 10 percent were undecided.

Yet 55 percent of those polled also said Minneapolis “should not reduce” the size of the police force — including 75 percent of Black residents and 51 percent of White residents who were surveyed.

The uptick in crime has coincided with a slowdown in police response, which the department blames on staffing shortages. Since Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, nearly 300 officers have left the department — many claiming post-traumatic stress disorder from the fiery protests that erupted after his killing. According to numbers presented to the city council this week, a total of 588 officers were working at the department as of Sept. 30 — down from the 888 positions that had been funded last year. washingtonpost.com