City council members in Minneapolis lawmakers have declared intent to abolish the police department and replace with alternative model in wake of George Floyd’s killing. Tara Pilkington reports.
The Minneapolis city council has pledged, in a historic move, to disband the city’s police department and replace it with a new system of public safety.
This comes after calls to defund law enforcement are sweeping the US following multiple instances of police violence.
Speaking at a community rally on Sunday, a veto-proof majority of councilmembers declared their intent to “dismantle” and “abolish” the embattled police agency responsible for George Floyd’s death, and its place build an alternative model of community-led safety.
The decision is a direct response to the protests which are currently taken across American cities following the death of George Floyd, and is a major victory for activists who have long fought to disband the current police and prison systems across the country.
Tony Williams, a member of MPD150, a Minneapolis group whose literature on building a “police-free future” has been widely shared during the protests, has said: “This is a moment that’s going to go down in history as a landmark in the police and prison abolition movement,”
He added: “There’s a groundswell of support for this. People are grounded in the history of policing in a way that has never happened before. It’s visible that police are not able to create safety for communities.”
