"Minneapolis" And "Moronville" Are Alliterative, But, It Turns Out, Not Synonymous
Liz Navratil, Briana Bierschbach and Ryan Faircloth write in the Minnie Star Tribune that Minneapolis voters rejected a plan to replace a good bit of Police Department with, effectively, the Department of Hugs.

The pro­pos­al be­fore voters would have amend­ed the city's chart­er, re­mov­ing the re­quire­ment to main­tain a Police Department with a min­i­mum num­ber of of­fic­ers based on pop­u­la­tion. In­stead, it would have cre­at­ed a Department of Public Safety that takes "a com­pre­hen­sive public health ap­proach to safe­ty." De­tails of the new de­part­ment, in­clud­ing po­lice staff­ing lev­els, if any, would have been de­ter­mined by the may­or and City Council mem­bers.

Can­di­dates run­ning in the first mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions since Floyd's death large­ly agreed that Minneapolis should boost men­tal health programs, in­crease so­cial ser­vices and seek to de­ter­mine which non­vi­o­lent calls could be han­dled by ci­vil­ians.

But they dis­agreed on one fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: wheth­er the city should re­place its Police Department with a new a­gen­cy in its ef­forts to take a broad­er ap­proach to public safe­ty.

Now, in my work as a mediator, volunteering in a program at City Hall, I've had a number of clients who either had serious mental health issues or, say, a tenant who had them.

I'm a strong advocate of the Dept of Mental Health's mental health triage team -- a team of mental health professionals -- who will come out 24/7 to deal with issues that are psychiatric rather than criminal.

That said, there's plenty of need for real policing -- in Los Angeles and Minneapolis -- and replacing police officers with social workers willynilly seems to be a really terrible idea for public safety.

More of the story out of Minneapolis:

Minneapolis voters on Tues­day re­ject­ed a pro­pos­al to re­place the Minneapolis Police Department, crush­ing the hopes of sup­port­ers that out­rage over the kill­ing of George Floyd would lead to a his­tor­ic ex­per­i­ment in trans­form­ing public safe­ty.

The fi­nal votes end­ed a con­ten­tious and close­ly watched e­lec­tion cy­cle cen­tered on how far the city would go to reinvent polic­ing, 18 months af­ter Floyd was filmed plead­ing for breath un­der an of­fi­cer's knee. Since then, a city al­read­y bat­tered by a glo­bal pan­dem­ic was the site of the worst ur­ban riots in three de­cades, a surge in vi­o­lent crime and a wrench­ing tri­al that re­sul­ted in mur­der con­vic­tions for the first of­fi­cer tried in Floyd's death.

In the days lead­ing up to a his­tor­ic e­lec­tion, voters were blan­ket­ed with mes­sages from po­lit­i­cal com­mit­tees that had mil­lions to spend as they at­tempt­ed to sway peo­ple to vote for or against a meas­ure seek­ing to re­place the Minneapolis Police Department with a new a­gen­cy fo­cused on al­ter­na­tive re­sponses to cri­ses.

While sup­port­ers in­sist­ed po­lice would still be part of the de­part­ment, op­po­nents of the chart­er change ham­mered on themes that echoed in voters' rea­sons for say­ing no on ques­tion 2: Who's going to an­swer 911 calls? What's the plan for keep­ing the city safe?

Voters op­posed the a­mend­ment by a 12-point mar­gin, well short of the 51% need­ed to pass. The fail­ure of the bal­lot ques­tion came as one of its most out­spok­en op­po­nents, May­or Ja­cob Frey, held a com­mand­ing lead in his re-e­lec­tion bid. Voters also ap­proved a sepa­rate chart­er a­mend­ment that shift­ed more pow­er from the City Council to the may­or, and were poised to oust sev­er­al coun­cil mem­bers who led the push to re­place the po­lice de­part­ment.

Wynn Wever, who voted at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Longfellow, said the polic­ing ques­tion was the only part of the bal­lot he filled out. He voted no.

"I like the po­lice. We need the po­lice," said Wever, 79, a re­tired roof­er.

No fucking kidding.

You can believe -- as I do -- in rooting out corrupt, abusive police officers...while also understanding the value of police and policing.