As scholars such as Elizabeth Hinton, Stuart Schrader, and Naomi Murakawa have shown, modern, militarized U.S. The violence of the MPD is, of course, part of a national story. Indeed, in many senses they coopt the language of defunding, made popular by young activists, to attempt to sneak through the exact opposite: though they would reduce the growth of the police force, they would not in any obvious way address the militarization that has made the MPD into one of the most violent police forces in the country. While these reforms appear ambitious, they are far from the coordinated effort to “defund” the MPD that they were initially billed as being. In March, legislators put forward a ballot measure (to be voted on in November) to amend the Minneapolis city charter to deputize the city council with the authority to make significant changes to the city’s policing: once this has been approved, actions being considering include putting the MPD under the supervision of both the mayor and the city council (the MPD currently answers only to the mayor), in some way curtailing the growth of the Minneapolis police force, and even outright replacing the police department with an “office of public safety.” Piecemeal yet long overdue changes such as banning chokeholds and mandating that officers document when they unholster their firearm already preceded this effort to reform the police via charter amendment.
#CURSORCERER DOESNT WORK SERIES#
In the weeks prior to Wright’s death, city legislators approved, or at least considered, a series of specific reforms of the MPD. Such bold action was unthinkable prior to 2020. The Minneapolis City Council seemed to recognize this last summer, when city officials announced a commitment to substantive police reform-up to and including the possibility of replacing the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). The exhausting depravity of Floyd’s death-the indelible image of Chauvin’s knee pinched into Floyd’s neck as fellow officers looked on with indifference-served as a vivid illustration of a fact Black activists have long known: that police brutality is not only endemic in the United States, but in Minneapolis specifically. Unfortunately, the popular notion of what would constitute ideal police reform has its roots in the same postwar liberalism that created modern policing in the first place, in which private responsibility and collective securitization remain the ultimate goods that are sought.
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