US' Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, to dismantle its police department

Minneapolis: A veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis city council has announced its intent to dismantle the city’s police department and invest in community-led public safety, a move that would mark the first concrete victory in the mounting nationwide movement to defund law enforcement agencies in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd.

Nine of the council’s 12 members announced their pledge to create a new system of public safety before hundreds of demonstrators at a rally at Powderhorn Park in south Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon.

“This council is going to dismantle this police department,” Jeremiah Ellison (@jeremiah4north) said today of the @MinneapolisPD at a massive community meeting at Powderhorn Park in South Minneapolis. pic.twitter.com/UkhKOU22hO

— emma (@bymyelf) June 7, 2020

“This council is going to dismantle this police department,” councilman Jeremiah Ellison said.

Added city council president Lisa Bender: “We’re here because we hear you. We are here today because George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis police. We are here because here in Minneapolis and in cities across the United States it is clear that our existing system of policing and public safety is not keeping our communities safe.

“Our efforts at incremental reform have failed. Period.”

On Friday, the council approved an agreement to ban the use of police chokeholds and neck restraints in response to the killing of Floyd with the state’s department of human rights, which also requires officers to intervene anytime they seen an unauthorized use of force.

When pressed by CNN for details on what a city with a defunded police department might look like, Bender told the network that funding would be shifted to other needs.

“The idea of having no police department is certainly not in the short term,” Bender said.