Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender was one of the leading proponents of dismantling the city’s police force. In early June, she told CNN that to expect the police to respond to an emergency at your home “comes from a place of privilege.”
Instead of assuring that the laws of her city will be protected and guaranteed on an equal basis, Bender implied that, like white privilege, the privilege of having police respond to crime should be abolished.
Bender then took to Twitter to rally fellow idealists, writing, “If you are a comfortable white person asking to dismantle the police I invite you to reflect: are you willing to stick with it?” Will you be calling the police in three months, she asked, to report a garage break-in?
Less than two months later, Bender’s home was vandalized. She subsequently filed a police report for insurance purposes, demonstrating the potential difficulties of her police-free ideal, even at the administrative level.
Confusion abounds in Minneapolis. On June 26, nine City Council members, led by Bender, pledged to “end policing as we know it.” They quickly realized, however, that the term they embraced — “defund the police” — has no absolute fixed meaning.
“Defund the police” means different things to different people. It is ambiguous enough for anyone to graft their wishes onto it or to feign ignorance of its meaning if the experiment goes off the rails. One council member said he meant the words “in spirit”; another said the language was “up for interpretation.” Meanwhile, some activists are dismayed that their calls to dismantle the police were not taken literally.
Unsurprisingly, Minneapolis has seen a surge in crime this year. More people have been killed in the first nine months of 2020 than in all of 2019. There has also been an increase in robberies, assaults, property damage and arson as the police department has seen an exodus of officers, either retiring or taking a leave of absence. The force is now overworked and understaffed, and there has been a corresponding lag in response times. Low morale is expected if your city council unanimously votes for the institution that you represent to no longer exist.
Luckily, the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey — who faced down the boos and hisses and calls of shame from the mob when he would not commit to abolishing the police — is joined by a majority of Minneapolis citizens who favor sensible police reform, such as a ban on chokeholds and new de-escalation and reporting requirements for the use of force.
In calling the police when her home was vandalized, Bender failed her own purity test, but she did what any reasonable person would do.
A bad political slogan requires explanation, and bad public policy has law-abiding citizens wondering why their 911 calls are going unanswered.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)
