Today, Explained - Minneapolis commits to “dismantling” the police

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

Minneapolis City Council member Alondra Cano explains what the city wants to do and what might get in the way. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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mercilessly extinguished his life. Ever since, the people of Minneapolis have been calling to defund the city's police department. On Saturday, protesters gathered in front of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry's house. He came out to join them and was asked point blank if he would dismantle the city's police department, and his answer was no. Fry was booed and jeered at as he walked off. The next day, nine members of the Minneapolis City Council stood on stage at a community rally and pledged to do exactly what Mayor Fry would not.

This council is going to dismantle this police department. Our commitment is to end our city's toxic relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department, to end policing as we know it, and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe. This ain't going to happen overnight. This ain't going to happen overnight. This ain't going to happen tomorrow. We need everybody's voices included. I encourage all of our officers who are still on duty to continue to do your work with compassion,

with respect and love. We're going to need every single human to be a part of this project. The last voice you heard was city council member Alondra Cano. She represents Minneapolis's ninth ward where George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin. We reached out to Cano on Monday to ask what exactly she and her eight fellow council members want to do right now. What we did was unite nine council members in agreement that the Minneapolis department is not reformable, in agreement that we are committed to ending the current policing structure we have,

in unison that we are committed to working on a new system of safety with and for our community by engaging every single resident in Minneapolis that is willing to have this conversation with us and committed to looking at policy and budgetary changes in the coming weeks and months to get us on a trajectory to end the current broken system and come up with a renewed system that is centered in community justice, trust, respect, compassion, love. So we're retooling that whole paradigm. So does that mean it's still largely symbolic? Right now, you could say that it is a strong signal of the direction of the future of policing

for Minneapolis. You can look at the fact that nine of us got together publicly. Nine council members is a veto-proof majority of the council, so we can override actions from our mayor if need be on this topic. And I think that all of us were unflinchingly clear that the current policing system is going to come to an end and that we are putting ourselves on a clear path to reimagining what policing looks like and that we're going to do it with our community. And the nine of you are in opposition to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry on this. He wants to reform. You want to dismantle. How come? murder of a man who was already handcuffed and on the ground really, really made me understand the deepness of this problem and the fact that all four of them violated city policy and the directives from their own chief. That's when I realized that policing, as we know it, had to end.

So you guys took this vow on Sunday. What's the reaction been? There's been many, many emails and many people coming to our backing. There's an understanding that nine council members and a mayor won't be able to do it alone, that community will need to and want to show up every step of the way in this. What about the opposition? Are you hearing anything back from people that they're scared that they don't have confidence that this is the best idea? Of course. I'm hearing a lot of folks be concerned with the violent crimes. So what's, if we abolish the police system, who's going to respond to a shooting? Who's going to respond to

a rape? Who's going to respond to a shooting? Who's going to respond to a rape? Who's going to respond to a homicide? We're going to answer those questions together. We know that the current system isn't keeping people safe. I know people are in a moment of, as my council colleague Lisa Bender says, a moment of fear. And for those folks who are white and for the first time are feeling unsafe, we invite you into the experiences of communities of color every day. This is what the system that they've been living and experiencing for a very long time. So it's a coming to moment. Give me a sense of how much money is on the line here for the police department, for the police union, and what percentage of that money is of the budget you guys have in the city of Minneapolis.

Our police department is at about $193 million. There will be inevitable cuts coming to the entire city because of the losses due to the coronavirus. And we are in the process now of engaging with our colleagues to decide what that future of funding looks like. $193 million is, and how much is the budget of the city, just to get a sense of what percentage that is? Like $1.5 billion, $1.3 billion. And as we established on our show last week, abolishing police, defunding police doesn't necessarily mean,

oh, now we have $190 million to dream up purpose for. It means that you're rethinking how safety and security is managed in your community. How do you see that money being repurposed in this early stage of rethinking how your safety works in Minneapolis? So many of us who either are abolitionists or, you know, don't want to identify as an abolitionist, but are certainly interested in ending the current system, we know that this change won't happen overnight. and likely we'll have sort of two systems up and running at the same time until we can finally get to a point of not having to rely on the other for immediate high violent crimes or other issues that people might typically want a police officer to respond

to. What are the biggest barriers to passing this kind of reform? I know you're saying traditional police reforms haven't really worked. This is a much more drastic and revolutionary measure. I mean, your mayor has said that he's not on board with this. You guys, it appears, have the votes to bypass him. What comes after him? Well, I think we have more opportunities than barriers because now the state is heavily involved. I think we're in a moment of radical collaboration where people who didn't care before are on board, ready to sign up to do work, whether it's volunteer work, research work, which is what we need. We need people to believe that this is the path forward, and many of them do in ways they didn't before, and we're all signing up for it. Does it feel like it's happening really quickly? Like,

three weeks ago, no one was even talking about these ideas seriously, and you've gone from there to protesters clamoring for them to now you guys are actually taking the steps to make them a reality? Does it feel like the clip's a little dizzying? You know, I'll say that it has felt very intense. I don't know that it feels fast, but it's certainly very intense because we know that the entire nation is watching what we do. And we know that this is a pivotal moment in our country's history. We know there's deep racial inequities in our city that we're trying to solve. So I feel like we've put on our shoes, tied them, and we were at the

starting blocks. And it was just a matter of figuring out when it would be ready, set, go. Do you think other cities might follow your lead if you guys pull this off? I do. I already have council members reaching out to me from across the country saying, hey, how did you get nine council members out? What happened? Send us your thoughts, send us your notes.

Where are people reaching out from out of curiosity? Detroit, San Antonio, certainly in touch with folks from LA, Seattle, Washington, I think was one. So it's, it's been really good to see, um, that interest. Before we go, I just would love to get a sense, you know, what have these two weeks been like for you in Minneapolis? I mean, we've been talking about Minneapolis, but, but you've been living Minneapolis. Give me a sense of what this has felt like to be on the ground there. It feels like leaving the matrix. It feels scary and slow and fast at the same time,

to your point, because there's so much work that we want to get done right now. And we know that you can only move as fast as your relationships and the trust that you have in the community. At one point in time, you know, there was deep sadness because of the murder of Mr. George Floyd and sort of the shame and the guilt that comes around that because you're an elected official that should have been able to prevent that. And then there were moments of happiness because we would be on an organizing call for the fifth night in a row talking about the beautiful future that we know our communities deserve and want and can get. And so it's been a very strange mix of both possibility and feeling

the weight of the old systems. So it's been pretty surreal. And for the first time on my block since I moved here back in, I think, 2017, I know all my neighbors, and I have all their phone numbers. And we all meet together on the block once a week to talk about how are we going to patrol the neighborhood? How are we going to keep each other safe? And so it's truly inspiring in that way and reassuring in so many ways as well. Council member, I wish you luck and I hope you can be in touch with us as you go through

this process. We'd love to hear more about it. Yeah, please do stay in touch. I appreciate you all reaching out. This might feel like uncharted territory, but it's not. After the break, we go to Camden, New Jersey, where they dissolved their police department seven years ago. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend.

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I'm Sean Ramos-Firm, and here's where we stand. There are people in the streets demanding the dismantling of police departments across the country. The president is stepping in to stoke fears that there will be mayhem in the streets, and places like Minneapolis are forging ahead undeterred. But seven years ago, Camden, New Jersey, dissolved its police department without starting a culture war. Historically in New Jersey, the police contracts were very difficult to work through. And the end result was that officers were, there were requirements of certain amounts of overtime or sick leave.

And it ended up being very expensive to run that force. So one day, the Camden Police Department just poof, went away. Ann Milgram is the former Attorney General of New Jersey. And back when Camden had one of the highest murder rates in the country, she was brought in to initiate reforms. Eventually, the city of Camden Police Department was dissolved and reborn as the Camden County Police Department. Yes, they just changed a word, but they changed other stuff too.

For starters, they got rid of everyone. All of a sudden, with the dissolution of the Camden Police Department, all of those employees were gone. The salaries were changed. The structure of overtime was changed. The ability to hire. So if you had a senior police officer who was 20 years on the job, who was making, let's say, with know, with overtime $100,000,

$120,000 a year, you then had new officers coming on at like $40,000 or $50,000 a year. And that means you can hire two officers, first of all. And you also can start shifting the culture to have folks who didn't grow up in a department that was resistant to reforms like tracking officer discipline, like accountability measures where, you know, somebody's going to ask you every week, like, why is crime going up in that neighborhood? So the policies and the processes changed. The people changed.

The name changed, as you pointed out, by adding a word. But essentially, you know, the old union contracts were gone. There were new rules that were put in place, and it allowed the new leadership really to institutionalize all the reforms that they wanted to make. And you were no longer dealing with like the chronic absenteeism, right? Like there was a point in time with the KMNPD where I think it was like 25 or 30% of the officers were just absent from work under the old policies. That could not happen under the new policies, under the new department. So it just allowed everything to sort of be built from the ground up. And how did it go? You hire back a bunch of the same people, you hire a bunch of new people, you change the rules, you institute reforms. What came of them? So crime is at a 50 year low in Camden. It's really the lowest it's been. And so what I think is as important is that the beat officers are now community police

officers. There are officers. I talked to someone this morning who was standing on the streets of Camden, standing 10 feet from a police officer. Go back to that first day I went down in an unmarked car and didn't see a single officer. I was there not long ago, over sort of January. There are officers on street corners. There are people in the community. And there's just a connection of hearing and being heard that's different than I've seen in any other police department I've worked with. Did the reforms last? Were they sort of impervious to the politics of managing police departments? Yeah, I mean, look, I personally believe, and others could disagree with this, but once we showed that the city could be safe and everyone understood that the police department could be accountable, both running themselves as an institution with integrity and reducing crime,

I don't think anyone wanted to go back. And so what you saw was just the acceleration of that and the acceleration of the reforms with the county. If you asked me, could they do more? I mean, the short answer is, of course. Do you keep in touch with Camden? I do. How's the city looked like in the past few weeks where we've seen, you know, police brutality in Los Angeles and Minneapolis and New York City? Yeah, I mean, the chief of police reached out to the community leaders, basically said, can I march with you against police violence? And, you know, as we've seen a lot of places where there's been confrontations between the police and the protesters, and in Camden, we saw like, you know, something that I think is so remarkable and so

important, the police standing in unity and solidarity with the community to say like, no to police violence. Hey, Camden, you say strong. Camden, strong! Camden, strong! Camden, strong! Camden, strong! Camden, strong! There's been pushback on those moments because people say like, oh yeah, this happened 10 minutes before we started getting tear gassed. Has there been that subsequent tension between police and protesters in Camden? Not in Camden.

And look, it worries me. I mean, I'll be candid in saying I think I'm so hopeful for reform, but I have to keep in mind that, like, you and I watched the Camden chief march with the protesters. I asked my officers to de-escalate situations on a daily basis. This was my turn to go out and try to de-escalate the situation. And I think we were able to lower the tensions a little bit. We're together.

We're one community. It's not us versus the community. We're part of the community. And you would think other police chiefs and other sheriffs would look at that and be like, wow, they're not violent. They're having a conversation with the community. This is how I should do it. And a lot of them didn't.

And maybe just can't sort of see the world that way. I guess the thing I wonder about is, you know, if Camden had such success, why haven't other police departments looked at what y'all did there and replicated it? I could not begin to tell you, you know, I was AG for a little over two and a half years. Camden was my priority. There's nothing I spent more time on. We failed a lot. We worked incredibly hard and there's nothing I had more time on. We failed a lot. We worked incredibly hard, and there's nothing I had more political resistance to. You know, and I should say this, actually, police departments don't reward innovation, right? They're very old school

hierarchical places. And so when I put Scott Thompson in as the interim chief in 2008, he had 14 years on the job. He hadn't taken the civil service test to be chief, but all those rules were suspended. So I was basically able to work around and to basically say like, look, I think this guy is the most innovative guy here. I think he gets it. I think he sees it the way I do. Let's put him in as the interim. A lot of police departments can't do that. And so you need political will, you need funding or or like the ability of the state to say, like, you know, get it done. If you fire officers, you know, we'll be willing to defend you in lawsuits and so on.

It's a big lift. So like, I don't want to in any way say it's easy. I think it's the hardest thing I've ever done in my career. And I think a lot of people look back now or they look at the end result and say, like, wow, that's great. Or that's simple. It was definitely not. Anne Milgram is a professor of practice at New York University's School of Law.

She's also the co-host of the Cafe Insider podcast. You can find it wherever you're listening to this one.