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Minneapolis City Council Pledged to 'Defund the Police' Earlier This Year, Now, Not so Much

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Some Minneapolis City Council members who pledged to defund the police are now changing their tune.

Last May, nine council members voted in support of a pledge to defund the police following the death of George Floyd, who was in Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) custody. 

In July, the city agreed to a plan moving $1.1 million from the police force to the health department for violence prevention. 

Now, residents of some neighborhoods are complaining about rising crime and lack of response. That has some council members parsing their words. One says he supported the pledge, "In spirit, but not the letter."

Another said the wording of the pledge is "up for interpretation."

Even Lisa Bender, the council president, told the Chicago Tribune, "I think our pledge created confusion in the community and in our wards."

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According to the newspaper, elected officials said there was wide disagreement about the meaning of "defund the police."

"I think the initial announcement created a certain level of confusion from residents at a time when the city really needed that stability," Mayor Jacob Frey, who declined to support the pledge, told the Tribune. "I also think that the declaration itself meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people — and that included a healthy share of activists that were anticipating abolition."

The pledge city officials made is nowhere closer to becoming city policy.  

As CBN News has reported, overall support for the BLM movement has slipped in the last few months as peaceful protests against police brutality and racial injustice have escalated into riots and looting in numerous US cities, according to the results of a Pew Research Center survey. 

Earlier this month, members of the Minneapolis City Council asked the city's police chief how his department was responding to the city's rise in violent crime just months after the council led an effort to defund the police department.

The number of reported violent crimes, like assaults, robberies, and homicides is up compared to 2019, according to MPD crime data. More people have been killed in the city in the first nine months of 2020 than were slain in all of last year. Property crimes, like burglaries and auto thefts, are also up. Incidents of arson have increased 55 percent over the total at this point in 2019, according to MPR News.

Councilmember Phillipe Cunningham said at the time, "What I am sort of flabbergasted by right now is colleagues, who a very short time ago were calling for abolition, are now suggesting we should be putting more resources and funding into MPD."

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