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Minneapolis Residents to Vote on Replacing Police Force with a ‘Department of Public Safety’

Next week, voters in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota will vote on a ballot measure that would completely eliminate the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), and instead replace it with a new agency known as the Department of Public Safety, as reported by the New York Post.

The ballot measure, formally known as City Question 2, describes the proposed new agency as a “comprehensive public health approach” that would replace police officers with “experts” on mental health and substance abuse.

Backing the proposal is the far-left group Yes 4 Minneapolis, a coalition of left-wing organizations and businesses that lobbied to put Question 2 on the ballot. Following a lawsuit in which a district judge attempted to block the question from making it to the ballot, the Minnesota Supreme Court overruled the judge’s order and allowed the measure to be voted upon next Tuesday.

The measure is supported by far-left Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who gave a controversial speech at a town hall meeting on Saturday in which she claimed, without evidence, that the police themselves were responsible for the city’s spike in crime over the last year.

“The lawlessness that is happening is due to two things,” Omar said. “One, the police have chosen to not fulfill their oath of office and to provide the public safety they are owed to the citizens they serve. The Minneapolis police department is the most dysfunctional police department in our state and probably in the country.”

Despite Omar’s support, the measure is opposed by numerous other prominent Democratic politicians in the state, including Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Governor Tim Walz (D-Minn.), and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D-Minn.).

Question 2 is the latest major effort in the Left’s ongoing efforts to “defund the police” in major cities and localities across the country. The movement started after the death of George Floyd, a black man who died of a fentanyl overdose while in police custody in Minneapolis last year, but whose death was falsely blamed on Officer Derek Chauvin, who arrested him for his erratic, drug-induced behavior.

The incident sparked nationwide race riots that saw multiple cities burned by far-left domestic terrorist organizations, including Black Lives Matter and Antifa. Hundreds of businesses were destroyed, dozens of Americans were killed in the streets, and over $2 billion in damages were racked up across the country. But radical Democratic politicians, including Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and others have voiced their support for the controversial “defund the police” movement, often accusing police forces of being biased against black people or otherwise being “systemically racist.”

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About Eric Lendrum

Eric Lendrum graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the Secretary of the College Republicans and the founding chairman of the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter. He has interned for Young America’s Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, and the White House, and has worked for numerous campaigns including the 2018 re-election of Congressman Devin Nunes (CA-22). He is currently a co-host of The Right Take podcast.

Photo: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times