# Minneapolis to Disband Police Dept. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 8, 2020, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247 "2020-06-08T14:04:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/61 "2020-06-11T03:30:02Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Do you know if violent crime or other unlawful offenses went down after they did that? Nope, I will see if it did. The one article mentioned that the citizens were surprised to see so many more cops, but that’s about it. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/62 "2020-06-11T03:50:44Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Nope, I will see if it did. The one article mentioned that the citizens were surprised to see so many more cops, but that’s about it. I see. So you are against something and you don’t even know if that something was a positive or negative. Nice one! ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/63 "2020-06-11T04:42:28Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > I see. So you are against something and you don’t even know if that something was a positive or negative. Nice one! Where did I say I was against it? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/64 "2020-06-11T05:05:02Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Where did I say I was against it? 😕 You said this: “This was simply a move to cut costs. They even ended up with 100 MORE cops. It had nothing whatsoever to do with a “corrupt” PD. Sure, maybe a couple of the worst werent re-hired. But this was just cost cutting. It’s a really bad example.” Why would you say it was a bad example? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/65 "2020-06-11T05:33:05Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > You said this: “This was simply a move to cut costs. They even ended up with 100 MORE cops. It had nothing whatsoever to do with a “corrupt” PD. Sure, maybe a couple of the worst werent re-hired. But this was just cost cutting. It’s a really bad example.” > > Why would you say it was a bad example? It is a bad example of "disbanding its police department " as the Police dept wasnt in practice disbanded, just new name and new contract. Read\*\* iiandyiiii \*\* Post _"They should use Camden NJ as a model – Camden NJ disbanded their PD in 2013, …_" No, They should NOT use Camden NJ as a model or as a example, as they didnt in practice disband their police dept. As my cite and link sez:_Camden, New Jersey actually went forward with disbanding its police department — in theory. In practice, what Camden did is just old-fashioned union-busting: disband the department to get rid of the union, then hire the same cops back at lower salaries and benefits._ Please read\* all the thread\*, and see what I am replying to before you go off on some odd tangent. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/66 "2020-06-11T05:39:26Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > It is a bad example of "disbanding its police department " as the Police dept wasnt in practice disbanded, just new name and new contract. > > Read\*\* iiandyiiii \*\* Post > _"They should use Camden NJ as a model – Camden NJ disbanded their PD in 2013, …_" > No, They should NOT use Camden NJ as a model or as a example, as they didnt in practice disband their police dept. As my cite and link sez:_Camden, New Jersey actually went forward with disbanding its police department — in theory. In practice, what Camden did is just old-fashioned union-busting: disband the department to get rid of the union, then hire the same cops back at lower salaries and benefits._ > > Please read\* all the thread\*, and see what I am replying to before you go off on some odd tangent. I see. So do you think that Camden NJ disbanded their police department? A simple yes or no will suffice. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/67 "2020-06-11T05:41:17Z")
I don’t think associating itself with the notion of disbanding the police departments throughout the land is currently a good selling point for the Democratic Party, or its standard-bearer. So let’s bracket that off for a moment. However much it may be a good idea, it is not a good idea whose time has come. Or at least I sure don’t think it is. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/68 "2020-06-11T05:51:43Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Sure, so now they fire cops because they campaign for the wrong candidate, they fire every cop with a “Biden For Pres.” sign on their front lawn. Or they fire all the cops who DONT belong to the white supremacist group. Or they fire any cop with X number of complaints, which takes the bad guys about a day to figure out, so within a week every cop who is busting crooks and not on the take is gone. So they can join the rest of the working people in their job security, although, some of your examples are illegal even in right to hire/right to fire states. But again, this isn’t a debate about unions. There is something to be said for not having the guy on the auto assembly line being fired hastily or without cause as part of the package of his job benefits. Police are granted a sacred trust by the government which should be able to be withdrawn more quickly when things happen. Worst thing about the auto worker is that he still gets paid when he should have been shown the door. Well, that sucks, but the only thing bad that happened was the company had to pay him money under the contract it negotiated. With police, he could kill someone like George Floyd. (And no idea what was in the personnel file, because of union rules, that is secret squirrel stuff; it should be an open book for a person that has a right to put me in handcuffs). ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/69 "2020-06-11T05:53:28Z")
[^^^](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22348556&postcount=67) … but having said that… Imagine for a moment that the general response of any community to a community member behaving in an inflammatorily disruptive way was to get their attention, ask what the fuck they were doing, listen, express their concerns about it, and see if they could work it out. I think it is safe to assume that some of the time that wouldn’t work. That there’s an adversarial conflict between what the community wants, safety-wise and property-wise and so forth, and what the disruptive individual wants. And/or that what the individual communicates when confronted isn’t consistent with their subsequent behavior. So — for now — perhaps charging the person with a crime and giving them a court date isn’t by any means (yet) out of the question. But think of what changes if the systemic response to a person’s problematic behavior is no longer to see whether or not they can be charged with a violation or stronger offense and hence punished, but instead to reach out and try to communicate. And why _is_ our systemic response so immediately adversarial? It’s because (IMHO) we have for eons had classes of people that we _knew_ (at least subconsciously) (acknowledged but not acknowledged) were being thwarted by how things were set up. And we were geared towards treating those classes of people as Enemy. We really don’t have a structure that’s designed around the possibility of being able to work things out to everyone’s mutual satisfaction. It’s advertarially oriented from the get-go. Not only “if you break the rules you get punished” but also “We are out there looking for rulebreakers” and “We have a strong sense of what rulebreakers look like and we’ve learned how to recognize them, from a combination of their othe behaviors, their appearance, their social situation, and other markers”. Let’s try it the other way. After the fucking election. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/70 "2020-06-11T18:03:31Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > I see. So do you think that Camden NJ disbanded their police department? > > A simple yes or no will suffice. Let me give you this quote for the third time: \*Camden, New Jersey actually went forward with disbanding its police department — in theory. In practice, what Camden did is just old-fashioned union-busting: disband the department to get rid of the union, then hire the same cops back at lower salaries and benefits. \* Exactly what are you arguing here? What point are you making with these constant argumentative question? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/71 "2020-06-11T18:06:14Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I don’t think associating itself with the notion of disbanding the police departments throughout the land is currently a good selling point for the Democratic Party, or its standard-bearer. So let’s bracket that off for a moment. However much it may be a good idea, it is not a good idea whose time has come. Or at least I sure don’t think it is. Reform- YES! Disband- NO! (but maybe a few exceptions) ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/72 "2020-06-12T01:38:41Z")
Just a reminder that no matter what the city of Minneapolis does, it’s part of a greater Twin Cities metro area that includes something like 15 other municipal police departments, and three (five if you count the more distant suburbs) county sheriffs departments. Not to mention the state patrol headquartered in Saint Paul. Law enforcement is not going to vanish. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/73 "2020-06-12T02:04:00Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > I see. So do you think that Camden NJ disbanded their police department? > > A simple yes or no will suffice. Let’s say I have UltraVires Law Firm. I shutter it. However, I reform as UltraVires Law Office in a building down the street with the same employees and the same clients. Everything is as before except I change a few policies and pledge to be nicer to my clients. Would you say that in any but the most hypertechnical way that I “disbanded” or “defunded” my law office? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2020, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/74 "2020-06-15T14:26:39Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Let’s say I have UltraVires Law Firm. I shutter it. > > However, I reform as in a building down the street with the same employees and the same clients. Everything is as before except I change a few policies and pledge to be nicer to my clients. > > Would you say that in any but the most hypertechnical way that I “disbanded” or “defunded” my law office? Since that is not quite what took place, the actual answer is Yes. [https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/12/camden-policing-reforms-313750](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/12/camden-policing-reforms-313750) > [@](#): > > As a movement grows in American cities and suburbs to overhaul police departments and confront their long records of racially unjust, violent enforcement, Camden is one rare—and complicated—success story, a city that really did manage to overhaul its police force and change how it operated. And it took a move as radical and controversial as what some activists are calling for today: Camden really did abolish its police department. > > And then the city set about rebuilding the police force with an entirely new one under county control, using the opportunity to increase the number of cops on the streets and push through a number of now-heralded progressive police reforms. And with time, the changes started to stick in a department that just years earlier seemed unfixable. > [@](#): > > On top of that, the police department had a reputation for bad cops. Of the 37 excessive use of force complaints levied in 2011, not one had been “sustained,” or clearly proven or disproven, which raised serious red flags about accountability with the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New Jersey at the time. In 2010, five officers in the department were charged with evidence planting, fabrication and perjury. Later, state and federal courts would go on to overturn the convictions of 88 people who had been arrested and charged by those officers. > > Without the restrictions of the union, proponents argued, more cops could be put on the streets of Camden, and hopefully, the city’s deadly spiral could finally be stopped. > [@](#): > > Not everyone agreed with the changes. A group of Camden residents who saw this as high-handed intervention submitted a petition to stop the disbandment with the goal of placing the issue on the ballot in 2012. Redd and Moran filed a complaint against the residents on the grounds that the petition amounted to an unlawful restraint of legislative power. > > In a strange legal coda to the whole drama, the case filed by the Camden residents to save their local police department worked its way through New Jersey courts and ultimately ended up in front of the state Supreme Court, which ruled 6-0 in favor of the residents in 2015. But it was too late: The Camden County police force had been around for four years, and by most accounts, was already a success. In this case, politics had moved faster than the courts and, legally or not, the Camden city police force was long gone. > [@](#): > > Those who championed the disbandment of the department say the upheaval was critical to the department’s ultimate success. Scott Thomson, the Camden police chief at the time, had locked horns with the police union for years over contracts and virtually “any type” of managerial decision, he says. Unless the UltraVires Law Office had a corrupt union and mishandled cases on purpose and dismissed those pettifogger sharks in that firm. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2020, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/75 "2020-06-15T15:57:48Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > And from being in the criminal justice system, we devote massive amounts of resources to restorative justice and sadly it is an abysmal failure. Anytime I have a client who sold drugs, stole things, forged checks or anything non-violent, if I can convince a judge it was because of a drug problem or youthful immaturity, that client doesn’t go to prison, he or she gets probation and a myriad of impressive services that the state offers. > > However the success rate is vanishingly small. That client that I worked my ass off to keep out of prison will invariable commit more crimes, fail to take advantage of services and after again and again and again failing, ends up going to prison. What about the ones who DO go to prison, though? Most American prisons long ago gave up any effort at reform or correction; their job is to warehouse the offenders for some specified length of time, with luck not allowing them to commit too many more crimes during that time (although robbery, assault, and drug dealing are rampant inside), and then turn them loose with a whole new set of skills and behaviors learned from their cellmates. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2020, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/76 "2020-06-15T16:25:33Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I dont know a single cop that thinks Chauvin was right- in fact they hate the guy. Some of them arent so sure about the other three guys, I admit. So a significant portion of the cops you talked to think that acting as lookouts so that a fellow cop can straight up murder a guy, making sure that no one can intervene to save the victim, is OK? The fact that they’re fine with assisting in a murder, including threatening to use deadly force against anyone who interferes with the murderer, is pretty damning. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2020, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/77 "2020-06-15T16:59:42Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > So, we already do what you are proposing, except you propose replacing it with an insanely complicated system. Life imitates [South Park](https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Die_Hippie,_Die/Script) \*Hippie #1: Right now we’re proving we don’t need corporations. We don’t need money. This can become a commune where everyone just helps each other. Hippie #2: Yeah, we’ll have one guy who like, who like, makes bread. A-and one guy who like, l-looks out for other people’s safety. Stan: You mean like a baker and a cop? Hippie #1: No no, can’t you imagine a place where people live together and like, provide services for each other in exchange for their services? Kyle: Yeah, it’s called a town. Hippie #2: You kids just haven’t been to college yet. But just you wait, this thing is about to get HUGE.\* ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2020, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247/78 "2020-06-15T17:02:27Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > So as I understand it (and correct me if I am wrong) the idea is the the Minneapolis Police Department is well passed saving and it is time to start again with a clean slate. I live here. I used to live eight blocks away from Cup Foods where George Floyd was murdered - then I moved to the 'burbs and had kids and all that - since my kids are now both in their 20s, its been a while since I’ve lived in that neighborhood, but my mother in law and many of my friends still live nearby. The police department has been past saving for at least three decades. St. Paul is slightly better - but also needs to be drastically restructured. Minneapolis Public Schools also needs a housecleaning - our racial inequality is deep - but it can’t be fixed unless you start at the beginning with how our kids are educated - because you can’t hire people of color if they haven’t graduated high school, much less college, and therefore aren’t qualified to be Java Developers or bookkeepers or hairdressers or cops. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minneapolis-to-disband-police-dept/855247.md?page=3)