[STARTRIBUNE] Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Medaria Arradondo on Monday rebuffed a proposal by three City Council members to cut the Minneapolis police budget by nearly $8 million, with Frey calling the plan "irresponsible and untenable" amid a year of rising "This notion that in order to have a more comprehensive public safety strategy you have to do away with one critical element, which is police, is wrong," Frey said. "We are hearing from communities right now that they are looking for a ’both-and’ approach."
"This is literally a life and death matter right now and we need to get it right," he said.
The proposal by a trio of City Council members — including President Lisa Bender, Phillipe Cunningham and Steve Fletcher — would move roughly 5% from MPD to violence prevention, a mental health crisis team and other departments that could help process reports of property damage and parking violations. The change, they said, would reduce officers’ overall workloads and allow them to focus on
The council members’ proposal would fund a department with roughly 770 officers and reduce the authorized force size to 750 in future years. That’s far lower than the 888 "target level" included in Frey’s budget proposal.
Those three council members were on the losing side of a 7-6 vote this month to spend $500,000 for other law enforcement agencies to help the Minneapolis police patrol the city. However,
some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves...
contracts have yet to be signed.
Frey’s budget plan includes roughly $1.5 billion in spending for 2021, about $179 million of which would go to the Police Department. His plan calls for adding three recruit classes to help offset a wave of officer departures following the death of George Floyd and subsequent riots.