Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council announced that they plan to defund and dismantle the city’s police department.
“We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe,” Council President Lisa Bender told CNN.
The council would have a veto-proof majority with nine of the thirteen votes of the council, according to Bender.
Bender said she was looking to shift the focus toward a community-based strategy and the council would be looking to ways to replace the current police department, acknowledging the current system was not working.
The council analyzed the nature of the city’s 911 calls and found the majority of them were for mental health services, health and EMT and fire services.
“The idea of having no police department is certainly not in the short term,” she added.
At a protest in Minneapolis on Saturday, Mayor Jacob Frey was booed when he told the crowd he would not support abolishing the police department.
See CNN.