Ah, true leadership: “It’s not my fault! I didn’t do it!”
https://minnesotareformer.com/2023/07/10/minneapolis-police-chief-says-he-never-saw-excessive-force-video-of-officer-whose-hiring-he-okd/
I remain extremely bitter about the fact that our police department is so awful they started a global uprising, and for all that, there have been essentially zero deep structural or policy changes in the Minneapolis police department. And I don’t see any sign from anyone in the chain of command — police chief, safety commissioner, or mayor — to suggest that any are coming.
A particular irony of the George Floyd uprising’s aftermath is that the relatively whiter lower-crime-but-afraid-of-crime parts of Minneapolis mobilized in the 2021 election to defeat what they perceived as “defund the police” ballot measure and candidates…
…but the police department shrunk rapidly on its own through attrition and 6-figure-annual-income early retirements for more or less any officers who raised their hands.
That means Minneapolis has a much smaller police department now (exactly the outcome the fearful “reform don’t defund” folks didn’t want) but without any sort of new, robust structure to replace it (exactly the outcome the “defund / abolish” folks didn’t want).
Despite that, crime is •way• down in Minneapolis, because crime generally depends on larger societal factors, not the size of the police department. Well, crime not committed by police, anyway.
@inthehands official police chief response:
@inthehands You could move to Atlanta, where our APD responded to BLM protests awfully aggressively for the "City too busy to hate", and to the firing and arrest of APD officers who killed Rayshard Brooks with a massive blue flu. In reward the privately funded Atlanta Police Foundation (the largest in the country) has secured commitments from the city for $60M in construction costs and rent to build Cop City. And the city will need to add another $30 or so million to fully fund.
@jonathanpeterson
I have been following events at Atlanta from a distance with immense frustration. Never stop giving ‘em hell, at every single step.
@inthehands The City too Busy to Hate, has always been the city that lets big corporations sway it's policies. In 1964, Coca-Cola, pushed conservative, white political leaders into honoring Martin Luther King when he won the Nobel Prize. These days, however, the monied power types are doing exactly what MLK warned about in favoring stability over justice and allowing a giant, corporate-funded non-profit, with conservative ties and donations to twist the arms of our black politicians.
@inthehands and it's largely being done (IMO) to payoff the Governor's support in stopping the racist Buckhead City Movement. A movement that was driven by conservatives from out of state and supported by rural politicians, but NOT supported by a majority of even the white folks living in Buckhead.
Atlanta has always had an inferiority complex looking at NYC, Chicago, LA. We've arrived on the international scene because of black urban culture, but become the City too Greedy to Care.
@inthehands i just want to say that the lady next to him in that picture (sign language interpreter?) is making the same face i made when i read the headline