On September 7, the sky was a glossy blue in Minneapolis as thousands of children headed back to school for the first time in months. The temperature hovered in the mid-70s, providing relief after a scorchingly hot, dry summer.
Around 3:30 in the afternoon, however, gunfire erupted in a neighborhood just north of the city’s downtown. Some people in the area heard the gunshots and came running, where they discovered that a twelve-year-old boy, London Michael Bean, had been killed.
“We have to get these guns away from these babies.”
Bean was reportedly shot by another child during a dispute. Although an official incident report has not yet been made public, local community activist Lisa Clemons has alleged that the boy was killed in front of his mother. A car passing by the scene during the incident was also reportedly struck by gunfire, injuring a young girl.
Bean is the third Minneapolis child to die from gunfire in the past six months.
In a particularly horrific stretch, from late April to late May, three children ages ten and younger were shot in the head in separate incidents. Two of them have since died, while the third, LaDavionne Garrett Jr., is still recovering.
No one has been arrested in any of these cases, although a reward for information in the shootings is now up to $180,000.
Booker Hodges, acting commissioner for Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety, called the situation a “horror movie,” according to the Star Tribune. He also told reporter Libor Jany that he grew up in the same North Minneapolis neighborhood where these children have been shot, and he remembers other unsolved gun deaths involving local kids.
“We have to stop making these movies,” Hodges said.
Some of Bean’s friends and family members were interviewed by a local television station in the hours following his death. With tears spilling down their cheeks and pain echoing through their voices, a group of girls speaking to a reporter remembered Bean as a good kid who was adept at putting a positive spin on negative situations.
These kids, they lamented, are treating guns like toys. Bean’s grandmother recalled taking him to the Minnesota State Fair just two days before his death. “We have to get these guns away from these babies,” she insisted.
It is against this backdrop of seemingly never-ending shootings and tearful press conferences that a dispute over whether or not to remake the Minneapolis Police Department is playing out.
Early voting in Minneapolis begins on September 17, and the ballot will include a controversial proposal to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a public-health-focused Department of Public Safety.
It is very difficult to bring grassroots change to the Minneapolis Police Department, even in the wake of an incident as universally condemned as the murder of George Floyd.
The impetus behind all of this is the 2020 killing of George Floyd, whose agonizing murder under the knee of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin prompted immediate calls for changes to the city’s troubled police force.
Floyd’s very public death seemed destined to bring change, at last, to a police department that has long been accused of harassing and killing people of color.
Shortly after Floyd was killed, the city, if not the world, erupted in fiery protest. Nine of the thirteen members of the Minneapolis city council publicly declared their intention to dramatically alter, if not abolish, the Minneapolis Police Department.
This initial push has stalled under the weight of bureaucracy and in-fighting among various lobbying groups intent on either remaking or reinforcing the city’s police force.
One group, a coalition known as Yes 4 Minneapolis, has succeeded in obtaining more than 20,000 signatures on a petition calling for voters to be given an opportunity to weigh in on whether or not the city’s charter should be amended to allow for the creation of a Department of Public Safety.
Currently, the charter—which functions as a guide to city policy and is overseen by an unelected governing body—mandates that Minneapolis have a police department of a certain size (approximately 1.7 officers per 1,000 residents), to be funded as needed through a special tax provision.
This unusual stipulation, which essentially bakes funding for the police into the city’s charter, dates back to the early 1960s. No other department under the city’s purview enjoys the same funding protections. (The police department is also the only entity directly controlled by the mayor of Minneapolis; all other city departments are governed by a committee that includes the mayor and a handful of city council members.)
At the time, the Minneapolis Police Federation publicly campaigned for this provision, which voters approved as a charter amendment in 1961.
This brings us to today. Because the 1961 amendment campaign was successful, any attempt to alter how big or how well funded the city’s police department is must be put before voters via the decidedly obtuse charter amendment process.
In other words, it is very difficult to bring grassroots change to the Minneapolis Police Department, even in the wake of an incident as universally condemned as the murder of George Floyd.
Even now, as ballots for the 2021 election will soon be on their way to the printer, an ongoing legal action led by former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels is threatening to keep the Yes 4 Minneapolis amendment proposal from reaching voters this year.
Samuels and others have argued that voters should be made aware that a “yes” vote on the amendment will allow the city council to disband the Minneapolis Police Department with no clear plan on how to replace it.
Frankly, there has also never been a clear, nor clearly enacted, plan on how to reform the police department. Piecemeal attempts to punish so-called “bad apples” on the police force have not led to structural change, nor have they prevented the murder of Floyd and countless others.
A further investment in today’s hyper-militarized form of policing is not likely to combat the myriad issues impacting Minneapolis residents, either.
As another family prepares to bury their child in Minneapolis, now seems like the perfect time to adopt a public health approach to public safety, just as the Yes 4 Minneapolis amendment proposes.