The City of Minneapolis is holding a series of community meetings to discuss the site for the Minneapolis Police Department’s (MPD’s) new Third Precinct building, but the site at East 26th Street just east of Hiawatha Avenue is the odds on favorite.
For the past three years, MPD’s Third Precinct officers have worked out of downtown. The Third Precinct building at East Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue was badly damaged by fire during the 2020 George Floyd uprising.
Continue readingMinneapolis City Hall is offering the illusion of community engagement in its efforts to choose a site to rebuild the Minneapolis Police Department’s (MPD’s) 3rd Precinct building (the one damaged by fire during the 2020 George Floyd uprising.)
It’s a significant decision, yet the city’s “community engagement” is minimal. It’s giving residents two sites to choose from, and one month to comment.
Option 1 is to rebuild at Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue at the site of the former 3rd Precinct building. In an email to constituents, Council Member Robin Wonsley (Ward 2) said this option would be a daily reminder to residents “of MPD’s decades of brutality and racism, and of the global uprising that took place after Officer Chauvin murdered George Floyd.”
Option 2 is to build the precinct station at East 26th Street, just east of Hiawatha Avenue,
Wonsley is critical of the plan, saying the city misused money meant for community engagement around redeveloping the old 3rd Precinct site for the community’s benefit.
Continue readingThe city of Minneapolis has announced four community-wide discussions regarding a future building for the Minneapolis Police Department’s (MPD’s) 3rd Precinct between April 11 and April 19.
The two sites under consideration are the former precinct facility at 3000 Minnehaha Ave. and a vacant City-owned lot at 2600 Minnehaha Ave. These were chosen after a survey of several potential sites, which was conducted from July 2020 through December 2022. This survey considered each site’s advantages as well as potential obstacles to access and construction.
Continue readingCity Council member Robin Wonsley (2nd Ward) is “confused and disturbed” by the city’s opaque process to redevelop the former Minneapolis Police Department’s (MPD’s) Third Precinct site, 3000 Minnehaha Ave., which people burned down during the 2020 uprising following George Floyd’s murder.
Community engagement work about the site’s future is slated to start soon, Wonsley wrote in a constituent update sent out Friday.
“Council Members, including myself, have been given minimal information about the process. Earlier this week, Council Vice President [Linea] Palmisano made public comments with very specific information about the Mayor’s plans for re-establishing a Third Precinct building for MPD, either at the old location or at a predetermined new location. I had no prior knowledge of the claims that Council Member Palmisano made and have not received any additional information about them since.”
Remodeling the old building would cost between $12 million and $18 million, while a new building would probably be two to three times more expensive, Palmisano told KSTP.
Continue readingSay thousands of angry citizens stormed the streets because our drinking water was polluted and the government wasn’t fixing it. Police are called in from multiple jurisdictions to quell the unrest. Citizens report multiple cases of excessive use of force.
When the dust settles, would our most urgent task be to figure out how to fix law enforcement’s crowd control?
No. We’d be rushing to find ways to get clean drinking water.
So when angry citizens take to the streets because of police brutality — such as what happened after George Floyd’s murder — why are we focusing on improving law enforcement practices and slow to act on a law enforcement system that makes many people feel unsafe, and be unsafe?
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Tuesday, hundreds and hundreds of people gathered at 38th and Chicago in Minneapolis to commemorate the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of city police. Today, another 100 people gathered outside the Governor’s Mansion in St. Paul to continue demands to stop the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline, a project that creates the most harm for the Anishinaabe peoples of northern Minnesota.
The two events are linked by the legacy and ongoing reality of white supremacy culture.
Continue readingIn this post:
The U.S. Justice Department today announced a sweeping probe of the Minneapolis Police Department, investigating its practices, culture, and use of force to see if there is a pattern of unconstitutional or unlawful policing.
Sounds impressive, but we’ve heard this reform story before, nationally and locally. Problems persist.
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Hennepin County jurors today found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of second-degree murder in the death of George Floyd, along with two lesser counts.
It was the first time in state history that a white police officer was held accountable for killing a Black man, according the Minnesota ACLU.
In their closing arguments, prosecutors stressed to the jury that Chauvin’s trial was a pro-police prosecution, not an anti-police prosecution. They knew that some jurors had a favorable opinion of police and didn’t want to lose any a vote by suggesting this was an indictment of the police in general.
Yet this moment calls for an overhaul of our system of public safety. The push will come from many organizations and from across the city, including those people currently occupying George Floyd Square.
Continue readingWhite bodies have demanded obedience, submission, and respect from black bodies since this nation was founded, even before.
Things have improved, slowly, but white supremacy is still alive, even thriving. In policing, it can show up as intimidation, excessive force, and death for Black bodies.
It is easy for those of us who are white (including this author) to “other” the police, as if we haven’t benefited from their policing and other forms oppression that have led to gross racial inequalities in our communities. We are part of that same social conditioning into white supremacy.
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