After Floyd's killing, Minneapolis police retreated, data shows

[Valin]

Reuters

After the brutal killing of a Black man went viral and triggered national protests, Minneapolis police underwent an abrupt shift: Officers began making fewer traffic stops, drug and gun checks, Reuters found. With the city engulfed in violence, citizens ask: Where are the police?

BRAD HEATH in MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

Sept. 13, 2021

Bullets crashed through the walls of Brandy Earthman’s house on Minneapolis’ north side one evening this summer. The shots sheared through the door of the living room where her children were playing. One severed a bone in her 19-year-old son’s arm.

The gunfire was part of a wave of shootings this year in Minneapolis, where killings are on the rise and, Earthman and others complain, the police are frequently nowhere to be seen.

“They don’t care anymore,” she said. “They’re just going to let everybody kill themselves.”

Policing in Minneapolis changed dramatically in the year since a white police officer murdered George Floyd. The video-recorded killing of a defenseless Black man touched off rioting, rekindled a national debate about racial inequities in law enforcement and launched scattershot efforts to strip funding from police. In the months that followed, few cities wrestled more with the question of what the future of American law enforcement should be than Minneapolis. Officials here floated attempts to overhaul, shrink or even abolish the city’s besieged police force – so far with no success.

(Snip)

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