BY ED FELIEN
Mayor Hodges is asking for a 5.5% increase in property taxes for more police: “The investments I make in public safety represent more than 70 percent of all the new ongoing investments that I propose for next year.”
She’s asking for $1,305,000 to hire 15 new officers and $1,093,000 to hire 20 part-time (15.0 FTEs) community service officers.
When Bob Kroll, the head of the Police Federation, told the Star Tribune, “We’re moving in the right direction,” it began to sound like we were racing to a train wreck.
According to Minnesota Public Radio only 5.4% of the MPD actually live in the City of Minneapolis.
So, Hodges wants to raise our taxes to hire more suburban thumpers to come into our town to keep us in line.
In her speech on the budget, she said, “I have often spoken about the three questions on the white board in my office that I ask myself every day: How does this make the city run well? How does this move the dial on growing the city? How does this move the dial on equity?”
“How does this make the city run well?” The Police Department in its current state is dysfunctional. Ten months after the police killing of Jamar Clark the Internal Affairs Unit still hasn’t written a report evaluating the actions of the officers involved. The public voice of the department is Bob Kroll, the leader of the Police Federation, and City Heat, a motorcycle gang made up of white cops fond of Confederate flags and Nazi Iron Crosses. Throwing more money at the MPD increases the problems.
“How does this move the dial on growing the city?” More authoritarian bullies make this city less attractive.
“How does this move the dial on equity?” It moves the dial backwards.
The best way to stop crime is to prevent it, not hire more police to clean up after it.
We know what causes most crime—poverty. We know that poverty means no job, bad nutrition, no education, no future. We know there are city, county, state and federal programs that could help. We know the best person to talk to someone about healthcare, daycare or job training is a neighbor.
Why can’t the city take the salary of one police officer and hire 10 part-time block club coordinators, chosen by the block clubs, to go around and talk to their neighbors about government programs and some kind of hope to break the cycle of poverty?
They could be paid $20 an hour. They’d spend three hours a week learning about programs and three hours a week knocking on doors and talking to their neighbors.
More top-down, authoritarian repression is not going to prevent crime and make Minneapolis better. More power and a little money at the grass roots just might. Let neighborhood organizations pick the blocks with the most needs. Let them call a meeting on the block, and let the block club hire one of their own to be their contact with the government.
I mentioned this proposal to former 9th Ward Council Member Kathy Thurber. She wrote back: “I was surprised by your letter simply because so much of what you proposed was very close to what we had in the ’90s with Community Crime Prevention and some of the NRP funds that neighborhoods used to staff up and fund programs. I know it wasn’t perfect, but is any of that still in place? I’ll never forget the time our car was broken into 20 years ago and damaged badly, and all the police had to say was, ‘Well, you live here—what do you expect?’ ”
