Minneapolis Police To Be “Dismantled”

Minneapolis police will be “dismantled,” city councillors in the American city where George Floyd died on Sunday, which has sparked protests across the country and around the world against racism in law enforcement.

“We are committed to dismantling the police service as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuilding with our people a new model of public safety that truly ensures the safety of our people,” said Lisa Bender, President of City Council, on CNN.

She said that she intended to transfer the funds allocated to the city’s police budget to population-based projects. The city council also intends to examine how to replace the current police, she added.

“The idea of ​​not having a police force is certainly not a short-term project,” she said.

City Councilor Alondra Cano said on Twitter that the decision was made “with a majority of the Minneapolis city council sufficient to avoid a veto.”

According to her, the council concluded that the city police were “not reformable and that we were going to put an end to the current system of policing”.

A white Minneapolis police officer was charged with the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, on May 25. A video filmed by a passerby shows him with one knee pressed for almost nine minutes on the victim’s neck, who reports that he can no longer breathe. Three accompanying police officers were also charged.

Tens of thousands of Americans demonstrated again Saturday in many cities across the country. And the rally in the federal capital Washington, under the windows of a White House surrounded by wire fences and transformed into an entrenched camp, did not give rise to any incident.

Riots and looting broke out in the days following the tragedy in several major cities across the country, prompting the authorities to put in place curfews.

From Bristol to Budapest via Madrid and Rome, tens of thousands of Europeans joined the anti-racism protests on Sunday.