Voters in Minneapolis defeated a ballot proposition to remove the police department from the city charter and replace it with a Department of Public Safety, a move endorsed by Representative Ilhan Omar.

With 945 of precincts reporting, 57% of voters — almost 77,000 — were against the amendment.

The vote means the Department of Public Safety will not be created and the Minneapolis Police Department will remain on the city charter.

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Police Department is seeking $27 million in funding to address a “staggering” number of police officer departures as violent crime surges in the city.

Arradondo said there are 598 active sworn officers this year compared to 853 in 2019. The budget proposal calls for increased funding to rebuild core services.

In 2020, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by former police officer Derek Chauvin.

“We all agree that we can’t sustain as we are now with the way policing has been,” Brian Herron, a church pastor on the city’s North Side said. But the pastor was against getting rid of the police department, The New York Times reported. “We don’t have time to reimagine. We got bodies dropping in the streets. We got innocent folk being killed.”

As a candidate for mayor of Minneapolis, Sheila Nezhad backed the initiative.

“For every new change, someone had to be the first,” she said. “This is our opportunity to lead.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Tim Walz opposed the initiative, whilst State Attorney General Keith Ellison and Representative Omar supported the measure.

“I find it fascinating that folks are saying, ‘No, this is the wrong time to do things that directly address the things that are bad right now,’” JaNaé Bates, a minister who helped lead the charge to replace the police department, said.

“I am disappointed that people appear to be coming from a place of fear,” Minneapolis resident Erica Mauter, who supported the measure, said to Fox News Tuesday night. “When we’re uncertain about the future or when change feels tenuous, we want to go back to what made us feel comfortable and to what we already know. We have to challenge ourselves to have some imagination about different paths to a safer Minneapolis.”

More on this story via Conservative Brief:

Celebrations were had by many on Twitter who support the police.

“Tonight, the people of Minneapolis rejected Ilhan Omar and the Defund the Police movement,” Parkland dad Andrew Pollack said. CONTINUE READING…