Minneapolis community group rallying residents to speak out on police funding

The Minneapolis City Council will hold a series of budget hearings in the coming weeks as members work to finalize spending for next year, including for the police department.

Safety Now MPLS is a group of residents and business owners who are rallying people to speak at budget meetings and urge the city council to not cut public safety funding.

"As an average citizen, my biggest concern is this, I don’t like what I see out there morning, noon and night," group member Bill Rodriguez said about the spike in crime. "We need more folks getting engaged and getting involved so we get a more representative sampling of what the community is thinking."

Safety Now MPLS took its message to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Thursday.

The community group will ask the council to make no further cuts and set aside resources for police academy classes and money for officer overtime, as well as restore the community safety officer program, fund more mental health response teams and an officer accountability program.

Safety Now MPLS

Earlier this week, Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo described the spike in crime in the city as "unprecedented."

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Frey’s 2021 budget calls for cuts due to COVID-19, and when it comes police, he’s asking for around $178 million — that’s a reduction of 7.4% from this year.

"Mayor Frey’s 2021 budget recommendation includes several key investments to strengthen public safety. To help offset officer departures and boost diversity in the ranks, he dedicated funding for three recruit classes and restore the Community Service Officer program," Frey’s spokesperson, Mychal Vlatkovich, wrote in an email to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS.

Frey has also proposed public safety funding that goes beyond policing to the council, his office said.

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In a statement to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, Minneapolis City Council Budget Committee Chairperson Linea Palmisano wrote in part, "Residents are facing the impacts of this uptick in real time and we need to allocate the necessary resources to combat that violence now."

Public Health and Safety Chairperson Phillipe Cunningham told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, "There is absolutely no doubt we are in the midst of a public safety crisis in our city. As Northsiders living in the middle of a hotspot, my family and I are in the thick of this crisis ourselves. We, as a city, will not be safer by continuing to rely on a broken criminal justice system that got us in this crisis in the first place by breaking up families and destroying people’s futures. More of business as usual will not give us different results. When you’re in a hole, the solution is not to keep digging. The only way we will make our city safer is through a “both/and” approach that includes community members and organizations, service providers, and targeted law enforcement all working together. Simply churning more people through the broken criminal justice system will only continue to make us less safe."

The council is expected to vote Friday to spend nearly $500,000 to pay the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office and Metro Transit Police to help Minneapolis Police with law enforcement personnel throughout the end of the year.

The budget committee has a public meeting on Nov. 16 at 10 a.m.

The 2021 budget is scheduled to be finalized and approved in December.