City Council Budget Committee approves Safety for All Budget Plan that would redirect funds from MPD

Monday, the Minneapolis City Council Budget Committee approved amendments to the proposed 2021 budget from the Safety for All Budget Plan that was proposed by a number of council members.

The amendments would redirect $7.77 million meant for the police department to "other approaches to preventing violence and building community wellbeing."

If passed, the Safety For All Budget Plan would redirect some emergency calls to other departments, build a non-police mental health crisis response and violence prevention programming in the city.

Minneapolis city councilmembers propose ‘Safety for All’ budget plan to revamp city’s public safety system

The Safety for All Budget was authored by Council Members Phillipe Cunningham, Steve Fletcher and Lisa Bender.

"It is our duty to protect the people of Minneapolis, and our current public safety system fails to do so. The Safety for All Budget Plan will keep the residents of our city safer by meeting the urgent safety needs in our city now while also laying a path towards much-needed transformation in our public safety system," Cunningham said.

The council proposed starting a new public safety staffing reserve fund of $6.4M for the police chief to use but it also requires later council approval to access.

"I think we made really important investments in mental health response, and alternative responses to 9-11, that takes pressure off law enforcement, and violence prevention, I think it was a really good outcome," said councilmember Steve Fletcher. “What I think we did was responsible and thoughtful, and provide public safety outcomes we can actually roll out this year, adding police to our depleted force is a very long term proposal because it takes time to staff them up."

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey issued the following statement regarding the budget committee’s approval of the amendments:

"Pre-emptively reducing the sworn capacity by 138 officers prior to having alternative responses in place or completing the mutually-agreed upon staffing study is irresponsible. We’ve given the Council every opportunity to join us in a both-and approach that gives Chief Arradondo the flexibility he needs to move forward and ability to scale up new safety solutions. Last week, we joined private, faith, and community leaders to launch a new, $5 million initiative that would better integrate mental health and social services into our emergency response system. We continue to stand ready to collaborate and support the safety beyond policing initiatives, but I am actively considering a veto due to the massive, permanent cut to officer capacity."

In response to the threat of a veto of the budget, Council President Lisa Bender responded by saying:

"The City Council came together to unanimously forward a budget for approval tomorrow night which takes a strategic, balanced approach to public safety. Our amended budget includes the same number of sworn officers, recruit classes and overtime that Mayor Frey proposed for 2021 and includes new investments in violence prevention, community safety and mental health response.”

“Mayor Frey’s insistence that we should plan for 888 police officers in 2022 is completely unrealistic. The realistic budget the City Council has drafted is based on the actual current staffing of MPD after years of attrition and an exodus of officers since the killing of George Floyd and the burning of the 3rd precinct. If the Mayor has a real plan to hire 150 more officers in 2022, he could simply propose that in next year’s budget along with the taxes needed to pay for it.”

“The City Council’s amended budget actually pays for what we have and builds in more flexibility to lower taxes or invest in other priorities in future years. If the Mayor vetoes it, he will trigger a $20 million budget cut that will affect every City department next year while we are still responding to a pandemic, rebuilding public safety and facing multi-million dollar lawsuits related to police violence. This veto would be so destructive to the City and our residents that it is difficult to take the threat seriously."

A public online hearing to discuss the budget will take place at 4 p.m. Wednesday and go no later than 9:30 p.m. The Council will then vote on the proposed budget. A link to the meeting can be found here.