The Minneapolis City Council has decided to devote a small portion of the city’s police budget to alternative methods of policing including violence prevention specialists and mental health crisis teams, according to The Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Washington Post.
In a budget that was approved on Thursday, $7.7 million from the $179 million police department budget will now go toward supporting other methods of conflict resolution.
After the police killing of George Floyd on video this summer, there were widespread calls for the city’s police department to be disbanded or defunded, even by some city council members.
But city leaders quietly backed off of any plans that would see any major changes to the city’s police department and even struggled just to push through the relatively minor $7.7 million change.
The Washington Post reported that Mayor Jacob Frey threatened to veto the budget because of the $7.7 million shift and only backed off of that threat when the city council agreed to remove another section that attempted to reduce the city’s 880-person police force by 130.
“My colleagues were right to leave the targeted staffing level unchanged from 888 and continue moving forward with our shared priorities,” Frey said in a statement to The Minneapolis Star Tribune. “The additional funding for new public safety solutions will also allow the City to continue upscaling important mental health, non-police response, and social service components in our emergency response system.”
