A judge has ordered the city of Minneapolis to hire more police officers after eight residents sued over a spike in crime they believe is due to the lack of enough law enforcement on the streets.
The hilariously ironic ruling comes a little more than than a year after social justice activists demanded Minneapolis cut – and even completely dismantle – the city’s police department following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after being restrained by a white police officer.
In response to the demands, the city shifted about $8 million in funding from their police department to support “violence prevention and mental health crisis response teams,” per a December NPR article. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who was at one point physically chased out of a left-wing social justice rally for refusing to agree to dismantle his city’s entire police department altogether, also proposed a 2021 budget that included a $17 million cut to the department. While significant, the drop in funding fell far short of the tens of millions that many activists had demanded be stripped from local law enforcement and re-designated toward housing and social programs.
In the year following Floyd’s death, more than 200 police officers quit, retired, or took extended leave from the department. And, as of this past May, homicides in Minneapolis had doubled over the same time frame in 2020. Gun thefts from vehicles had risen by more than 100%, while illegal gun seizures had dropped. Residents from some minority communities even began showing up at city council meetings demanding to know why police officers weren't responding to calls and helping stop the violent crime running rampant through their neighborhoods.
The spike in crime coupled with mass exodus of police officers finally led to eight Minneapolis residents, represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center, to sue the city for not retaining enough officers on their payroll to meet local requirements.
Hennepin County District Judge Jamie L. Anderson – who represents the same county in which former Officer Derek Chauvin was tried – ordered the city to employ at least 730 police officers by the end of June 2020, 61 more than the 669 officers the city’s current plans include. According to a local law, the city must employ at least 0.0017 sworn officers for every city residents, meaning the city may actually end up having to employ even more than that 730 total if the 2020 census dictates needing more police officers to meet the legal mandate.