From Global Protest to Local Reality: North Minneapolis Residents' Views on Public Safety and Police Reform Five Years After the Murder of George Floyd

Abstract

The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin on May 25th, 2020, shook the nation and the world, and led to one of the largest protest movements in US history. Protestors poured out onto the streets demanding justice, the end to discriminatory policing, and the strengthening of police accountability systems. Some called for “defunding” police, an initiative that made it to the Minneapolis ballot in 2021, but failed at the voting booth. Despite the failure of this initiative, over the past five years, Minneapolis has begun implementing significant police reforms. When Minneapolis became the center of global and national attention in 2020, attention largely focused on the area of South Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered, and the perspectives of Northsiders, who had been disproportionately affected by high levels of crime and police misconduct for decades, were sidelined. To my knowledge, since the murder of George Floyd, there have been no social-scientific studies of this region of Minneapolis. To fill this gap in the literature and amplify the voices of Northsiders, this study poses the question, “What are North Minneapolis residents' perceptions of public safety and the need for police reform today?” I used two methods to answer this question. Firstly, I surveyed a sample of North Minneapolis residents. Secondly, I conducted interviews with stakeholders in North Minneapolis, including non-profit leaders, business owners, school administrators, and government officials. I hypothesized that North Minneapolis residents are: 1) dually concerned about crime and police misconduct in their communities, 2) generally supportive of police reform but opposed to more expansive restructuring of public safety because they depend on police for protection from crime, and 3) believe that community-based violence interruption groups and emerging alternative response models are positive additions to public safety. I found support for all three of my hypotheses. The results from both methods reveal that overall, Northsiders worry about high levels of crime in their community, and exhibit low levels of trust in police. Furthermore, Northsiders by and large desire an unbiased and compassionate police force composed of officers who are actively invested in community safety and dedicated to holding their colleagues accountable for misconduct. The results suggest that there is a strong appetite among Northsiders for expanding alternative responder models that employ trained non-police safety professionals. Requests for improving youth engagement and rehabilitation programs were also prominent. Overall, to address the concerns voiced by Northside residents and community leaders in this study, I recommend that the City of Minneapolis expand youth programming and rehabilitative services, establish equitable traffic enforcement, build on programming that brings together police and community members for public safety discussions, grow its alternative response network, and improve oversight of violence interruption groups. Actively consulting with community members and implementing community feedback will be critical to the success of these policy recommendations.