DEC 2020 Blues Vol 36 No. 12 - 36TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Minneapolis mayor,

Minneapolis mayor, police chief call proposed police cuts ‘irresponsible’ Mayor Jacob Frey and Chief Medaria Arradondo pushed back on a proposal to cut the police budget by nearly million amid rising crime. By Liz Sawyer Star Tribune (Minneapolis) MINNEAPOLIS — Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and police Chief Medaria Arradondo on Monday struck back at a proposal by three of City Council members to cut the Minneapolis police budget by nearly million, with Frey calling the plan “irresponsible and untenable” amid a year of rising violent crime and a shrinking police force. Although both said they support some community alternatives and reforms in policing, they said it cannot come at the cost of further cuts to the department already facing historic attrition rates — the department is down 120 officers since the start of the year, with more destined for departure. “This notion that in order to have a more comprehensive public safety strategy you have to do away with one critical element, which is police, is wrong,” Frey said. “We are hearing from communities right now that they are looking for a ‘both-and’ approach.” by Sandy Malone & Holly Matkin “This is literally a life-anddeath matter right now and we need to get it right,” he said. The proposal by a trio of City Council members — President Lisa Bender, Phillipe Cunningham and Steve Fletcher — would move roughly 5% from MPD to violence prevention, a mental health crisis team and other departments that could help process reports of property damage and parking violations. The council members’ proposal would fund a department with roughly 770 officers and reduce the authorized force size to 750 in future years. That’s far lower than the 888 “target level” included in Frey’s budget proposal. The three council members were on the losing side of a 7-6 vote this month to spend 0,000 for other law enforcement agencies to help the Minneapolis police patrol the city. Frey’s budget plan includes roughly .5 billion in spending for 2021, about 9 million of which would go to the Police Department. His plan calls for adding three recruit classes to LAPD: Verbal consent now a must to search someone during routine stops New rules say officers must record detainees agreeing to a search if officers are making a stop without reasonable suspicion. By Josh Cain Daily News, Los Angeles LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Police Department officers who search people during routine stops must now document getting consent for those searches, according to a new policy approved Tuesday The new rules, adopted in a unanimous Los Angeles Police Commission vote, mean LAPD officers must use their body cameras to record detainees verbally agreeing to a search, or get written permission, if they’re making the stop without a reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred. The change in policy follows an Office of Inspector General report released in October that showed LAPD was stopping Black and Latino drivers at a disproportionate rate to white drivers for minor traffic violations, as well as subjecting them to more intense searches of their vehicles. The intent of the searches was to suppress violent crime, Inspector General Mark Smith wrote in the report. But the strategy didn’t work. “The OIG concluded that some portion of the racial disparities seen in both stops and poststop activity ... were the result of strategies designed to use these violations as a pretext to identify or suppress more serious crimes,” Smith wrote. “The data also indicates that these strategies are, on balance, of limited effectiveness in identifying evidence of illegal firearms or other serious crimes.” The report found that in hundreds of thousands of such searches, Black and Latino drivers were less likely to be caught with guns or drugs than white drivers, or to be arrested of crimes. The practice came under scrutiny after a Los Angeles Times investigation found that squads of crime suppression officers in LAPD’s Metropolitan Division were making thousands of stops of mostly innocent drivers in South L.A. and around downtown. After furious outcry from community leaders and civil rights activists, LAPD wound down the strategy. The department recently redeployed Metro Division officers in units investigating shootings. The policies adopted Tuesday do not affect officers’ ability to stop and search people who they suspect have committed crimes. “This order pertains only to consensual searches and should not be confused with other legal searches, such as pat-downs when an officer has articulable facts which cause him or her to reasonably believe the person is dangerous or may be carrying a weapon,” officials wrote in the new policy. Commissioners said the policies implemented Tuesday, which also included new rules for serving search and arrest warrants, were part of a move to reduce biases found in the way LAPD polices different communities. Several commissioners also expressed interest in study- *CONTINUED ON PAGE 34 *CONTINUED ON PAGE 34 30 The BLUES POLICE MAGAZINE The BLUES POLICE MAGAZINE 31