[Mpls] Challenge to Mayor Rybak and Black Community by Dwight Hobbes

[Dyna Sluyter]

> Dwight Hobbes
> August 30, 2004
> Nine officers are expected to retire from the Minneapolis
> Police Department next year and, if Mayor R.T. Rybak can
> get his projected 2005 budget past the City Council, those
> cops will not be replaced. 	

	Nine officers sounds like an optimisticly low estimate- typically cops 
are eligible for retirement after 25 to 30 years service, thus making 
on average 3-4% of the force eligible for retirement in a given year. 
With the force down to maybe 700 officers we should be seeing 20-30 
retirements next year. That number doesn't even include officers taking 
early retirement or disability retirement options, so we could see our 
already decimated police force lose another 50 or more officers next 
year.

> It would be most responsible of him to take another look at
> the books and figure out somewhere else to make this cut.
> Starting, for instance, with the $200,000 that will be spent
> on, of all things, a study on streetcars on the Midtown Greenway.

	Agreed- I noted that questionable budget item too. We have a wealth of 
volunteer groups with rail experience in this area at Minnesota 
Transportation Museum, the U of M Railroad Club, and other groups. I 
suspect they'd be willing to do that study for the cost of expenses 
like copying, etc.. I'm sure we'd all rather have a couple more cops on 
the street that yet another consultants report littering the shelves of 
the Municipal Information Library.

> Inner-city African-Americans, many of whom have had the most
> trouble with cops and condemn the Minneapolis Police Department
> as racist, in their own best interest ought to be first in line
> trying to help the MPD.

	Agreed. None the less the Police Department needs to take action to 
reassure us that we won't be hassled by the police when we cooperate 
with them. The other day I was officially invited to the weekly CODEFOR 
meetings, However, with a criminal warrant for my arrest for possession 
of peeling paint still active, and our Police Department's recent 
arrest of an HCMC physician for following the ethical standards of his 
profession, I'll pass on the invitation- no point in getting hauled off 
to jail if I say something that ticks off the chief or his minions.

> Activists who've protested racial profiling and selective
> excessive force would do well to vehemently speak out and
> demonstrate against decreasing the police force. Regular,
> everyday citizens should be dispatching letters and telephone
> calls demanding that their City Council representatives
> oppose this planned cut.

	Agreed- abuse is fed by understaffing and a general feeling among cops 
of futility.

> Police officers, frankly, are the only protection they have.
> There is no place to turn when crack is peddled practically on
> their doorsteps. There's no one else to call when they're victimized
> by burglarizing junkies. The plague of drug traffic continually
> worsens in their neighborhoods and certainly won't lessen with fewer
> cops on patrol. There's long been a hue and cry for more cops of
> color -- but with nine fewer positions, well, do the math.

	Agreed- but we need those cops sent where they're needed too. Last 
night I shopped the new West Broadway CUB at midnight and found two 
squads in the CUB lot, two more squads within a couple blocks on West 
Broadway, as well as three of CUB's own security guards. No wonder the 
drug dealers so confidently do business in the residential 
neighborhoods a few blocks away.

	BTW, CUB's security tried to get me to check my bag, a request that 
has never been made of me at a CUB store before. With a PowerBook and 
ham radio in that bag I wasn't willing to surrender it, and was rather 
troubled that CUB was more concerned about the security of their 
groceries than my electronics. BTW, I was wearing a Postal Service 
uniform and ID at the time which should have at least established that 
I was not a common criminal. One can imagine the reception one of my 
fellow Postal Workers of African-American decent would have received in 
plain clothes...

> The mayor would do a great deal better, instead of expediently
> talking feel-good talk, to responsibly walk the walk, making it
> a priority that inner-city life doesn't get any worse.

	And until he does we inner city taxpayers rather than upgrading our 
homes and increasing the tax base might be better off buying RVs (which 
don't pay property taxes) and camping in the best policed and safest 
place in Minneapolis- the West Broadway CUB parking lot!

> The last thing crime-ridden communities need is a weakening of
> the only thing standing between decent folk and criminals.

	Amen

		hangin' on in Hawthorne,

			Dyna Sluyter