Much has been written about the proposed charter amendment to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a Department of Public Safety. The focus has been on whether there will be police officers, how many, what the management structure will be and how the City Council will manage the new department.
Other language in the proposal concerns me, however, and suggests that the City Council has not put enough thought into what happens if the charter amendment succeeds. A philosophy behind the amendment has been a "public health" approach to safety and crime prevention. Does the city believe that it has the capacity, experience and resources to be successful in this? If so, that belief demonstrates the council's naïve and superficial approach to public safety.
The budget of the Police Department is about $180 million a year, according to city documents. The City Council proposes diverting some of this funding to early intervention, prevention and remediation strategies to address the root causes of crime and public safety issues in the city. Even if the city could divert a significant amount of that budget, it would be insufficient.
Hennepin County, which has primary responsibility for the provision of social services, much of which is directed to the city, commits well more than $300 million a year to this purpose. The county has decades of experience in providing early intervention and prevention services, some of which are successful and some not.
The Minneapolis School District commits millions of dollars a year to mental health services for children, outreach efforts to marginalized families and communities, and other social services to improve educational outcomes for children. Certainly, educational success is a primary early intervention strategy. Private social service agencies, foundations, religious institutions and voluntary groups play a part in addressing the root causes of crime and poor safety outcomes.
A serious public health proposal would involve a yearslong commitment to strategies that coordinated, managed and assessed such an approach. Certainly, the state, with its resources, would have a part to play also.
Different government agencies have a difficult time cooperating with one another, especially over time. It appears that the city isn't even interested in trying. The City Council has not mentioned any coordination with other social service agencies in its poorly thought-out approach to public safety. Instead, it has adopted a kind of "we alone can fix this" attitude.
The development of the city's crisis mental health program is an example of this. Instead of collaborating with the county's existing psychiatric crisis outreach program — and leveraging the experience, sophistication and relationships that have been developed — the city has established a contract with a Richfield-based mental health agency with little experience in taking crisis calls typically handled by the county's service or the police. The contract has already been criticized as poorly developed.
