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Wednesday, September 01, 2021

Minneapolis has a charter provision that restricts adaptability.

 Rep. Omar in her recent op-ed traces challenged charter language to 1971, and some are old enough to remember the tensions then, Rodney King, anti-war protesting, draft card burning, and some politicians pushing "law and order" where money sets the law, and cops enforce order the way money wishes. The Battle of Seattle being prime classical "law and order" control politics having sway over citizen crowd protest politics. There was intense control effort aimed the way money wanted things.

After Rep. Omar's op-ed mentions Bob Kroll and the union he headed, the fundamental question is exposed - would a charter change have prevented Bob Kroll's ascent within the police force, and the union? Would a different setup have curbed his rise, his belligerence, his intransigence, or his aggressiveness?

That segues to the second question, is the contract and contracting situation the major part of the problem which changing the city charter would not directly fix, while it would enable indirect change likelihoods (or at least possibilities)?

The first question is speculative. The feeling here is Kroll types get into policing, and would do so, however the charter vote turns out. Bad apples among the good.

The second question is more interesting. If there is adaptability, there is authority, vested somewhere, to fit moods of the times and then to change as moods alter. With charter provisions set into a situation where a special vote is needed to break a logjam, the setup is wrong, per se.

The big uncertainty, what would really change regardless of changing the charter, hinges upon the authority negotiating with the police, their biases and willingness to confront forcefully and not fold, when the union is steadfast.

That situation  is separate from any wording in the charter proposal. But related. What the proposal allows is flexibility to strengthen citizen input and civic powers to fire bad cops.

Why would anyone mistrust making the situation more adaptable to changing with the times? Or adaptable to firing bad cops? Inflexibility is next worse to timidity among those negotiating with the power structure in the police union.

What everyone needs to understand is that police will be armed with lethal power regardless of how voting turns out, there will be personality problems where culling bad cops is key, and either indifference or timidity among those policing the police will continue to be worries. With changing the charter there is no assurance better negotiations will result. But it will be more likely they could. That's enough to vote "Yes."

A caveat: In closing, remember that Amy Klobuchar in all her years as top dog prosecutor never prosecuted bad cops. There are dimensions beyond charter language, human dimensions, which shall remain problematic. In voting, remember the charter change is only as good as how the bigger picture evolves after the vote. Yet flexibility allows a possible good evolution as more likely than under present charter-language constraint.

________UPDATE________

Wikipedia on Battle of Seattle. This image. 1999. Decades ago, a wake-up call. That wake-up call appears to have awakened nothing. The feeling here is the Klobuchar-like policy and politics of letting bad cops go unprosecuted is more a daily counterproductive factor than reaction/reform after how the Battle of Seattle was handled. 

VP Harris, during her prosecutorial days never went after bad cops.

You tolerate badness. Badness prospers. Badness spreads. Expanding like a gas to fill the space available to it. Blind-eye prosecutors CAN BE FIXED, NEXT.

However, change the stupid anti-change Minneapolis charter situation. That is something that can be passed by public initiative. So, change it. Then hope.