it's really happening, isn't it

That whole police-defunding thing? It seems to be under way in Minneapolis:

Minneapolis City Council Goes For Woke, Will Defund Police.

Does "defund" mean "remove all funding"? The article says:

We’re off to the Twilight Zone, everyone. The Minneapolis City Council now has a veto-proof majority, and says they will “defund and dismantle” the Minneapolis Police Department.

After all, what could possibly go wrong?

“We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe,” Council President Lisa Bender told CNN.

With nine votes[,] the city council would have a veto-proof supermajority of the council’s 13 members, Bender said.

Sunday’s pledge was an acknowledgment that the current system is not working, Bender said.

“(We need) to listen, especially to our black leaders, to our communities of color, for whom policing is not working and to really let the solutions lie in our community,” she said.

Pressed for details on what the dismantling might look like, Bender told CNN she was looking to shift police funding toward community-based strategies and that the city council would discuss how to replace the current police department.

“The idea of having no police department is certainly not in the short term,” she added.

So: they're going to replace the police department. That seems pretty clear. What remains unclear to me is what a replacement entails. How do you replace a police department with an organization that will have largely the same purpose as a police department, and that will need to be able to carry out its mission by force if necessary? All I can see is a police department that replaces the current police department, and the Stanford Prison Experiment shows quite clearly what happens when you put inexperienced people in positions of authority: power goes to their heads, and violence and degradation are the result. Well... good luck, I guess.

I keep forgetting how fucking weird Minnesota is. This is the state that casually elected Jesse Ventura as governor and had the grope-y Al Franken as senator. Now, we see they've got murderous cops in Minneapolis and a thoroughly cowed city council. Is Minnesota the face of current America, or is it a harbinger of things to come? Just... wow.

ADDENDUM: Dr. Pepple asks: "Why move to Minneapolis when you can move to Beirut?"

Anyway, Minneapolis had become a little urban jewel. It had mostly avoided the urban unrest of the late 1960s, so it could attract people who would otherwise want to avoid its dreadful winters.

And now all of that has been destroyed. Maybe the businesses destroyed will come back, but if other places are any indication, they won’t. It would be too risky, especially since there is no indication from the city’s elites that they understand that such places need police protection. Since owners cannot count on the police for protection, they will either have to protect their own places (and often anyone who does so will be arrested while looters won’t be), risk having no protection, or just not bother.

There is no reason to move to Minneapolis anymore, unless you like living in a city in decay, which a small minority does. But most people – even most liberals – don’t like such a thing.

Get woke, go broke, as Glenn Reynolds likes to say.

NB: that Victory Girls article (the very first link in my post) is one of the better ones I've read. I recommend reading it all the way through. I don't generally like the Victory Girls' writing style, which often seems too precious and dramatically breathless. Whoever this Deanna Fisher is, though, she's a solid, no-nonsense writer. I like her style.