Geraldo Rivera: Keep cops, defund abuse

“White people cannot understand the dangers facing over-policed Black Americans,” former Navy SEAL, professional wrestler, mayor and governor of Minnesota Jesse “The Body” Ventura told an interviewer during the burning of Minneapolis, his hometown.

Raised two blocks off Lake Street, the main drag and epicenter of the city’s ruinous rioting, Ventura was visibly distraught over both the epic destruction of his old hood and the chronic injustice facing many of the African Americans who now live there.

 Igniting a worldwide protest against racism and police brutality, the choking death of local resident George Floyd led the city and state to a perilous inflection point. There is a serious movement now to defund the police — that is, to end urban policing as we know it. 

A City Council Charter Commission is pondering a ballot initiative asking for a vote to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with an undefined “community safety department.” What would that even look like? If a resident was being robbed, raped, carjacked or murdered who would they call? A social worker or anti-violence counselor?

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As I write this, the wacky defund campaign in Minneapolis and similar initiatives across the nation are being pounded by ads funded by President Trump’s reelection campaign that vividly portray a lawless, police-less, dystopic world overrun by violent criminals. Politicians like presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden have rushed to deny they support anything like true defunding. 

Most agree that police reforms, while often necessary, should be modest enough to ensure that when someone places a 911 emergency call they are not put on hold.

The Defund Movement is perhaps most evolved in New York City, where $1 billion has been “slashed” from the $6 billion budget of the embattled police department. Except it wasn’t really.

In a force comprised of 36,000 uniformed and 19,000 civilian employees, much of the so-called savings have come from cutting police overtime, postponing the incoming Police Academy class of 1,600 recruits, transferring the School Safety program to the Department of Education, and farming out to other agencies responsibility for providing crossing guards, dealing with illegal vending, and homeless outreach.

Cities need cops to be cops. The inconvenient truth is that violent crime is making a comeback. Long proud of being the world’s safest big city, New York City — along with most big cities — is facing a spike in violent crime. New York suffered a 177 percent increase in shootings in July over 2019, and a 59 percent increase in murders.

Minneapolis is also facing an undeniable spike in violent crime, as its battered and reviled cops adopt a cover-your-ass defensive strategy of policing. Already, 288 people have been shot there this year. And 41 have been killed, about double the toll from a year earlier.

Residents along Lake Street look out their windows at a wide swath of ransacked shops and businesses, including the torched Third Police Precinct. Who will fund the rebuilding?

The wreck of the city’s “live and let live” ethos weighs heavily on the minds of many Minneapolitans, Black and White. Anxiety is widespread that businesses and high-income residents will flee. 

At a minimum, it will cost Minneapolis $500 million and years to replace what was lost in the rioting and looting following Floyd’s murder. Restoring faith in the city’s institutions will take longer.  

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Minneapolis has changed ethnically and racially since Jesse Ventura’s day. When he was a teenager on Lake Street, there were almost no minorities. The state and city built by sturdy German and Nordic immigrants is now almost 20% Black and poor, many fleeing the urban decay and violence of Gary, Ind., and South Chicago. Latinos make up another 10%. 

The experiences of these latter-day residences of color with the police has often been troubled. George Floyd’s choking murder was not the first. In 2010 another Black man, David Smith, died after a Minneapolis cop pressed his knee into Smith’s back.

Expensive civil settlements ranging in the millions of dollars plagued a police department often criticized for bad training and excessive force.

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Gov. Ventura is right. There is no denying that Black men have vastly different and more negative experiences than Whites dealing with cops. Sensible reforms, like increased community policing and recruiting more officers of color, are urgently needed. Not defunding, but re-imagining.

Hopefully, the folks in charge in Minneapolis and others going through this same wrenching process don’t kill their cities trying to fix their cops.

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