Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott is proposing major changes to public safety in the Twin Cities suburb, nearly a month after the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright during a traffic stop.
Elliott told residents at a meeting Saturday that his proposal would “add more tools to our toolbox to appropriately respond when members of our community are in grave need.” And he urged city council members to act quickly to approve the measure.
Several council members expressed support for the resolution on Saturday, but the council did not vote on the proposal in part because one member had to leave early. The council may pick up the discussion at its regular Monday night meeting, or at another special meeting tentatively scheduled for next Saturday.
Among other proposals, Elliott’s resolution would:
– create an “unarmed Community Response Department (to respond) to all incidents where a city resident is primarily experiencing a medical, mental health, disability-related, or other behavioral or social need.” The department would include “trained medical and mental health professionals, social workers, or other staff and volunteers,” with dispatchers routing those calls to them.
– create an “unarmed civilian Traffic Enforcement Department (that) has the responsibility for enforcing all non-moving traffic violations in the City.”
– create a Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention to oversee and coordinate operations of the police and fire departments, as well as the two new departments mentioned above.
– create a permanent Community Safety and Violence Prevention Committee, with a majority of members being residents “with direct experience or the close experience of immediate family members with being arrested, detained, or having other contact with Brooklyn Center police.” Among other duties, the committee would be tasked with reviewing police response to protests following the shooting of Daunte Wright; reviewing any collective bargaining contract with police officers; and making recommendations for creating a new, separate civilian oversight committee.
– prohibit use of deadly force “in certain situations including firing upon moving vehicles, (and prohibit) certain uses of force or other policing tactics during First Amendment protests and assemblies. It calls for policies “requiring de-escalation (and) exhaustion of reasonable alternatives before using deadly force.”
– The resolution would create a committee to create policies and guidelines to make those reforms happen, with a directive to present recommendations to the City Council within 180 days.
– And it would put in a place a “citation and summons” policy, requiring police officers to only issue citations – and prohibit arrests or consent searches – “for any non-moving traffic infraction, non-felony offense, or non-felony warrant” while new policies are being implemented.
Elliott’s proposal is named in honor of Wright and also in honor of Kobe Dimock-Heisler, who was fatally shot by Brooklyn Center police officers in 2019 while in a mental health crisis. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman decided not to charge the two officers who shot Dimock-Heisler six times.
Kimberly Potter, the former Brooklyn Center police officer who killed Wright, faces a manslaughter charge. Prosecutors say she shouted “Taser” before firing her handgun.
Elliott joined community members Saturday in calling for quick action to approve the measure, noting the time it will take to implement the proposals. He said a vote on the initial proposal is just the beginning of a “path to change” – with more community discussion and City Council votes to come as plans are finalized and implemented.
“To get to the point where we can pass this resolution, we need to do it as if there was an emergency and people were at the PD protesting again – we need to have that level of urgency,” he said. “This cannot afford to have the same process as every other item in our city.”
Amity Dimock, mother of Kobe Dimock-Heisler, told council members and others at the meeting that “the time for police reform was yesterday. I’d say now, but no – it was yesterday.”
Among the speakers at Saturday’s meeting was Tom Thompson, a retired assistant police chief in Miamisburg, Ohio, who also oversaw a police department serving a health care system’s facilities in that state. He spoke Saturday on behalf of Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a national nonprofit advocating for “best practice criminal justice reform.”
He called the proposal in Brooklyn Center – specifically regarding alternate responders – “on the cutting edge” and “a courageous move forward.”
But he also urged caution on at least one part of the proposal, questioning whether having unarmed civilians enforce minor traffic violations would involve them conducting traffic stops.
“That is one of the most dangerous situations for police officers… and I would really talk through that one,” he said, to ensure both community responders and community members stayed safe.
Council member Marquita Butler expressed support for the resolution Saturday.
“These last three weeks haven’t been easy on any of us, on our community,” she told the audience. “But if we have the opportunity now to make a difference and try to lessen the trauma that our community continues to experience, to save another person’s life, we have to do it.”
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Here we go again—let’s treat the symptoms and ignore the cause. Every police encounter results in the creation of another modern-day “hero”. Feed the frenzy and fan the flame.
I think all of this resistance towards police officers has the objective of increasing the odds that any given situation will become confrontational and ultimately result in the officers having to use force to whatever degree. I think this is being taught and encouraged and the morons behind it all would do well to reverse course and start teaching respect for the law and law enforcement. I don’t think Police officers intend for traffic stops to turn into a shooting spree, but the reason that tends to happen more and more is due to the provocations initiated by the ones being stopped. Reforms, more tools, and defunding is BS for not wanting to deal with the real issue.
Elliott told residents at a meeting Saturday that his proposal would “add more tools to our toolbox to appropriately respond when members of our community are in grave need.” ,,,,,,,and the proffered tools are the Soviet Hammer and cycle where THE STATE dictates, and THE PEOPLE obey.
If secular Socialist Democrats had one iota of understanding human nature and the natural defects that cause humans to fall from grace into lawbreaking, or rise in integrity to human success, America would be thriving today. But there is nothing natural in their utopian approach that insists on human equity outcomes rather than human equality, of individual choices that have good and bad results depending upon the values embraced. Most democrats have no values other than pursuit of the immediate gratification where passion and emotions rule the moment, that when applied to situations of social violence will get unarmed psychological interceders killed,,,, in the twinkling of an eye, and their “In grave need” translates into the need for more gaves.
Hw many traffic incidents we’ve seen this year alone, resulted in even ARMED COPS BEING SHOT and killed??
THEN THINK if the crooks see these “UNARMED Social worker” types are going to be the ones pulling them over, HOW MANY OF THEM will say “Too hell with it.”
Let’s just put ALL police officers on foot patrol, unarmed, with their hands cuffed behind their backs. There, problem solved.
You forgot “and go without their body armor”..
Medical and mental health professionals, social workers, or other staff and volunteers and unarmed civilians. Sounds like their will be more dead bodies, just not the perpetrator’s.
AND IN the case we DO SEE spikes in dead social workers etc, THEIR FAMILIES, should sue the hell out of mayors like this… PERSONALLY (not professionally as then we the tax servants would be footing the bill).
Yep Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott, send out the “unarmed” social workers, that will really stop someone armed or stronger than some psychology major.
I propose a better plan: When in session the mayor and counsel members will all be required to wear propeller beanies. My plan is inexpensive, easily enforceable, and will do just as much to ensure public safety.
Yes, yes, with bright colored beanie sections and pictures of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee on the ID tags for the council members. The members get to choose their favorite Tweedle.
Na. HOWS about we force the MAYOR and all his council members, to be the ones to have to go out, IN PERSON< unarmed, and without any armed guards, to do the social working, and traffic ticketing…
Ever notice how the Marxist Communist solution to everything is to create more bureaucratic Bull rather than address the actual cause and effect issues. They embolden criminals to fight and resist law enforcement which , ultimately ,could lead to their demise. ALL of the dead THUGS would be alive today if they followed the directives of the Police.
this guy is an idiot.
he only got elected because he is BLACK.
A big part of it is because he is also a leftist.
“He called the proposal in Brooklyn Center – specifically regarding alternate responders – “on the cutting edge” ….”
Yes many of them will find themselves on the cutting edge. That’s why we have armed police.
Looks like the criminals will be safe now. What about the victims. Now they have two more layers of bureaucracy and authorities to work through before they get any real help.
When seconds matter you should be prepared to wait a few days.
LIbtards CONTINUALLY SHOW they don’t give a Crip, about the victims, but LOVE THEM some crooks..
Some of the ones in grave need, are going to get their needs met, and maybe not the way they planned.
Criminal s resist arrest with violence. As soon as one of these unarmed civilians get seriously hurt or killed, then what will they do ??? Has blaming cops solved anything ???400 years and they still can’t behave
I have a simple suggestion, DON’T FIGHT OR FLEE!!!
I have another possible solution. Require all black males to attend a class on what is in violation of the law, such as drug use, how to obey a legal command from an arresting officer, and what resisting arrest consists of. Upon graduation, they will all be required to sign an acknowledgment that they understand what a crime is, what resisting arrest means, and that using illegal drugs is not only in violation of the law, but can cause them to behave in a violent and dangerous manor which could require force to defend society from them. It should be an inexpensive solution since it only involves the ~5% of the population who commit most of the violent crimes.
EVEN IF they attend, i doubt many would CARE to follow what they learned.
He left out the “Tea and crumpet squad” that rides out on Unicorns to all traffic stops and domestic violence situations. They then serve tea and crumpets and tell the people involved how nothing is their fault . They then give them a check for an undisclosed amount of money to pacify them for questioning their activities.
Maybe they can get the Care bears to ‘stop all crimes’..