A conversation with Michelle Phelps, author of The Minneapolis Reckoning, a book that puts the murder of George Floyd in the context of generations of Minneapolis police violence and abuse -- and activist efforts at both reform and abolition. We talk about why she felt compelled to write the book; how this project that began at the height of the BLM movement, and activism in response to police killings in the Twin Cities, became something different after Floyd's murder; how Minneapolis has grappled with our "ambivalence" and conflicted feelings about the future of police and public safety; how to understand the politics that led to the Minneapolis City Council declaring in 2021 they would dismantle MPD; how resistance to a new kind of public safety was more a generational divide than a racial one; how the defeat of the public safety charter amendment in 2021 wasn't the end of the story; how the killing of MPD officer Jamal Mitchell, four years and five days after Floyd's murder, is already affecting police politics; and how a rise in community violence, victimization and crime politics threatens to overshadow efforts to address police violence.

Buy the book: https://moonpalacebooks.com/item/6CvPe_CEu0Zi5VUiASXa9Q\

From the publisher:

"Phelps explains that the council’s pledge did not come out of a single moment of rage, but decades of organizing efforts. Yet the politics of transforming policing were more complex than they first appeared. Despite public outrage over police brutality, the council’s initiatives faced stiff opposition, including by Black community leaders who called for more police protection against crime as well as police reform. In 2021, voters ultimately rejected the ballot measure to end the department. Yet change continued on the ground, as state and federal investigations pushed police reform and city leaders and residents began to develop alternative models of safety.

"The Minneapolis Reckoning shows how the dualized meaning of the police—as both the promise of state protection and the threat of state violence—creates the complex politics of policing that thwart change. Phelps’s account of the city's struggles over what constitutes real accountability, justice, and safety offers a vivid picture of the possibilities and limits of challenging police power today."