June 8, 2020 | 12:28pm
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar went beyond calls to defund the police following the death of George Floyd, instead calling for dismantling the Minneapolis Police Department because it is “rotten to the root.”
Omar, whose congressional district includes Minneapolis and its suburbs, recalled past efforts to reform police departments, to increase diversity training and to hire minority police chiefs, noting “all of that has failed.”
“Well, we’ve had a black president, we’ve had a Congressional Black Caucus, we’ve had black mayors, we’ve had black governors, and we’ve had black city councilmembers, we’ve had black police chiefs, yet we are still getting killed, brutalized, surveilled, mass incarcerated, and we are still having conversations with our children on how to have a conversation with the people that are supposed to protect and serve them so that those people don’t in return kill them,” Omar said during a rally in Minneapolis on Saturday, according to the Washington Sentinel. “I am with you, I am tired.”
Protesters and members of Black Lives Matter have chanted “defund the police” during the nationwide demonstrations over Floyd’s death on May 25.
“We need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. Because here’s the thing, there’s a cancer,” she said, continuing that amputation is needed so it doesn’t spread.
“The Minneapolis Police Department is rotten to the root, and so when we dismantle it, we get rid of that cancer, and we allow for something beautiful to rise, and that reimagining allows us to figure out what public safety looks like for us,” Omar, a first-term congresswoman, said.
Floyd died after a now-fired police officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes.
Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder.
