Not everyone is for defunding the police. Especially those in communities that would be most affected.

See For Biden to Win, Listen to Minneapolis by Thomas L. Friedman. Excerpt:

"On one side are the super liberals on the Minneapolis City Council. They voted in June, after George Floyd’s death at the hands of the local police, to begin a process to remove the requirement of the City Charter to maintain a police department. It would be replaced with “a department of community safety and violence prevention,” with a director who would have “non-law enforcement experience in community safety services, including but not limited to public health and/or restorative justice approaches.” A division of “licensed peace officers” would answer to that director.

Among those opposing this change is a budding coalition of Black and white community leaders from North Minneapolis, the historical home of the Minneapolis Black community. (I was born in the Northside in 1953 when it was also the home of the Jewish community.) They are unnerved by the notion of dismantling the police force for a vague alternative at a time when their neighborhood has experienced a surge in gang shootings, lootings and drug dealing — all exacerbated by the pandemic, spiraling unemployment and demoralized police officers, who, after the Floyd killing, don’t always have the numbers or the will to show up.

On Aug. 18, this coalition — four Black and four white families from North Minneapolis — filed suit against the City Council and the mayor, Jacob Frey, to compel them to maintain the legal minimum of police officers on the Minneapolis force. The families contend that the Council’s actions have driven out too many police officers and curtailed the hiring of replacements, endangering their neighborhood.

Don’t get them wrong, the plaintiffs argue, they want thoughtful and deep police reform. But they want both a better police force and enough police officers to protect their kids and their streets — not either the present unreformed police or a disbanded police department and an uncertain replacement.

The Star Tribune of Minneapolis reported on Aug. 1 that since the killing of George Floyd in late May, the city’s police force is down at least 100 officers, more than 10 percent of the force, “straining department resources amid a wave of violence.” The department, the newspaper added, is budgeted for 888 officers this year, but could lose as much as a third of its work force by year’s end — through resignations, firings and medical leave for post-traumatic stress from the violence that followed Floyd’s death.

In an Aug. 24 op-ed in The Star Tribune, Sondra and Don Samuels, two of the Black plaintiffs, explained why they are suing. I know them both, and they are deeply involved in improving their Northside neighborhood. Sondra is the chief executive of the Northside Achievement Zone, and Don, her husband, is a former City Council member, former Minneapolis school board member and chief executive of Microgrants, a local nonprofit.

“We want radical police reform, where all citizens are treated as fully human by all cops, and not just by the ‘good ones’ we all know well,” they wrote. “We support the reform moves of the mayor and chief, which include community alternatives to policing that work hand-in-hand with our police force.”

The State Legislature, they also argued, “must change arbitration rules that too often demand bad cops be rehired after being fired for abusive policing.”

But, they added: “We will not sacrifice the safety of our community in the pursuit of the City Council’s lofty goals with no plan to back them up. In the months since George Floyd’s murder, we have seen an explosion in crime and homicides. Five of us live just a few houses apart. Four of us have children in our homes. Here’s what we’ve experienced on our block alone over the last two months:

“A mother’s car was shot up with eight bullets, with her infant on board. Another car was shot four times. A bullet went through the front door and a wall of our neighbor’s home. A woman was kicked and stomped within inches of her life in the middle of the street. The drug trade has been revived in two homes, to unprecedented levels, with conflicts resulting in fights and shootouts.”

Their neighbors, they warned, “are leaving their Northside homes to stay with relatives to keep their children safe. Neighbors have put their house up for sale and others are considering it for the first time.”

This is the bottom line: “By charter the Council must maintain a per capita force in the mid-700s of active duty officers. While this is not enough for our needs, we worry that the Council’s naïve intent is to take us well below this number. And we are not having it. If the leadership of the city cannot muster the wisdom to keep us safe, it must muster the compliance to obey the law that is designed to do so.”

Besides big stores, like Saks and Nordstrom, which were vandalized last week in downtown Minneapolis — after rumors spread that the police had shot a Black man, who, it turned out, had actually committed suicide — a slew of Northside businesses owned by people of color were looted or vandalized during the George Floyd protests, and many owners are now afraid to rebuild.

Think about the Northside Achievement Zone that Sondra runs. It’s working with parents, students and local partners in predominantly Black North Minneapolis to end multigenerational poverty through education and fostering family stability. It’s been a real engine for building healthy community and enabling Black Americans to realize their full potential. But it can’t work in chaos.

“We have to be able to say both that Black lives matter and that protests that turn violent cannot be allowed to tear up our city,” Sondra said to me."