More Minneapolis voters say police force should not be reduced

More Minneapolis voters said in a poll released Saturday that the city’s police force should not be reduced.

The Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11 Minnesota Poll found that 44 percent of respondents said the size of the Minneapolis Police Department should not be decreased, compared to 40 percent of voters who said it should. Sixteen percent of voters were undecided.

Among Black participants, 50 percent said it should not be reduced, 35 percent said it should and 15 percent were unsure. 

Almost half of all voters said they thought making the police department smaller would negatively impact public safety, while about a quarter said it would positively affect it. Half of participants agreed that crime has increased in the city in the past few years.

But the poll showed majority support for shifting financial resources for the police to social service programming, like mental health, drug treatment or violence prevention programs, with 73 percent of all voters backing that. A total of 24 percent of Minneapolis residents said they were opposed to that. 

The poll determined that in the Black community, 76 percent of respondents agreed with transferring police funds to social services and 19 percent disagreed. 

Younger voters aged 18-34 were more open to both initiatives, with 88 percent saying police funding should be reallocated to social services and 61 percent saying the police department should be smaller. 

In comparison, 59 percent of older voters aged 65 and older said the funds should be redistributed, and 30 percent of them said the police force should be made smaller. 

The poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, Inc. surveyed 800 Minneapolis registered voters between Aug. 10 and 12. The margin of error amounted to 3.5 percentage points.

The poll surveyed a total of 500 Black registered voters between Aug. 6 and 12. The margin of error among Black voters was 4.5 percentage points. 

The data collection comes months after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis police custody, sparking protests across the city and the country. 

Floyd’s death initiated conversations and calls for police reform in the city, including the city council’s push to replace the police department with a different entity. The Minneapolis Charter Commission prevented the council’s measure from appearing on November’s ballot to look into it more, according to the Star Tribune.