2021 Minneapolis Question 2

2021 Minneapolis Question 2

November 2, 2021
Public Safety Ballot Measure
Results
Choice Votes % Yes 62,813 43.83% No 80,506 56.17% Total votes 143,319 100.00%
Yes:   70%–80%   60%–70%   50%–60% No:   50%–60%   60%–70%   70%–80%   80%–90%

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Ballot questions 2012 Amendment 1 Amendment 2
Minneapolis General elections 2005 2009 2013 2017 2021 Mayoral elections 2005 2009 2013 2017 2021 City Council elections 2005 2009 2013 2017 2021 2023 City ballot questions Question 2 (2021)
Saint Paul Mayoral elections 2001 2005 2009 2013 2017 2021
v t e

The police abolition movement gained momentum in the U.S. city of Minneapolis during protests of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and culminated in the failed Question 2 ballot measure in 2021 to replace the city's police department with a public safety department. The measure would have removed minimum staffing levels for sworn officers, renamed the Minneapolis Police Department as the Minneapolis Department of Public Safety, and shifted oversight of the new agency from the mayor's office to the city council.^[1] It required the support of 51 percent of voters in order to pass. In the Minneapolis municipal election held on November 2, 2021, the measure failed with 43.8 percent voting for it and 56.2 percent voting against it.^[2]

The ballot measure was part of the political movement in the aftermath of Floyd's murder by local political activists that sought to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with another system of public safety and divert its budget towards social services programs in the city, such as affordable housing, violence prevention, education, and food security. A public pledge by nine of the 13 elected members of the Minneapolis City Council on June 7, 2020, to "defund police" garnered significant attention for the police abolition movement, as well as considerable political backlash.^[3][4][5] The goals of the "defund police" pledge were never fully defined by city council members at the time of the pledge and the effort largely collapsed in the following months. A majority of Minneapolis city residents, including a large number of persons from the Black community, opposed a reduction in the size of the city's police force.^[6][7]

Public discussion in late 2020 about changing the city's policing policies came during a surge in violent crime, which disproportionately affected people of color in the city.^[8][7][9] At the end of 2020, city council shifted 4.5 percent of the city's annual police budget to violence prevention programs, but the incremental move fell well short of the sweeping changes demanded by activists and pledged by local lawmakers earlier in year.^[5][10] Though the city council committed to maintaining the same number of police officer positions, attrition and disability claims left the department with 200 fewer police officers, and city residents grew frustrated by the lack of a police presence and slower response times to 911 calls.^[11][12]

After the failed vote, public attention shifted away from ambitious police reform measures and towards crime reduction and more incremental reform strategies.^[13][14]