"Since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2014, police brutality, police violence, and police reform have emerged as central public policy concerns, and throughout that time, Minneapolis has been at the center of these conversations, both as a leader in progressive police reform and as a demonstration of the failure of those reforms. From solidarity protests with Ferguson in 2014, to an occupation of a police precinct following the killing of Jamar Clark in 2015, protests following the death of Justine Damond (Ruszczyk) in 2017, and the uprising following George Floyd's murder in 2020, activists in Minneapolis have long demanded that the city take measures to make Black Lives Matter. In 2020, these demands shifted from police reform and accountability toward police defunding and abolition, culminating in a deeply contested ballot initiative to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety-- a debate that has come to symbolize the rift in opinion about the role of policing that continues to divide the nation. The Minneapolis Reckoning uses Minneapolis as a case study to understand policing, police violence, and anti-police-violence activism in the twenty-first century. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2021, as well as detailed historical analyses of transformations in the Minneapolis Police Department from the Great Migration to the present, Michelle Phelps tells the complex story of elected officials, elite interests, activist organizers, and residents struggling to gain power over the police. Tracing the ways in which movements pushing for the transformation of policing have crashed into the local politics of race, inequality, and violence, both in the years leading up to the murder of George Floyd and in its aftermath, Phelps offers revealing lessons about the political struggle over policing and the power of social movements for racial justice to create change"-- Provided by publisher.

"Challenges to racialized policing, from early reform efforts to BLM protests and the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, the eruption of Black Lives Matter protests against police violence in 2014 spurred a wave of police reform. One of the places to embrace this reform was Minneapolis, Minnesota, a city long known for its liberal politics. Yet in May 2020, four of its officers murdered George Floyd. Fiery protests followed, marking the city as a national emblem for the failures of police reform. In response, members of the Minneapolis City Council pledged to "end" the Minneapolis Police Department. In The Minneapolis Reckoning, Michelle Phelps describes how Minneapolis arrived at the brink of police abolition. 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 efforts 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 threat of state violence-- create the complex politics of policing that thwart change. Phelps's account of struggles over what constitutes real accountability, justice, and safety in Minneapolis offers a vivid picture of the possibilities and limits of challenging police power today"-- Provided by publisher.