Minnesota Supreme Court rules Minneapolis voters may decide on abolishing police department

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that voters in Minneapolis may decide on whether or not to abolish the police department in the upcoming municipal elections.

If passed, the measure would do away with the Minneapolis charter requirement to have a police department with a minimum level of staffing. Minneapolis would instead replace the police department with a public safety department "that employs a comprehensive public health approach."

"A case with this many motions, and this many ups and downs usually takes 12 months. There's little time in the course of this to feel exhilaration when we won or disappointment when we lost, because there was always more to do," said Terrance W. Moore, an attorney for Yes 4 Minneapolis. "We felt it was important to be resilient and follow the course of the law and the course of the process and, ugly as it was, the process worked."