Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar supports calls to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department: 'you can't really reform a department that is rotten to the root'

• Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar said Sunday she supported calls to dismantle and defund the Minneapolis Police Department.
• "This is our opportunity as a city to come together and have the conversation of what public safety looks like," the Democratic lawmaker told CNN's Jake Tapper.
• Omar said she expects the existing police force to be replaced, but it had to first be dismantled to allow a conversation to start.
• The Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to pursue a community-led system to replace the current police department.

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, said Sunday she supported calls to defund and dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department following the police killing of 46-year-old George Floyd on May 25.

"You can't really reform a department that is rotten to the root, what you can do is rebuild," Omar told Jake Tapper during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union."

Activists around the US have called for local law enforcement agencies to be defunded, dismantled, and rebuilt in another form following repeated instances at police brutality toward African Americans. The catalyst for the ongoing protests was the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old man who was killed after a white police officer was recorded kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes amid his calls that he couldn't breathe and after he lost consciousness.

That officer — Derek Chauvin — and three others have been fired from the Minneapolis Police Department and have faced charges for their involvement in Floyd's death, but protests have continued nationwide as activists call for broader reforms to US police forces.

"And so this is our opportunity as a city to come together and have the conversation of what public safety looks like," Omar continued. "Who enforces the most dangerous crimes that take place in our community? And just like San Francisco did, they're moving toward a process where there is a separation of the kind of crimes that solicit the help of officers and the kind of crimes that we should have someone else respond to."

—State of the Union (@CNNSotu) June 14, 2020

Not all have supported such proposals. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, for example, was booed by a group of protestors after he said he did not support the defunding of the police department. Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for president, has called for an increase in funding to reform police forces to reduce racism.

"Shame on you," protestors chanted toward the mayor. "Go home, Jacob, go home."

The Minneapolis City Council on Friday voted unanimously to pursue a community-led public safety system to replace the police department. According to the resolution, the city council will begin a year-long process involving "every willing community member in Minneapolis" to create a new model for public safety in the city.

Omar said in advocating for dismantling the city police force, she was also advocating for some other model to replace it.

"Nobody is saying that the community is not going to be kept safe," she said. "Nobody is saying crime will not be investigated. No one is saying that we are not going to have proper response when community members are in danger."

She added: "What we are saying is the current infrastructure that exists as policing in our city should not exist anymore, and we can't go about creating a different process with the same infrastructure in place."

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