#Minneapolis council members who voted to abolish cops get private security

Minneapolis City Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins speaks to a group gathered outside the Cup Foods, where George Floyd was killed in police custody.
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Three members of the Minneapolis City Council who voted to eliminate the local police force are being protected by a private security detail that costs taxpayers $4,500 a day.

News of the arrangement broke Friday, the same day that the council voted 12-0 to abolish the Minneapolis Police Department in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

“My concern is the large number of white nationalist(s) in our city and other threatening communications I’ve been receiving,” Councilmember Andrea Jenkins told Fox 9 News — adding that she had been asking for private security ever since she took office in 2018.

The city has spent $63,000 on rent-a-cops for Jenkins and fellow councilmembers Phillipe Cunningham and Alondra Cano during the last three weeks after the three said they had received threats.

But an MPD spokesperson said that no complaints of threats against them had been filed.

All three have pushed the movement to scrap city police force in favor of “peace officers” and a “holistic, public health-oriented approach” to law enforcement.