Min­neapo­lis City Coun­cil mem­bers com­plained of ris­ing crime rates in the city and asked the city’s police chief what he is doing about it dur­ing a Tues­day meet­ing on police reform, months after the coun­cil pro­posed dis­man­tling the police department.Council mem­bers told police chief Medaria Arradon­do that their con­stituents have report­ed see­ing and hear­ing street rac­ing which some­times results in crash­es, day­light car­jack­ings, rob­beries, assaults and shoot­ings, accord­ing to an MPR News report.“Residents are ask­ing, ‘Where are the police’?” said new­ly elect­ed coun­cil mem­ber Jamal Osman who has been swamped by res­i­dent com­plaints that calls for police are going unanswered.“That is the only pub­lic safe­ty option they have at the moment. MPD. They rely on MPD. And they are say­ing they are nowhere to be seen,” Osman said.In the after­math of the police killing of George Floyd, the City Coun­cil vot­ed to remove the require­ment to main­tain a police depart­ment form the city char­ter — the first step in a longer process to change the char­ter. The council’s pro­pos­al to dis­man­tle the police depart­ment was set to be on the Novem­ber bal­lot until the Min­neapo­lis Char­ter Com­mis­sion vot­ed last month to take addi­tion­al time in review­ing the plan.The coun­cil pro­posed replac­ing the police depart­ment with a Depart­ment of Com­mu­ni­ty Safe­ty and Vio­lence Pre­ven­tion which would pro­vide a “holis­tic, pub­lic health-ori­ent­ed approach,” and a Divi­sion of Law Enforce­ment Services.While the coun­cil mem­bers float­ed the idea of rid­ding the city of its police depart­ment, the city has been plagued by months of high­er-than-usu­al crime.Violent crimes such as assaults, rob­beries and homi­cides as well as prop­er­ty crimes like bur­glar­ies and auto thefts are up com­pared to 2019, accord­ing to MPD crime data reviewed by MPR. More peo­ple have been killed in the city in the first nine months of this year than all of last year.The police depart­ment has added more offi­cers to patrol and inves­tiga­tive duties and cracked down on rob­beries, among oth­er mea­sures to fight the increase in crime, the police chief told the council.Council pres­i­dent Lisa Ben­der, who in June had said fear of dis­man­tling the police depart­ment comes from “a place of priv­i­lege,” accused offi­cers of being defi­ant in the Tues­day meet­ing, say­ing her con­stituents have said offi­cers have admit­ted that they’re delib­er­ate­ly not arrest­ing peo­ple who are com­mit­ting crimes. “This is not new,” Ben­der said. “But it is very con­cern­ing in the cur­rent con­text.” Arradon­do called the alle­ga­tions “trou­bling to hear,” and vowed to speak with com­man­ders and the heads of each precinct. “We need to make sure that our com­mu­ni­ties know that we are going to be there,” Arradon­do said. “That we’re going to be respon­sive. We’ve tak­en an oath to do that.”Council mem­bers said offi­cers have told res­i­dents that they are over­worked and under­staffed as around 100 offi­cers have left the depart­ment or tak­en leave since the begin­ning of 2020 — more than dou­ble the usu­al number.The vio­lence has not spared even areas of the city which are nor­mal­ly con­sid­ered safe, leav­ing con­stituents feel­ing “terrorized.”The depart­ment recent­ly arrest­ed two groups of teenagers that had been the source of crime in far south cen­tral Min­neapo­lis, where recent car­jack­ings and rob­beries of busi­ness­es have scared res­i­dents and busi­ness owners.Still, coun­cil mem­ber Phillipe Cun­ning­ham, who rep­re­sents the 4th Ward, where a 17-year-old was fatal­ly shot on Mon­day, dou­bled down on the council’s approach to crime fight­ing and pre­ven­tion, under­scor­ing the impor­tance, in his view, of insti­tut­ing pub­lic health-based approach­es to vio­lence pre­ven­tion. He sup­ports the devel­op­ment of a new com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty agency to replace the police depart­ment and crit­i­cized some of his fel­low coun­cil mem­bers for flip-flop­ping in light of the increase in crime.“What I am sort of flab­ber­gast­ed by right now is col­leagues, who a very short time ago were call­ing for abo­li­tion, are now sug­gest­ing we should be putting more resources and fund­ing into MPD,” Cun­ning­ham said.The coun­cil recent­ly divest­ed more than $1 mil­lion from the police bud­get to pay for “vio­lence inter­rupters” to inter­vene and defuse poten­tial­ly vio­lent confrontations.“If we have these sys­tems in place we are get­ting ahead of the vio­lence,” said Cun­ning­ham.  “That’s why I have advo­cat­ed so strong­ly for the vio­lence inter­rupters, because if they are inter­rupt­ing the vio­lence before the guns are being fired, then the MPD doesn’t have to respond to that violence.”