Saying that the city’s current policing system could not be reformed, the council members stood before hundreds of people who gathered late in the day on a grassy hill, and signed a pledge to begin the process of taking apart the Police Department as it now exists.I don't see how this can possibly be done. It sounds like madness. There is some ray of rationality in "to begin the process" and "taking apart the Police Department as it now exists."
Maybe it's a slow process and they take it apart but they put it back together again in a form that's just different from the way it now exists. Maybe it's just a new way to say reform.
Council members said in interviews on Sunday that they did not have specific plans to announce for what a new public safety system for the city would look like. They promised to develop plans by working with the community, and said they would draw on past studies, consent decrees and reforms to policing across the nation and the world.So they have no plan or even a general idea of what it is, but they pledge to do it. I imagine a lot of Minneapolis people are alarmed and anxious but won't say too much about all this.
ADDED: "Dismantle" is an interesting word. Especially in this context, it makes me think of the famous essay title "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." And did you know that the original meaning of the word is "to divest of a mantle or cloak; to uncloak" (OED)? The extended meaning is "To render (fortifications, or the like) useless for their purpose; to pull down, take to pieces, destroy, raze."