Law and government of Minneapolis, Minnesota
Encyclopedia
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
is the largest city
City
A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...
in the state of Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and the county seat
County seat
A county seat is an administrative center, or seat of government, for a county or civil parish. The term is primarily used in the United States....
of Hennepin County
Hennepin County, Minnesota
Hennepin County is a county located in the U.S. state of Minnesota, named in honor of the 17th-century explorer Father Louis Hennepin. As of 2010 the population was 1,152,425. Its county seat is Minneapolis. It is by far the most populous county in Minnesota; more than one in five Minnesotans live...
.
Neighborhoods
The city is divided into communities, each containing neighborhoods. For example, the Near NorthNear North, Minneapolis
Near North is a community on the north side of Minneapolis. Contained within it are six smaller neighborhoods. Near North is the primary area represented in the North Minneapolis Encyclopedia, InsideNorthside....
community is composed of the Hawthorne, Jordan
Jordan, Minneapolis
Jordan is a neighborhood in the Near North community in Minneapolis. Its boundaries are Lowry Avenue North to the north, Emerson Avenue North to the east, and West Broadway to the south and west.-External links:* *...
, Near North, Sumner-Glenwood
Sumner-Glenwood, Minneapolis
Sumner-Glenwood is the name of a small neighborhood in the Near North community of Minneapolis, MN. It is roughly contained by 15 city blocks bordered to the north by 11th Avenue N., to the south by Glenwood Avenue, to the east by I-94, and to the west by both Girard Terrace and Emerson Avenue N...
and Willard-Hay neighborhoods. Neighborhoods coordinate activities under the Neighborhood Revitalization Program. In some cases two or more neighborhoods act together under one organization. Some areas are commonly known by nicknames of business associations like Dinkytown, Downtown, Midtown
Midtown, Minneapolis
Midtown is a loosely-defined region in south Minneapolis, Minnesota. There are no hard-set boundaries to the midtown area, but it is generally agreed to include the area in the vicinity of Lake Street between Interstate 35W and Hiawatha Avenue...
and Uptown
Uptown, Minneapolis
Uptown is a popular commercial district in southwestern Minneapolis, Minnesota, centered at the Uptown Theater at the intersection of Hennepin Avenue and Lagoon Avenue. It has traditionally spanned the corners of four neighborhoods, Lowry Hill East, ECCO, CARAG and East Isles neighborhoods, within...
.
American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
. The first six projects involve Washington
Washington Avenue (Minneapolis)
Washington Avenue is a major thoroughfare in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Starting north of Lowry Avenue, the street runs straight south, with Interstate 94 running alongside it until just south of West Broadway, when the freeway turns to the west...
, Nicollet
Nicollet Avenue
Nicollet Avenue is a major street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and three of its suburbs. It passes through a number of locally well-known neighborhoods and districts, notably Eat Street in south Minneapolis and the traffic-restricted Nicollet Mall in the city's downtown.It began as a military road...
, Penn, Lowry, Central and Lyndale Avenues, and 18th, 40th and 46th Streets.
Government and politics
Minneapolis is a stronghold for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor PartyMinnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party
The Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party is a major political party in the state of Minnesota and the state affiliate of the Democratic Party. It was created on April 15, 1944, with the merger of the Minnesota Democratic Party and the Farmer–Labor Party...
(DFL), an affiliate of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
. The Minneapolis City Council
Minneapolis City Council
The Minneapolis City Council is the governing body of the City of Minneapolis. The City Council is composed of 13 single member districts, called wards. Barbara Johnson is president of the council. The council is dominated by members of the DFL Party with 12 members. The Green Party has one member...
holds the most power and represents the city's thirteen districts called wards. The council has twelve DFL members and one from the Green Party
Green Party of Minnesota
The Green Party of Minnesota is the fourth largest political party in Minnesota and was founded in 1994 on the Four Pillars of the Green Party: Ecological Wisdom, Social and Economic Justice, Grassroots Democracy, and Nonviolence and Peace...
. R.T. Rybak also of the DFL is the current mayor of Minneapolis. The office of mayor is relatively weak but has some power to appoint individuals such as the chief of police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
. Parks, taxation, and public housing are semi-independent boards and levy their own taxes and fees subject to Board of Estimate and Taxation limits.
Crime
The early years of the city were noted for crime. 150 brothels operated in hotels and candy stores earning the city $50,000 annually in 1900 dollars. Two historical figures are remembered in particular. Four-term mayor "Doc" Ames turned the Minneapolis Police DepartmentMinneapolis Police Department
The Minneapolis Police Department is the police department for the city of Minneapolis in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Formed in 1867, it is the second oldest police department in the state of Minnesota, after the Saint Paul Police Department . A short-lived Board of Police Commissioners existed...
into organized criminals
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
who directed swindlers, pickpockets and burglaries. Ames earned income from prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, 45% of the profit from a stacked game of poker, and $15,000 a year from slot machines. During Prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
, Kid Cann
Kid Cann
Isadore Blumenfeld , commonly known as Kid Cann, was a Jewish-American organized crime figure based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for over four decades and remains the most notorious mobster in the history of Minnesota...
processed what some estimates say was 600 gallons of liquor per day and by 1933 had made himself a nationally known bookmaker
Bookmaker
A bookmaker, or bookie, is an organization or a person that takes bets on sporting and other events at agreed upon odds.- Range of events :...
. Shortly after this time, depleted forests and a drop in the price of iron ore in northern Minnesota, loss of the seat as milling capital of the country to Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
, and cheap water transport combined into an economic downturn and drop in crime. Since 1950 the city lost 150,000 people and lost much of downtown to urban renewal and highway construction, resulting in a "moribund and peaceful" environment during the second half of the 20th century.
During the 1990s the murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
rate climbed. After 97 people died in 1995, people called the city "Murderapolis," a T-shirt slogan mentioned by The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
when reporting that Minneapolis had nearly 70% more murders per capita
Per capita
Per capita is a Latin prepositional phrase: per and capita . The phrase thus means "by heads" or "for each head", i.e. per individual or per person...
and had surpassed the annual number of homicides in New York City. Under police chief Robert Olson, Minneapolis imported a computerized New York City system known as CODEFOR or Computer Optimized Deployment Focused On Results that sent officers to high crime areas despite accusations of racial profiling. By 1998 the overall rate of major crime dropped by 16 percent, the department's largest one year improvement in two decades, and continued to drop for seven more years until 2005. The number of homicides increased three times during that period and rose to its highest in recent history in 2006. Politicians debate the causes and solutions, from improving on the lack of police officers caused by balancing the city's budget, to providing youths with alternatives to gangs and drugs, to helping families in poverty. For 2007, the city invested in public safety infrastructure, hired over forty new officers, and has a new police chief, Tim Dolan.
Minneapolis mayor R. T. Rybak
R. T. Rybak
Raymond Thomas Rybak, Jr. , known as R. T. Rybak, is the 46th and current mayor of the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the 2001 election Rybak defeated incumbent Sharon Sayles Belton by a margin of 65% to 35%; the widest margin in city history for a challenge to an incumbent...
is a member of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition
Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition
Mayors Against Illegal Guns is a coalition of over 600 mayors who support a number of gun control initiatives that the group calls "commonsense reforms" to fight illegal gun trafficking and gun violence in the United States...
, an organization formed in 2006 and co-chaired by New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
mayor Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg
Michael Rubens Bloomberg is the current Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, he is also the 12th-richest person in the United States...
and Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
mayor Thomas Menino
Thomas Menino
Thomas Michael "Tom" Menino is the mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, United States and the city's first Italian-American mayor...
.
List of foreign consulates in Minneapolis
The following list are countries that currently have Consulate offices in MinneapolisMinneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
:
In the United States, the consular network (rank in descending order: Consul-General, Consul, Vice-Consul, Honorary Consul)
(Consul General) - A consul general heads a consulate general and is a consul of the highest rank serving at a principal location and usually responsible for other consular offices within a country.
(Consulate) - The office of a Consul is termed a Consulate, and is usually subordinate to the state's main representation in that foreign country, nowadays usually an Embassy or High Commission usually in the capital city of the host nation. In the capital, the consulate may be a part of the embassy itself.
(Vice Consul
Vice Consul
A vice consul is a subordinate officer, authorized to exercise consular functions in some particular part of a district controlled by a consulate....
) - Vice consul is a subordinate officer, authorized to exercise consular functions in some particular part of a district controlled by a consulate.
(Honorary Consul) - Honorary consul may not be a citizen of the sending country, and may well combine the job with their own (often commercial) private activities, in which case they are usually given the title of honorary consul.
( Consul General ) - Canada Canada Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean... - Mexico Mexico The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of... - Norway Norway Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million... | ( Honorary Consul ) - Austria Austria Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the... - Belgium Belgium Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many... - Bolivia Bolivia Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America... - Costa Rica Costa Rica Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east.... - Czech Republic Czech Republic The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest.... - Denmark Denmark Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark... - Ecuador Ecuador Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border... - Finland Finland Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside... - France France The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France... - Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... - Guatemala Guatemala Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast... - Honduras Honduras Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize... - Iceland Iceland Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population... - Italy Italy Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and... - Japan Japan Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south... - Lithuania Lithuania Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark... - Malta Malta Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in... - Netherlands Netherlands The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders... - Romania Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea... - Slovak Republic - South Korea South Korea The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south... - Spain Spain Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula... - Sweden Sweden Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund.... - Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition.... - United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... |