Minnesota’s 5^th Congressional District’s spot in Congress has been filled by members of the Democratic Party since 1963. Cicely Davis is running for Congress to put an end to failed leadership in Minneapolis that raises a political celebrity on a platform of defunding police, overinflates taxes, fails businesses, and threatens public safety. Instead, she wants to restore success and unification to Minneapolis and surrounding areas and focus on the actual issues at hand.

Cicely Davis noticed that a lot of the Democratic Party here in Minneapolis focuses on looking at issues through the lens of identity politics instead of tackling larger issues and finding ways to tackle problems at the root of what is going on.

In an interview with Cicely Davis, she stated that, “I was looking for a way that I could also neutralize that (identity politics) and by also being female, by also being a woman of color, we lower and level the playing field to make this a contest of just issue and not about gas lighting issues, and that would be the basis of why I ran. I ran so that we can really address the list of issues in this district in particular because I absolutely deem Congressional District 5 and Minnesota responsible for defunding the police.”

In recent years, crime rates have significantly increased in the Twin Cities. Unfortunately for college students, this means that crime has also increased on the University of Minnesota Campus. In talking with Cicely Davis, I wanted to ask her about how she intends to make not only the University of Minnesota college campus safer, but also surrounding areas in the congressional district.

“When you take the prospective of being female today on a college campus in Minnesota in Congressional District 5, because we hold the city of Minneapolis as being the most diverse and populated in the entire state, we need police officers at a base line need in communities for civility for them to just do their duty, which is to keep the public and businesses safe. So it just runs as counter to common sense to make a decision that any one person, any one family, or any community needs to exist or try to exist without the presence of police. Under her (Ilhan Omar) leadership, she’s rendered our cities, she’s rendered our families, and she’s rendered businesses less safe. Police officers are simply needed. We need to be able to pick up the phone in times of urgency with regard to crime and knowingly feel confident that someone will arrive to protect our safety. So when you have a system and a leader and principalities that actually are against public safety, not rendering the people safe, then you have lawlessness and you have a city full of people who do not feel safe, you have businesses who do not feel confident so they will leave. And residents who can afford it will sell their homes and they will leave. Rendering this district, depleted of business, and depleted financially just simply isn’t our best. We need police officers. Every city, every district, every state needs police officers. It is a human requirement. These are baseline, human issues. When you pick up the phone in times of trouble, you need to know that local law enforcement will keep you safe. It’s just common sense.”

When asked her intentions to better public safety, she responded with, “We have an amendment in place, the Minneapolis City Council has an obligation to maintain a certain number of police officers. They had lost that, so I plan on holding them accountable to make sure they are working with the police chief to reenforce those numbers and get the numbers back up on our police force.”

“I am also going to see to it that there are incentives to bring back the emotion of community policing. We do have some establishment of that, but there needs to be a better checks and balance system. We need a community where people, particularly in Minneapolis, recognize people who are on the police force in a positive light and redefine patrolling. Police patrolling needs to be more than just rolling around in vehicles. They also need to be out of their vehicles, on the streets, on foot to fix the approachability of our police officers. There also needs to be a level of awareness for citizens as well. Citizens have a roll in this, this isn’t all on the police officers.”

“If we have mutual participation from both citizens and the MPD, then we get a safer community again. We get back to being the very best and what I like to refer to as the ‘Star of the North’ here in Minneapolis.”