RIOTS FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME: Minneapolis City Councilman Carjacked in His Own District.
While I have long thought that the residents of [Minneapolis] had an outsized ego regarding its nearness to paradise, I have to admit that on many levels it punched above its weight. While not especially beautiful, and far less “cultured” than it believed, it has been a decent place to live until COVID hit.
Far too liberal for my taste, and often annoying, but what city isn’t? We should have moved to the suburbs, but we were younger and dumber then.
Since COVID and the George Floyd riots, the city has rapidly gone downhill, although there is still enough resistance that Omar Fateh lost his bid to oust Mayor Jacob Frey, meaning that the city is governed by a progressive rather than a radical.
Still, the city is struggling. Property crime is still off the charts, and while carjackings have been slowly declining, the decline has been from record levels. Until recently, carjackings were so rare that the police didn’t even bother to count them as separate crimes, and the state didn’t have a law specifically aimed at the crime. They were lumped in with theft and robbery. It was only in 2023 that the legislature created the crime of carjacking and made it a felony with severe sentences.
I’m not at all surprised that Osman has locked down replies to all of his tweets: The Minneapolis City Council is being irresponsible with public safety.
The decision by a majority of the Minneapolis City Council to strip critical funding from the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) is not only shortsighted — it’s a huge blow to the stability and safety of our community. The MPD is but one part of an entire public safety ecosystem overseen by the Office of Community Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette, and includes behavioral crisis response teams and neighborhood safety teams. While Mayor Jacob Frey’s public safety team, including Commissioner Barnette and MPD Chief Brian O’Hara, is committed to public safety reform with the goal of balancing and integrating all of these public safety resources to provide the right response from the right team at the right time and place, the City Council is undermining that goal.
By slashing vital recruitment budgets, Council Members Emily Koski, Elliott Payne, Robin Wonsley, Jeremiah Ellison, Jamal Osman, Katie Cashman, Jason Chavez, Aisha Chughtai and Aurin Chowdhury have effectively reversed the modest but tangible progress the MPD was making toward restoring its ranks and reforming its operations. These council members also diverted $1.8 million from the MPD along with $1.1 million in funds from coordinated citywide beyond policing work to ward-specific projects with no proven track record in handling the urgent public safety needs of Minneapolis.
—The Minnesota (nee: Minneapolis) Star-Tribune, December 19th, 2024. (Emphasis mine.)
(Classical reference in headline.)