We’ve all had a lot to think about during this past year. On top of COVID-19, much of our peaceful world came crushing down upon us in rapid succession in Minnesota with little or no time to gather our thoughts and more importantly, gather the facts surrounding the subsequent mayhem that has become a way of life in Minneapolis.
We remained silent when the Minneapolis Third Police Precinct was looted, set on fire and destroyed last May by anarchists who besieged our city. Concerned citizens were told, first by the mayor of Minneapolis that, “The symbolism of a building cannot outweigh the importance of life of our officers or the public.”
By the time the protests over the senseless death of George Floyd ended, over 1300 buildings were destroyed, causing an estimated $350 – $500 million in damages. Much of the city still hasn’t fully recovered and many businesses likely won’t rebuild. Thankfully the police officer responsible for the death of Mr. Floyd was convicted by a jury of his peers. While his civil trial remains to be held, his punishment thus far is a virtual life sentence, as well it should be.
And yet the lawlessness in Minneapolis has gotten worse – much worse since the tragic death of George Floyd. In the first eight months of 2021, over 60 murders have been committed in Minneapolis.
- The raging gun violence in the city has cost two innocent children their lives with several more shot and gravely wounded.
- Robberies and aggravated assaults are up over 30% from last year while ShotSpotter activation has increased over 74% over 2020.
- Don’t get us started talking about the violence associated with car jackings: with an average of 1.27 occurring every day in Minneapolis, car jackings have increased 222% over 2020.
And now Minneapolis officials tell us that the police will no longer be stopping drivers for minor traffic infractions. Amazingly, Minneapolis officials cited a Portland (you know, that city of law and order in Oregon) police initiative as their guide for not ticketing minor traffic violations. And all of this, plus the big ballot initiative to “defund the police” is because we have been told that our police force is responsible for many deaths of innocent Black men and that the police must be defunded and disbanded. Minneapolis elected officials apparently don’t believe that the police officers who bravely still show up and do their jobs every day are the only reason complete and total mayhem hasn’t finished the job the protestors started last year.
Part of the reason there is little push back on the efforts to “defund the police” is that only one side of this narrative makes front page headlines. Well-organized “progressive” groups have dominated the news on both the far-right and far-left sides of many debates today.
They would lead you to believe that the police are the enemy, when in fact, this is a horrible distortion of the truth. I recently read this remarkable article and had to share it with you. It sums up one of our major issues in this country today: “A remarkable aspect of today’s culture war debates, across a whole range of topics, is the fact that many massively popular positions bear no resemblance to measurable truth.”
The article continues: “It is simply not debatable that the claims of many popular modern movements are far removed from reality. BLM’s contentions about a near-genocide of African Americans directed by police may be the best example of this.
To give only two famous examples out of dozens, Black Trans Lives Matter activist Cherno Biko stated on prime-time television in 2015 that an innocent Black person is “murdered” by American police “ever 28 hours,” while star attorney Benjamin Crump hinted at an even higher total in a 2019 book he titled “Open Season: The Legalized Genocide of Colored People.”
“Almost every time the narrative of systemic racism is subjected to empirical analysis, it collapses.” This is especially true when considering several of the BLM narratives that have been widely disseminated in the past year. For example, “A well-run and large-N study from the Skeptic Research Center in February 2021 found that 54% of Americans who ‘identify as very liberal’ believe that the average number of unarmed Black men killed annually by U.S. police is somewhere between ‘about 1,000’ and ‘more than 10,000.’
But wait—there’s more: “A major empirical survey conducted by the political scientist Eric Kaufman in April 2021 found that 80% of African Americans and 60% of educated white liberals believe that more young Black men die annually at the hands of police than in car wrecks.”
The facts? “The actual number of unarmed Black men killed by police last year was 17.
Given the grave importance of this issue, it’s worth repeating that number – 17 – across the tens of millions of annual police-citizen interactions. As it turns out, about 1,000 people of all races, sexes, and ages are shot to death by on-duty police officers in a typical year (1,021 in 2020), and about 250 of those are identified as Black.”
And it’s not just the progressive left that is deceiving folks with false statistics that drive a popular (but often very wrong) narrative. Check out this article here.
