By Kevin D. Williamson
Crime, homeless encampments, riots, crime, loopy left-wing government, crime, litter, violent protests, imperious left-wing activists seeing off mainstream liberal Democrats, boarded-up shops downtown, a vicious social-media-driven politics of personal destruction, crime, crime, and crime, to say nothing of the crime — today’s Minneapolis is where Minnesota Nice turns into Minnesota Nasty.
Let’s talk about the crime first. Everybody does.
“We’re moving,” says one longtime resident of downtown Minneapolis. “Prior to COVID, I walked to work every day and walked home. You couldn’t pay me enough to do that now — and it’s only a mile. It’s a changed city.”
That certainly is the experience of the 553 people who were shot in Minneapolis last year, the highest casualty figure in a generation. Robberies, assaults, thefts, carjackings, and the like are up across the city. The city council voted to partly defund the police department — and then promptly hired a private security firm to protect its members. And then, in mid February, it voted to allocate millions of dollars to . . . hiring new police officers, although they’re going to start asking them whether they have sociology degrees.
Social justice is hell on the poor, reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
Violent crime climbed in almost every part of the city, but it continued to exact the heaviest toll in poorer neighborhoods. . . . On the North Side, the Fifth Ward saw violent crime climb 36 percent over the five-year average, with homicides, robberies and aggravated assaults like shootings and stabbings going up. The neighboring Fourth Ward to the north saw similar increases, with the exception of robberies, which fell 21 percent.
In south Minneapolis, the Sixth and Ninth Wards, which stretch from the edge of downtown to Powderhorn Park, also saw a steep increase in violence, particularly in the number of assaults and robberies. The Ninth Ward had 16 homicides in 2020, after never recording more than four in any of the previous five years.
Meanwhile, more affluent neighborhoods sometimes went weeks without a violent incident.
A three-agency task force trying to combat rampant carjackings in the Twin Cities made 46 arrests in three days, producing 69 felony charges. Most of those arrested were released almost immediately — the jails have been emptied out by COVID-19 precautions.
A Minneapolis television anchor waiting for a train was struck so hard in the head with a brick that he went partially blind, assaulted by a man with a lengthy arrest record who was enraged because he “perceived that victim was homosexual,” as the police report put it. In neighboring St. Paul, a 21-year-old transgender resident was stomped half to death by a mob of a dozen men (and a few women) in a convenience store after a minor traffic incident. Gay and lesbian Minneapolis residents report being particularly worried about the city’s crime — social justice is hard on them, too.
What the hell happened?
You can read the full story by Kevin D. Williamson here:
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/03/08/minneapolis-is-a-nice-city-no-longer/
