NOVEMBER 3, 2021 – According to public information and insider observations, the heart of the Twin Cities metro area is a major crime zone. It’s not yet as bad as Minneapolis was 26 years ago, when with 97 shooting deaths, the city was known as “Murderapolis,” but the year isn’t over.
Moreover, in Minneapolis this year, automatic weapons have been involved in 78 shooting incidents in which nearly a thousand rounds were fired. This isn’t a positive trend given that in all of 2020, automatic weapon “activations” totaled five, with only 42 rounds fired.
Car-jackings, meanwhile, have increased 35% over last year’s high.
In St. Paul, downtown has become so crime-ridden, CEOs of the largest employers in the central business district wrote sharp appeals to mayor and council. Worse, charging out a crime has become problematic, given how critical witnesses have been threatened—even shot dead. The police department is so underfunded, officers no longer respond to lesser crimes—mere shoplifting, for example. The word is out: after robbing a store, the culprit needn’t run. No police will appear . . . even if called.
Where are we headed? Yesterday, Minneapolis voters wisely turned down a referendum replacing the traditional police department with a “public safety” department. No corresponding decision was on the ballot in St. Paul, but with the police chief having announced in frustration his retirement next June, pressure mounts to catch-up on police funding.
As it’s been said, however, “You can’t arrest and incarcerate your way out of a crime problem.” Alternatively stated, “Serious crime is only the tip of a very long spear.” Until society addresses the social and economic conditions that leave marginalized members with nothing to lose from violence, deeply rooted crime will persist.
The “answer” is multi-faceted. If police brutality has been a problem, we need to eliminate the brutality, not the police. Moreover, ideas advocated by the proponents of “public safety” should be folded into policy, even if a whole “department” of ideas without law enforcement isn’t realistic. Change is a long-term project, and it extends beyond local remedies.
Just as the “immigration crisis” is driven by living conditions in Central America, so is increased crime in the Twin Cities associated with worse conditions in Chicago, the nearest “big city” to Minneapolis/St. Paul. With Minnesota’s larger safety nets for the marginalized, many people in shot-up neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side migrate to the Twin Cities, where old habits die hard. Call the difference in safety nets another unintended consequence of 50 versions of “states rights.”
Apart from street crime, “law and order” must be applied consistently to all levels of society. If we say to street criminals, “Cuffs and slammer for you!” we must also fund the IRS to pursue high-end tax cheats and deploy more state troopers to nab drivers (and installing speed governors on their vehicles!) doing 90 in a 55 mph speed zone.
And maybe it’s (finally) time to hold liable, manufacturers of firearms and ammunition for the insane proliferation of gun-related homicides in our country, in the Wild West.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
