It has been six months since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The riots that followed kicked off a crime wave in the city that still has no end in sight. The Minneapolis City Council thinks the answer is less funding for the police and fewer officers.
Mayor Jacob Frey and the city’s police chief are currently sparring with members of the city council over their proposal to cut the city’s police budget by about $8 million. The two sides also disagree on the number of sworn officers in the city’s future, with the city council members wanting 130 fewer than Frey and Police Chief Medaria Arradondo are asking for.
Meanwhile, the city has seen a 537% increase in violent carjackings last month compared to November of 2019. The city had not actually started tracking violent carjackings until September, due to the surge in attacks, and had to apply the crime category to past years retroactively.
Violent crimes of all types have risen throughout the city since its summer riots, with the brunt of it coming in low-income neighborhoods. The Minnesota Star Tribune reports that 500 people have been shot in the city, the most in 15 years. The 79 homicides are the most since the city was dubbed “Murderapolis” by the New York Times in the mid-1990s.
This is the future that Minneapolis has courted through the city council’s foolish commitment to abolish the police and the activist protesters who swarmed the city to make that demand. Even state leaders such as Democratic Gov. Tim Walz refused to put their foot down as the city devolved into rioting and looting.
Meanwhile, celebrity legislator Rep. Ilhan Omar is still talking about how great it would be to defund the police. Omar, who joined the calls to abolish the Minneapolis Police Department, pushed back on Barrack Obama’s criticism of the “defund the police” mantra, calling it a “policy demand.”
It is anyone’s guess how fewer police officers running on less funding will stop this crime wave. But, much like Portland chose anarchy in its streets, Minneapolis has chosen its current predicament. No one forced the city to embrace the absurdity pushed by anti-police activists, and it’s up to Minneapolis leaders and residents to decide if they want to continue down that path.
