City(s) of Blood

"Our City of Lakes is now turning into a City of Blood thanks to an out of control crime issue the leaders refuse to confront."

For many years our fair city of Minneapolis was referred to as the City of Lakes. It was a wonderful city to visit or live in. Actually as a young lad, it was fun for me go to. My Mother would let me take the bus into town all by myself. Sure it was a bit riskier than hanging in the 'burbs, but not too much.

Then things started to change. All the years of "blue" leadership led to a worsening of crime. We got into the PC habit of turning the other cheek, turning a blind eye to crime. Then it got so bad in 1995, there was a record 95 murders in Minneapolis. That led to the New York Times writing an article about our city becoming "Murderapolis".

Then things started to settle down a bit. The police had a gang unit which started to nip things in the bud. They found out some of the gangs had ties to Detroit, Chicago, LA and even Mexico. However, that gang unit ran into some trouble and was disbanded in 2013. In 2015, the need for a new gang unit became painfully evident. So a new one was formed.

Even with this new gang unit, violent crime in Minneapolis is up for the 5th year in a row. While Mayor Betsy woos the "limousine liberal" class with her "Brag Minneapolis" campaign, the heart of the city continues to suffer. My personal feeling is when shot detectors had to be mounted on telephone poles, the city was losing the war on crime. Why? There should not be any shots in Minneapolis! Or any other city for that matter!

But there are shots, and lots of them. So what is happening? In 2014 there were 32 murders - which in my opinion are 32 too many. In 2015, there were 49 murders. That is quite a jump from 2014, and the most murders since 2006. And who are Mayor Betsy and the other Blue leaders of Minneapolis blaming? Gun owners. Too many guns on the street. Maybe we need stricter gun control in Minneapolis like Chicago has. In 2015, with some of the strictest gun control in the nation, Chicago only had 485 murders. And in January 2016 alone, there are already 53 murders in Chicago. If that pace keeps up, there will over 600 murders in Chicago alone this year.

I am torn on this next issue. I know that stop and frisk works. I also know that "broken window" policing works. However to bolster the power and authority of police go really get in and work this problem, well, that might be weakening our Fourth Amendment. When Rudy Giuliani had to get in and really clean up the mess in New York, the police were given a longer tether. And it worked. But abuses can happen. We have seen police shootings in Baltimore and Cleveland (just name a couple) that were suspect.

What is the answer? I sure wish I knew. In the Camelot type of America I would like to live in, any person can walk down any street, in any city, at any time of the day or night. And be perfectly safe. I know we can never obtain that, but I sure would like us to be closer to that than we are right now.