What is it like to live in Minneapolis these days? Gunshots in the afternoon: this is a ring video filmed in a normal Minneapolis neighborhood. The resident who forwarded the video to City Council members and other city officials wrote:
Our area is under siege. Attached is a video of an incident that occurred on the *** block of *** Ave. South. This behavior happens daily. We’ve been begging for help but to no avail. Lives are at risk daily, our community is desperate for your help.
Thankfully, no children were hit by stray bullets this time–an increasingly common occurrence in Minneapolis. This resident’s City Council representative responded:
Are there any MPD mobile cameras on this street or intersections?
This is really awful, I’m painfully aware of the situation. Yesterday while at the park in the middle of the day we all heard the gun shots. On two separate nights this past weekend/Friday/Thursday I was woken up, as were my kids, at 2 am and midnight by rounds of gun fire and fireworks coming from Lake and 12th area.
While I can’t legally or publicly support barricading your street like the folks in East Phillips did, I would not blame neighbors for taking such action given the circumstances and the City’s inability to slow down much less stop the violence.
I suggest that you reach out to Police Chief Medaria Arradondo for a meeting, his staff person Natasha included here can work with you and the neighbors to find a time. …
That is what it has come to in a formerly above-average city: residents barricading their streets to try to keep out the criminal elements against which local authorities are apparently powerless.
Meanwhile, a city charter amendment to defund the Minneapolis Police Department is up for a vote in November, and current odds are that it will pass. Goodbye policemen, hello social workers, who are really helpful when the bullets start to fly. How is this possible? The mostly minority residents of the neighborhoods most devastated by crime are low-propensity voters, especially in off-year elections, while the DFL liberals in South Minneapolis whose neighborhoods are less at risk (although increasingly subject to break-ins and carjackings) robotically march to the polls to cast knee-jerk left-wing votes, regardless of the issues at stake. These are the people who vote for Ilhan Omar, among others.
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