The anti-police campaign in Minneapolis continues to bear evil fruit. Homicides in the city have skyrocketed:
But it isn’t just that. Serious crime in the cities has spread to the suburbs, with carjacking in particular becoming a plague. As a result, Minnesota, which has always been a low-crime state, now has more serious crimes per capita than the national average:
How bad has it gotten in Minneapolis? Bad enough that neighborhoods are now banding together to hire private security. The Lowry Hill neighborhood is a prosperous area not far from downtown. There have been so many break-ins, carjackings, etc., that the neighborhood has raised money to hire off-duty Minneapolis police officers to provide extra patrols. This effort was controversial, however: anti-police activists, including some on the City Council, didn’t think it was “fair” for some neighborhoods to be policed more than others, even at their own expense. Never mind that they are trying to do away with policing altogether.
One of the organizers of the Lowry Hill self-defense effort is Cam Winton, a Republican who ran for Mayor of Minneapolis in 2013. Last night, Winton was “swatted.” That is, someone called in a false report that a murder had taken place at his home:
About 5:45 p.m. Thursday, police and two EMS rigs were dispatched on a report of a shooting on the 1700 block of Logan Avenue South in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis MN, according to police dispatch audio.
As the squads were responding, the dispatcher indicated to police that the call had not come directly to 9–1–1, that it was transferred to the 9–1–1 call center from a 3–1–1 administrative phone line, the City of Minneapolis’ general information call center.
The dispatcher indicated that the person had said they [sic] had killed their [sic] mom.
Swatting has proved deadly in several instances. Here, it was combined with other harassment of Winton and his family:
We reached out to Winton for further comment on the incident and to ask whether he thinks he was specifically targeted for some reason. Winton provided the following response:
Speaking only for myself, not for any other person or entity: Whoever prank called 911 tonight to make a fake report of violent crime at my home address took other actions simultaneously to harass me and my family members, illustrating that this incident was targeted, not random. If some radical is upset that I stand for public safety, then I wear their disapproval as a badge of honor. To all fellow residents of the city who want peace and safety: let’s all strengthen our resolve to keep building the coalition that’s standing up for order and staring down disorder at every turn. Tonight’s events only strengthened my resolve to do my part.
I don’t pretend to know Cam well, but he is a good guy and a real hero as a civic activist. Minneapolis needs many more like him.
At least one other Minneapolis neighborhood is in the process of hiring private security guards (not off-duty police officers) to try to bring order to a chaotic situation.
Meanwhile, who swatted Cam Winton? I suppose there is an outside chance that it was a criminal, a burglar who doesn’t want to be impeded in his pursuit of loot. But far more likely it was a liberal anti-law enforcement activist, a BLM or Antifa type. These people want disorder and are in favor of crime. Hence the desire to disrupt any effort to provide for public safety.
That is the bizarre situation in which Minneapolis and a number of other cities find themselves.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.