The Minneapolis police force has evanesced in size from around 900 officers at the time of George Floyd’s death in 2020 to 585 today. The Star Tribune arrives late to the story in “Minneapolis police staffing levels reach historic lows amid struggle for recruitment, retention.” Subhead: “With 585 sworn officers, the city holds one of the lowest ratios of officers to citizens among many major American cities.” The story includes the handy table below:
How did this happen? We have the case of George Floyd, of course, but we also have the persistent undermining of law enforcement by Minnesota’s political establishment in general and Minneapolis’s in particular. See, for example, my City Journal essay “The anti-cop attorney general.” To this we can add the piling on of the Biden administration for good measure.
And we have my favorite, the institutional pillar of both the state and local DFL establishment in the Star Tribune itself. To take just one example, consider the contribution of reporter Reid Forgrave that I took up in “Emotional in Minneapolis” (commenting on Forgrave’s August 2020 story “Activists blame riots on lack of trust in Minneapolis police”).
On Power Line I have repeatedly asked who in his right mind would go to work for the Minneapolis police department. It turns out to be a good question. The answer is approximately no one.
The Star Tribune lies at the heart of the Minneapolis power structure and embodies the civic irresponsibility that has wrecked Minneapolis. Forgrave’s bald apologetics in story form presented one small example of the ills that have undermined, demoralized, and devastated Minneapolis law enforcement.
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