Policing
July 12, 2020 — Steven Hayward
If you want to envision what the left has in mind for the future of urban policing after we defund the police and transform keeping order into a project for social workers, you can hardly do better than to check out this scene (which is totally racist) from the 1993 film Demolition Man. (Set in the distant future, this is the film where Sylvester Stallone is awaked from hibernation, and
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July 11, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
This week, demonstrators took to the streets of Anacostia, an area in Southeast Washington, D.C. where I was born, to protest the taking of black lives. But they weren’t protesting police misconduct. They were protesting the killing by gang members of an eleven year old boy and the lax policing of their neighborhood. The boy, Davon McNeal a budding football star, was gunned down as he was leaving a Fourth
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July 9, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Thanks to the death of George Floyd in police custody on May 25, Minneapolis has served as ground zero in the cultural revolution. All four officers on the scene have been terminated from the force and charged in Floyd’s death. Former Nation of Islam hustler and current Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has been assigned the lead in the prosecution of the officers. Yesterday one of the charged officers —
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July 7, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington, D.C. area has a large number of black immigrants from Africa. My impression (and it’s only an impression) is that these immigrants make up a considerable percentage of people who care for the elderly in this area, and are well represented among local taxi drivers. I gather they are well represented in certain other job categories too, but it is in these capacities that I encounter them. Do
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July 6, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Daniel Horowitz writes: Sadly, fireworks were not the only munitions shot over the July 4 weekend. Statues weren’t the only things felled by anarchists and criminals roaming free in the streets. This weekend was a bloody one across the country, with endless shootings in America’s cities, including New York City, which was considered the safest American city for a generation. Once again, African-American victims, including a number of young children,
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July 2, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Paul wrote earlier about the Minneapolis Effect. For those of us living in Minnesota, the effect is very real. But the Minnesota right is fighting back. My organization, Center of the American Experiment, has sponsored a poll that finds, among other things, that 85% of Minnesotans support law enforcement. We will soon begin a campaign to mobilize support behind law enforcement, including 38 billboards, radio ads, a social media campaign,
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July 2, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Heather Mac Donald documents the increase in violent crime that has accompanied the decrease in policing resulting from the denunciation, without evidence, of American police forces as racist, after an officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. She shows that the recent increase in violent crime has come with a speed and magnitude that makes the Ferguson effect — the spike that occurred after a police officer killed Michael Brown —
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June 30, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Over the weekend Minneapolis’s FOX 9 broke Tom Lyden’s story of the three Minneapolis city council members who have private security officers protecting them at city expense. Tom’s story is posted here. The video is below. The three council members are vocal proponents of substituting a Department of Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows for the Minneapolis Police Department. They all voted in favor of the ordinance advancing such a proposal last
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June 29, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Atlanta’s interim Police Chief Rodney Bryant was about to address the City Council on the unrest plaguing the city when a councilman informed Bryant: I was just notified there was a young man who was just shot and killed at 377 Westchester Boulevard. Can you get a unit out there? He’s been on the ground and there’s no police who have come. He’s dead already,
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June 29, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The city of Minneapolis is deep into the cultural revolution driving the Democratic Party ever further to the left. The city is run entirely by Democrats. Boy mayor Jacob Frey is a Democrat, as are 11 of 12 current members of the city council. The twelfth — Cam Gordon, Ward 2 — is a member of the Green Party. That’s diversity, Minneapolis style. The current council lineup is displayed here.
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June 26, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Few who are paying attention will be surprised that, in Maryland public schools, black students make up a disproportionate number of those arrested by police officers working in the schools. According to the Washington Post, black students make up 56 percent of those arrested (but only 34 percent of the student population), while white students make up only 28 percent (compared to 37 percent of the student population). Eight percent
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June 25, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
If you follow the news as presented by the mainstream media, you might well infer that America has lost its mind, at least insofar as policing is concerned. As depicted by the media, the current debate is between those who want to abolish the police and those who merely want to hamstring it. However, a new Rasmusssen poll indicates that, combined, these two positions — abolish and hamstring — have
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June 23, 2020 — John Hinderaker
If you want to know what it is like to live in Minneapolis, or any other city that has been ruined by liberal governance–Chicago, Baltimore, now Seattle–watch this Facebook Live video by a woman whose 12-year-old son was in the midst of football practice on a field in Minneapolis when a shootout between two criminal gangs broke out. You could say the scene was surreal, but surreal is the new
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June 22, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
In Minnesota, Democrats control the House side of the legislature, but Republicans control the Senate. Thus, if police “reform” is to be enacted, the two parties must agree. They don’t. Republicans are in favor of reform legislation. They back eleven steps including banning choke holds and requiring officers to stop colleagues from using excessive force. Those two measures alone, if followed, would have saved the life of George Floyd. But
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June 21, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Criminals apparently are getting a jump on the prospect of a cop-free Minneapolis. Last night, there was a “large gathering of people” on Hennepin Avenue just north of Lake Street. For reasons yet unknown, people within that crowd began shooting at one another. It sounds like a gang battle, but again, no details are yet known. Twelve people were shot, and at least one has died. This took place in
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June 20, 2020 — John Hinderaker
When I moved to Minneapolis in 1974, it was considered a model city. Prosperous, clean, progressive, low-crime. It has been declining ever since. After four decades of monopoly Democratic Party rule, Minneapolis has deteriorated beyond recognition. The George Floyd incident and nearly a week of rioting, looting and arson, which did around $500 million in damages–no one has any plan to rebuild the destruction–has brought Minneapolis’s decline to public attention.
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June 18, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Fulton County DA’s decision to charge officer Garrett Rolfe with murder struck me as highly dubious. It strikes Andy McCarthy as outrageous. Having read his article, I’m with Andy. The murder charge is “felony murder.” This is an effort to get around the difficulty of proving that Rolfe intended to kill Rayshard Brooks. As McCarthy explains, “the homicide theory of felony murder is that, while the offender does not
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