Remember that time, at band camp, in Minneapolis, when a criminal who overdosed on Fentanyl died in Police custody? Democrats applauded the response. Riots, looting, assault, and murder were met with calls of defunding cops. Minneapolis is a mess, but Democrats appear to have abandoned it.
Related: Black Leaders in Minneapolis are Pissed off The City Council Wants to Defund the Police
Are your local Democrats even talking about the crucible of their defund the cops’ marches? Noting? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Frye? Frye?
While the signs have been put away, the marches on ice, the shields, bats, and clubs relegated, and the rhetoric mothballed – mostly ‘cuz they think Biden won (that’ll change when he loses) Minneapolis is still a mess. Their narrative junky virtue-signaling democrat city council defunded their police. And guess what?
It all went sideways.
Crime went up. Black leaders were outraged. So, a few folks (eight was enough) sued the city. They said they had a right to more policing. But the lawyers for the city thought that’s crazy talk. Besides, if they were not victims of this supposed rise in crime, they had no standing to sue.
As it turns out, they do.
The City Charter has a formula that determines exactly how many cops they need on the streets. The City “must maintain 0.0017 police per resident.” The Council tried to add a referendum to wipe that provision out, but no dice. They are on the hook. As for standing,
The Samuels [whose ‘children can’t go outside right now as violent crimes including shootings] say they were offended when the city attorneys told the judge the lawsuit has no standing because none of the plaintiffs have been hit by gunfire.
“To get standing we need to take a bullet, right? We’ve seen our neighbors take bullets. We know the 20 year old, we know the six month old who’s in the car when her mom gets shot up,” Sondra Samuels said.
The City is about 100 officers shy of the charter requirement. After voting to defund, they stopped recruiting and training. Crime rose exponentially. And then there’s that niggling business about the City Charter.
[Judge] Anderson ruled city officials “have no authority to divert funds from the Minneapolis Police Department if they have not met their public duty to fund a police force of at least 0.0017 employees per resident.”
Anderson added that “misallocation of money that properly should fund a police force is an unlawful disbursement of funds.”
It sounds to me like plaintiffs will succeed but back to my opening argument. While Minneapolis swirled the drain, minority business destroyed, assault and murder spiked, not one Democrat to my recollection (at least in New Hampshire) were the least bit interested in flattening the crime curve.
None of them admitted that this policy was a bad idea. That it hurt the people they claimed it would help.
Here in New Hampshire, BLM and the NAACP pushed through some “reforms” which the governor embraced. A few are just dopey Marxist identity politics nonsense, but more police bodycams were a good idea. (I think they should extend that requirement to public school teachers but let’s not get off track.)
Democrats marched and protested and waved defund signs and ignored the violence against minorities now demanding the city protect their neighborhoods. And not a single Democrat can rise to march in their defense?
No one should be surprised by this, yet the identity politics victim groups still think the Left has their back.
They don’t, and they never did.
