What did they think would happen? "Staggering": Carjackings up 537% in Minneapolis for, er, some odd reason
Ho hum, just another couple of months in the reduced-policing utopia known as Minneapolis. With fewer police on the street, that must mean that residents in the city that made “abolish the police” official policy must be enjoying a more peaceful and free life, right? Well, some are — and the rest are paying for it:
The base story is at The Star Tribune.
Over the past two months, Minneapolis police have logged more than 125 carjackings in the city, a troubling surge that authorities had largely linked to small groups of marauding teens. But an increasing number of adults have been arrested in recent weeks for the same crime.
Within a one-hour period Saturday morning, police reported three separate carjackings in southeast Minneapolis, including one where an elderly woman was struck on the head. Such attacks are up 537% this month when compared with last November.
Carjacking was so rare in Minneapolis, that until this summer the PD didn't even see the need to track it separately from robbery or auto theft. But that changed, and they started tracking it in September of this year.
A retroactive count by analysts determined that Minneapolis has seen at least 375 carjackings this year — including 17 last week. That overall tally is more than three times higher than 2019.
The police spokesman seems shocked that civilization is breaking down.
“The numbers are staggering,” said police spokesman John Elder. “It defies all civility and any shred of common human decency.”
Life in a Blue City. As always it reminds me of Hobbes' State of War, in which life is nasty, brutish and short‡. Where the worst elements are not held in check by fear of repercussions. Because there are none. It also brings to mind "The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
After genuflecting to Saint George of the Floyd, some of the citizens of Minneapolis are not thrilled with the idea of fewer police patrolling the streets.
“I am unsettled by the acceptance that carjacking and attempted murder is being normalized as a new way of life in our city,” Higgins Victor wrote. “Police are gone. Criminals are emboldened. City leaders are not working toward common goals.”
This is deep blue Minneapolis, so even though people are afraid, there is no mention of Concealed Carry, which is legal in Minnesota for the law-abiding. Because they don't want to admit the conditions that they have created demand that they take personal responsibility for their safety. The cops can clearly do nothing.
Hat tip to Wirecutter at Knuckledraggin My Life Away
‡ Thomas Hobbes describes the situation in which the uncivilized elements of society are not held in check by fear of police power as being a State of War. (That is in The Leviathan.) Why do you think that Justice holds a sword?
Hereby it is manifest that, during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man. For ‘war’ consisteth not in battle only or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known, and therefore the notion of ‘time’ is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain but in an inclination thereto of many days together, so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is ‘peace.’
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time or war where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
I remember a British officer writing , " The main thing we have learned from " lessons learned " is that the reports on "lessons learned " are filed in the trash , and that there will be a desperate search for them the next time things go to hell."
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