In the news. . .

Stories you probably missed / Issue No. 2

Connecting the dots is a challenge in Minneapolis

Violent crime in Minneapolis rose by 21% last year from 2019, and experts consulted by the Minneapolis Star Tribune think they know one of the causes: racism.  

Weeks of “unrest” that followed the death of George Floyd while in police custody and the city’s long history of racism contributed, the newspaper quoted its sources.

“But most lay the blame largely on the pandemic, which has left many jobless and struggling to pay their bills, shuttered schools and worsened the lack of affordable housing,” the newspaper reported.

Minneapolis had 5,422 homicides, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults in 2020, up from 4,496 in 2019. To deal with the alarming increase in crime, the Minneapolis City Council voted to disband the city’s police department. To date, the force is down to 638 officers, 27.3% fewer than a year ago when it had 877. If there are no arrests, that means there is no crime, right?

City voters will consider a charter amendment to replace the Police Department with a new Public Safety Division.

Annals of Stupid Criminal Tricks

A South Side Chicago man called police because his victim pulled a gun on him after he stole the man’s flatbed tow truck. Unfortunately for the hapless criminal, the truck was equipped with GPS, and he was quickly apprehended.

Elliott Scott, 22, of the Grand Crossing neighborhood, called 911 to report the assault. “While police were on their way,” an assistant state’s attorney said at Scott’s bond hearing, “the defendant called 911 and said he stole a truck and he was upset because the owner pulled a gun on him.”

Chicago Police found the truck with Scott sitting in the driver’s seat. He was charged with aggravated possession of a stolen motor vehicle, misdemeanor theft, and driving on a suspended or revoked license. A judge released him with electronic monitoring because Mr. Scott has no criminal record, did not use a weapon, and, the judge noted, “called the police, apparently, upon himself.” – from a story at CWB Chicago.

Replacing police with safety ambassadors to reduce violence

Iowa City Police arrested a University of Iowa “safety ambassador” armed with a Glock 26 handgun after he got into an altercation with the staff of a local bar. Marquel Poole, 20, and some friends had been kicked out of the bar for what we assume was impolite behavior but refused to leave. He was charged with carrying a weapon while intoxicated, public intoxication, and being in a bar at 10 p.m. while underage. He faces up to three years in prison. from a story at KCJJ-AM 1630.

In San Francisco, safety ambassadors patrol certain neighborhoods to welcome visitors and guide tourists around the piles of human feces on the sidewalks. They also provide services to the “unhoused,” as the San Francisco Examiner describes the street people.

The ambassadors are expected to be an “extra set of eyes and ears in the neighborhood,” said Andrea Aiello, executive director for the Castro Community Benefit District, who perceptively noted “a lot of property crime in the neighborhood . . . and a feeling among shoppers and residents that the Castrol just didn’t feel as safe as it used to.” He complained that merchants were “having problems with people with untreated mental illness coming into the stores and being disruptive.”

San Francisco enjoyed increases of 49% in burglaries, 35% in auto theft, and 44% in arson from 2019 to 2020, thanks to the policies of former D.A. George Gascón. The Soros- and Black Lives Matter-funded Gascón has since moved on to Los Angeles County, where he has ended most cash bail, the death penalty and first-time misdemeanor prosecutions. – from a Breitbart story and other news reports.

A student columnist is fired for bad behavior

Tripp Grebe is a student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a former columnist for the Badger Herald, which claims fame as “the nation’s largest fully independent student newspaper.” He was fired for bad behavior.

The bad behavior? He wrote an opinion column supporting increased police pay and opposing police defunding, The College Fix reports. Initially the editor, a person called Samiha Bhushan, emailed Tripp that the editorial would not be published because it might “alienate” incoming freshmen. Then s/he said the story was poorly sourced. When that didn’t work – Tripp quoted 20 sources – the editor/editrix told Tripp he was being fired because he contacted a conservative students group called Young America’s Foundation with the news.

The university’s information control police got wind, contacted the nation’s largest fully independent student newspaper with some friendly advice, and that was the end of Mr. Grebe’s career as a student journalist.

“Because of your behavior after our refusal to publish, you can no longer write for the Herald,” Samiha Bhusan’s email said. 

There is one other thing that might shed light on this incident. “Additionally,” Samiha Bhushan’s  email said, “we just posted an editorial board supporting BLM and another article publicly endorsing two candidates who want to defund the police. As a result, your article would cause a lot of backlash that we cannot afford right now.” So much for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ view of free speech as the marketplace of ideas, which he famously described in Abrams v. United States.

Here is Grebe’s rejected editorial, published at The College Fix.

What self-government looks like in the Show Me State

The Newton County Commission in Missouri apparently studied the sanctuary city playbook and came up with its own, most assuredly not to be warmly welcomed by the America Last crowd. On Feb.3 the commission passed an ordinance that blocks federal enforcement of unconstitutional gun policies and authorizes the sheriff to arrest federal agents who try it. As The Blaze reports, the law makes it a criminal offense for federal agents to track or register firearms or ammunition in Missouri, and to attempt confiscating weapons from non-criminals. It also makes criminal any enforcement or co-operation or with federal agents. 

They were for the XL pipeline before they were against it

U.S. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and John Tester of Montana reversed themselves and voted to uphold Biden’s cancellation of the oil pipeline after first voting to overturn it. The Daily Signal reported that Tester and Manchin voted late Thursday for Sen. Steve Daines’ amendment to the CCP coronavirus relief bill that would have killed Biden’s Jan. 2 executive order that ends further construction of the pipeline. But in the dark of early morning both changed their vote.

Daines’ amendment initially passed 52-48, but after Manchin and Tester switched their votes, Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to uphold Biden’s order.

Short takes on the news

Why Members of Congress don’t complain about their paltry $174,000 salary. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s 2020 re-election campaign paid $2.9 million to her husband’s consulting firm, 78% of its total revenue, the Washington Free Beacon reports. That’s 56% of the campaign’s total spending. . . . Bank of America colludes with the federal government’s investigation of people suspected of taking part in the Jan. 6 Capitol disturbance because they used their BA credit cards to pay for lodging and food in the area, The New York Post reports. . . . The Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society claims Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave $500 million to election officials to violate election laws, The Epoch Times reports. . . . More than 200 academics from 20 UK universities are under investigation for inadvertently helping Communist China develop weapons of mass destruction, The Daily Mail reports. They face possible 20-year prison terms. . . . Biden quietly cancels Trump’s order that U.S. schools and colleges reveal all contacts and transactions with campus chapters of the Confucius Institute, a spy agency which the Chinese Community Party uses to collect intelligence on the U.S. . . . Tennessee State University is paying tax cheat Al Sharpton $48,000 to teach a one-semester political science course on social justice. Sharpton has been paying down millions in back federal and state taxes but still owes $698,741 to New York, the New York Post reports, while paying himself a $1,046,948 salary last year from his own charity.

Read Steve’s weekly Friday Letter at The News-Guardian.