Too Effective

Two weeks ago, the NARN did the annual Patriot Picnic. We drew about 200 people to Boom Island park, across the Mississippi and upstream from downtown Minneapolis. It's a beautiful park, in a beautiful place.

Of course, last year we drew nearly 700 people to a park in Eden Prairie. (The year before, 85 people journeyed to Prescott, Wisconsin for the first event, not counting station staff).

I wondered - why the drop?

The weather played a role, no doubt. The Patriot Thermometer showed 102 degrees at 2:30PM - and it was in the upper nineties in the shade, where the audience sat. I don't care how hardy, or how conservative you are - that's downright unpleasant; that anyone would come to an outdoor event on such a day is, to say the least, flattering.

Of course, Boom Island is a bit remote for some of the Patriot's audience, who tend to be based in the GOP-leaning west and south 'burbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul (where, it goes without saying, our signal is the strongest). And actually finding the park is a bit of a feat; if you're not comfortable navigating the twisty-turny maze of Northeast Minneapolis, it can be a bit of a challenge. I used to live in Nordeast, and it took me a while.

But I think fact that we were in Amy Klobuchar's Minneapolis didn't help. The alternative media in the Twin Cities - especially Rambix - has done a great job of publicizing the criminal morass that plagues so much - too much - of Minneapolis.

Maybe too good a job.

Oh, don't get me wrong; Amy Klobuchar is a lousy County Attorney - although to be fair she's only continuing a catch-and-release system that was a national joke twenty years ago. When it comes to leading a city to clean itself up, R.T. Rybak is a nonentity - and it likely wouldn't matter if he weren't, given Minneapolis' weak-mayor, strong-council system that is dominated by special-interest activists, unless he were a Giuliani or Reagan-level leader, which he assuredly is not. And while the average Minneapolis cop on the street is as solidly conscientious as any, the MPD has been plagued with leadership that has reflected - or fled - the city's political leadership.

But one way or another Minneapolis' crime rate has zoomed ahead of that of the rest of Minnesota; despite the bleatings of establishment apologists, cuts in state aid to local police forces affected all of Minnesota relatively equally - but Minneapolis is alone in facing spiralling crime rates.

And yet.

R.T. Rybak caught a lot of flak for saying that most of Minneapolis' murder victims were involved in "high risk lifestyles". It was a dumb remark, sure to inflame those who remembered Tyesha Edwards (killed by a random shot from a piece of gang-banging scum while doing her homework in her family living room), or people killed while out for the evening on Block E or Uptown.

But Rybak was to an extent right; in America today, your odds of meeting a violent end are vastly higher if you're involved in gangs, the drug trade, or other such. If you're not, your odds are vanishingly low - enough so that when someone "beats" the odds, it rates publicity.

Crime in Minneapolis is booming. And yet in much of the city - the parts outside the Near North side, Phillips, and in the forties and above in South Minneapolis - things are fairly normal. Families live. Children play (except for the occasional unfortunate kid whose parents, gobsmacked by the hype, keep them in the house or yard; my block has one set of such unfortunates, three boys whose mother never lets them outside the yard despite the neighborhood's relatively very tranquil nature). People fire up the grill and crack a beer and mow the lawn in Minneapolis, the same as in Minneota or Minnetonka. In the whole inner city, people do...pretty much what they do everywhere else.

In fact, statistically the typical Patriot listener is much more likely to die from being T-boned at an intersection in Plymouth or Eden Prairie or Burnsville than at the wrong end of some gang-banger's gun.

On a statistical basis, what's most likely to get you killed in the next year: (A) living in Israel during the Intifada; (B) living in crime-ridden, inner-city Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh; or (C) living in the bucolic outer suburbs of those cities? The answer is overwhelmingly C. A recent study by University of Virginia professor William H. Lucy found that Americans' migration into sprawling outer suburbs is actually a huge cause of premature death. In the suburbs, you're less likely to be killed by a stranger--unless you count strangers driving cars. Residents of inner-city Houston, for example, face about a 1.5 in 10,000 chance of being killed in the coming year by either a murderous stranger or in an automobile accident. But in the Houston suburb of Montgomery County, residents are 50 percent more likely to die from one of those two causes because the incidence of automobile accidents is so much higher.

Sprawling, auto-dependent suburbs are unhealthy in other ways, too. In such an environment, almost no one walks--and for good reason. In 1999, 4,906 pedestrians died, 873 of them children under 14.

In 2003 - the most recent year available - 169 Minnesotans died of all violent causes. In that same year, 703 Minnesotans died in vehicle accidents.

But what about the children? In 2003, 28 children between 5 and 14 died of all accidental vehicular causes. None died of intentional violence.

Not surprisingly, metro areas marked by sprawling development and a high degree of auto dependency--Orlando, Tampa, West Palm Beach, and Memphis, among others--are the most dangerous regions to walk in.

Quibble about the article and the author if you want; do it elsewhere. Address the statistics first, though. Traffic deaths are measured by deaths per mile driven - and people in the 'burbs drive three times as much per capita than most people in the city. Present company excepted.

Crime in Minneapolis is a travesty; not only should Amy Klobuchar go, but there should be an accounting for the generations of single-party rule that have left the city such a magnet for crime.

But let's keep things in perspective, shall we? You can come to a party in northeast Minneapolis without your flak jacket.

(Although your handgun (and legal carry permit) are a good idea no matter where you are)

Posted by Mitch at August 2, 2006 06:00 AM | TrackBack