This blog has taken considerable issue with Ramsey County’s once-and-again sheriff, Bob Fletcher, on many issues.
But it’s hard to see this statement as much of anything but the inconvenient truth – at least as far as Mayor Carter is concerned:
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS this year’s sharp rise in gun-related deaths and injuries are mostly tied to an ongoing feud between two rival St. Paul street gangs.
“There is no doubt that the biggest part of this is connected to a longtime feud between two of the city’s more violent gangs,” said Fletcher. “We have to recognize what the problem is and the problem is we have a small gang war.”
Fletcher said more than a dozen of the record-setting shootings and killings can be linked to a murder as far back as 2008, and there are no indications the retaliatory shootings are going to end anytime soon.
In a city where the mayor is trying to re-christen street gangs as “street groups”, and bends over backward to not call the plague what it is but to fob it (per the “Don’t Waste a Crisis” commandment in the DFL’s playbook) off on the law-abiding gun owner and/or non-“street group” member, it’s hard to see this sort of statement on the part of an elected sheriff as the first salvo of a mayoral bid.
Clearly, the best way to stop young, minority gang-bangers in Saint Paul from shooting each other is to take away AR 15’s from middle aged suburban white guys.
If only we hadn’t disbanded the Metro Gang Strike Force. Sure, they beat up people and stole their stuff, but the so-called “victims” were gang members, some of them, or knew gang members, or at least looked like gang members. And it worked – the city was peaceful back then.
It might also help if the left wing nut clowncils didn’t side with their minions and inhibit the police from doing their jobs. The mantra that the police are oppressors doing the white man’s bidding, ain’t workin’ out so well for the party apparatchiks.
ain’t workin’ out so well for the party apparatchiks.
Nah, they’re not on University at 11PM, or riding the Vomit Comet, or trying to run a business in the city.
They and their key constituents got no skin in the game.
This is as good as it will ever get. The twin cities has finally reached parity with the larger leftist ruled cities they have always envied.
It’s a vibrant and diverse urban center.
Swiftee,
And don’t forget those $50,000 fountains in Minneapolis.
Another meeting with Mayor Carter this Tuesday night
If you look at this problem with a different eye than the mayor is suggest you should go.
Apparently at least one member of the Strib’s editorial board had an “experience” on the LRT, and an editorial decried the violence and – signs of the apocalypse – suggested that maybe listening to Republicans on the issue might not be a bad idea.
Is that ‘street group’ thing true, or is it hyperbole….
Such that Carter would have the motivation to deny the existence of street gangs, its not because of racial politics. Its because he’s mayor and his reelection depends on the ability to claim a peaceful city. This is standard stuff.
The police are in no way inhibited by lefties from doing their jobs properly.
It might be right to understand St. Paul’s crime as symptomatic of two things, those things being gangs and the train. As far as the train goes, fare enforcement would change the dynamics. At that point, the real hippy-dippiness of the train comes into focus, cuz thing is they built it explicitly without a meaningful fare enforcement regime… and there was a racial angle there.
Pingback: Beef | Shot in the Dark