The Odds

I live in the Midway.

When people think of the Midway, they think urban blight – and they’re not wrong. .

South of Thomas, anyway. So far.

I’ve lived here a long, long time. I’ve been on the rollercoaster – the worst of the “Murderapolis” years (where Saint Paul was also beset with violent crime as well, although as usual to nowhere near the level of Minneapolis.

I’ve got no intention of going anywhere anytime soon.

And most of us live here without much incident.

And throughout the cities, most of us do. Some places it’s harder than others; I know people in North Minneapolis who’ve learned to tune out gunfire that’s not too close, sort of like infantrymen who ignore artillery shells that are passing overhead. Other places it’s harder for reasons that go beyond ambient crime; people stuck in the “George Floyd Autonomous Zone” or whatever they call it these days, or Powderhorn Park last year, where external forces change the neighborhood, against the neighbors will or not.

But for the most part, we live here, more or less like we did five or ten or 25 years ago. Maybe a little less retain, maybe a little more careful at stoplights – but life goes on, the changes slow enough, riots notwithstanding, not to raise any particular alarms.

But things are worse than they were five years ago; the numbers don’t lie. VIolent crime has skyrocketed. In Minneapolis, they were at 82 homicides so far this year. That was the total in 2016…

…for the entire state of Minnesota.

So life goes on – but all is not well, and all is not what it was five years ago, when Minneapolis had very low crime by urban standards, and carjacking was something you read about in Chicago. .We carry on – but we’re aware that property crime is a third above the national average; violent crime, double the national rate.

IShiny Happy People: bring it up because Ive been beset by a small plague of Shiny Happy People lately. Overwhelmingly young women in their late ’20s/early ’30s, visibly and vocally members of “progressive” Christian congregations, resisdents of third tier suburbs, who declare “Don’t believe all the apocalyptic hype; I’ve been to Minneapolis (or Saint Paul), a bunch, and it’s still pretty awesome”.

The message comes with an. implied “Tut tut, all you big angry white men; if lil’. ol’ me can take in a show, I don’t know what you’re jabbering about”.

I’ll meet ’em halfway. I’ve stopped bothering responding to hysterics from Orono and Landfall and their Mad Max fantasies.

But a quick note to the Shiny Happy People, the “progressive” evangelical tourists who drive in, proclaim, and drive back home.

On any given day in Minneapolis last year:

  • There were five armed robberies – six times the Minnesota average per capita.
  • There were 8-9 assaults. That’s almost triple the national rate, per capita. Note that this doesn’t include the rampant reports of gunfire that don’t produce a victim – each of those is an assault, although usually with. not complainant but a victim, either at North Memorial or out on the street.
  • There was a murder, on average, every 4.5 days. The rate is closer to every four days, so far this year.
  • There are ten burglaries
  • There are thirty reports of theft – everything from reported shoplifting to porch piracy.
  • There were ten car thefts.

That averages out to roughly 66 crimes per day- about 14 of them violent.

Spread that across a population of 400,000 people and your odds of being directly victimized by a crime of any kind is about 1/66 (and lower than that if you leave out the burglaries, which won’t apply to the Shiny Happy tourists).

Your odds of being involved in a violent crime on any given day in Minneapolis are about one in 2,666.

So you’re right; if you go to visit a congregation, or a restaurant or a coffee shop in the city, the odds that you’ll get back to Circle Pines unscathed are very, very high. Even in North Minneapolis, the odds favor you.

But for those of us who are here – many by choice, many not – the odds get worse every year. And the crimes that affect quality of life – the ones that make you focus on. personal security, make you leave a car length in front of you at traffic lights, make you run out to an Amazon drop location rather than get deliveries to your door, make you get your catalytic converters branded to help maybe prevent yet another petty but grossly expensive theft, or that make you wonder in the pit of the night “was that fireworks, or was that gunfire?”

Mind your tact, Shiny Happies. We don’t go home to Anoka when we’re done.

17 thoughts on “The Odds

  1. Dhimmi approval, whether tacit or active, of last years riots and burning and looting have had an effect every clear thinking adult would have known beforehand. I knew when the police station was surrendered that we were in for a long hot summer/fall.

    And there are lefties still who insist that there were no riots or burnings or lootings.*

    *”Looting” is now considered a racist word.

  2. In Minneapolis, they were at 82 homicides so far this year

    Probably a typo, but it’s 91 as of today.

  3. I propose a new test for neighorhood safety: the pistol comfort test.

    I lived two blocks off Selby and Dale in the late 1980’s, when the People’s Choice was still open and that entire area was shoulder-holster territory for a white boy. I carried a pistol to class every night and slept with it on the nightstand beside my bed. Never had to use it (praise God) but it was a comfort knowing it was there.

    I lived two blocks from Snelling and University in the late 90’s, when the blight was largely contained East of Lexington but there were occasional shootings near the sculpture park and in the Sherburne alley. I had a pistol on the nightstand but didn’t carry it around with me. Didn’t feel as if I needed to.

    I lived on the East side of Como Park nearly two decades. I left the pistol in the lockbox but it was unlocked every evening, re-locked each morning, except last year, during the riots, when I sat up all night with my Evil Black Rifle in case BLM made good on their threats to firebomb residential areas. We sold this June, when the noise drifting up from Maryland and Dale became undeniably gunfire and not fireworks, when the police sirens ran past our neighborhood day and night.

    Now I live in a suburb. I still hear sirens but it’s the ambulance hauling seniors from the old folks’ home to the local hospital. That’s a comforting sound, not a scary sound. I haven’t had the pistol out of the gun safe in two months.

    It about broke my wife’s heart to move – she loved that house, that yard and that neighborhood (we spent 19 years getting it fixed up just the way we liked it) – but we’re both FAR more relaxed living half-an-hour away from the old hood than when we were afraid to walk around the block at night.

    The pistol comfort test is an indirect measurement of how safe you feel living your ordinary life. Mine is so much better now that I left St. Paul.

    Next step: I may take Gov. Dayton’s advice and leave the state entirely, maybe somewhere with no state income tax. Warmer weather, lower crime, lower taxes, what’s not to love?

    How’s your pistol comfort level?

  4. I had a discussion about this with my kids, who are wanting to go on a summer mission trip to Baja California. I had to explain to them that the crime rate is as bad as Compton or Gary there, and they have to sleep there. When I would visit Compton or Gary, I went home well before the night got going. Big difference.

    There is also a big difference between going to the showplace of the region, and being in the surrounding neighborhoods. I will take the train through Gary and not get too nervous when I see the Genesis Center. Neighborhoods….yikes.

  5. How’s that “ranked choice voting” working out for y’all?
    Got a lot of Leftist radicals in office? ‘Cuz that is what ranked choice voting is intended to do.

  6. What are the odds? It’s hard to imagine two cities the magnitude of Minneapolis and St. Paul, both having pathetic, incompetent clowns as mayors at the same time.

  7. CRT advocates certainly act as though they are hiding something. They don’t want to answer questions, when they do, they are evasive.
    I doubt if “marxism” is a category in public school curiculae, but it is beyond dispute that marxism is the basis of much of history and economics as taught in the public school system.
    No one — no one — is beyond criticism, especially if their wages come from tax payers.
    CRT does go back to the late 70s & 80s. The theory was devised to explain why blacks did poorly in ostensibly race-neutral environments. It’s a whacky theory, there are many possible explanations why American blacks do not compete well with Asians and white Americans in race neutral environments. Choosing to interpret the socio-economic ranking with CRT is a choice, CRT can not be proven or disproven. CRT apologetics rely on anecdote, cherry-picked facts, and just-so stories. It is a shit theory, popular with educators not because it has been rigorously proven, but because it supports their radical political goals.

  8. Emery, given that the voters in both cities have voted reflexively Democratic for decades, the odds that both cities would have incompetent idiots in office at the same time is roughly 100%. The reason it’s apparently worse now is because the outside pressure towards the “progressive” side is even stronger than usual, but the mayors of these cities have been fools for at least as long as I’ve lived in Minnesota, and arguably a lot longer.

  9. I live in the country, with hardly any crime, and I always carry. I’m usually, but not always, packing when I am on one of my tractors, and the possibility of getting tractor jacked is zero.

    So far, no one has said: “is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me.”

    At 75 years of age, it’s a warm feeling of being at ease.

    I’ve always wanted to be in another war, but this time I don’t want to go half way around the world to do it. I want to have breakfast in the morning, pack a lunch and do the war thing, and be home before dark.

  10. AllenS one of the joys of having a tractor is that you can dig a deep hole in a hurry and fill it in even faster.
    In my neck of the woods the SSS* advice is: “if you have to bury something dig the hole 8′ down, throw in whatever you’re burying, push in a couple feet of dirt, throw in 4-6 old tires, then fill in the rest of the hole. That way if anyone does want to find out what you’re hiding they’ll dig down to the tires, call the DNR to come ticket you for improper disposal and then call it a day.”

    *SSS = Shoot, Shovel, Shut up

  11. All of my jeans have two consistent patterns of wear in them: the round outline of a Scoal can in the left front and the indistinct outline of a pocket holster in the right rear.

    I dont carry because I think I’ll be attacked though. I’m compensating.

  12. As long as we’re talking about carryon’ and shooting’, here’s an fyi. Classic Firearms has 1000 rounds of CCI Blazer, 115 grain 9mm center fire for $360.00.

  13. Pingback: Just Another Night In Uptown | Shot in the Dark

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