Focus
By Mitch Berg
Apologists for the government of the City of Minneapolis have pivoted to talking about crime dropping, we are told, from the three year average.
There’s a reason for that, naturally:
Here’s the city crime dashboard as of today:
The three year average is indeed high – it includes the tail end of the Walz/Covid crime wave of 2021.
But over the past year, to date?
- Murder is up.
- Robbery is up – sharply.
You’ll note that Minneapolis is now at 32 non-negligent homicides for the year so far. That’s up from 30 homicides in 2016. For the whole year.
It’s a shame the city doesn’t include a ten-year average space. It’d be interesting to see how the DSA/DFL coalition that runs the city would spin that.
July 16th, 2024 at 11:13 am
If only those 32 people had not engaged in violent rhetoric leading to their demise. Because that’s what causes assassinations so why not ordinary murders?
July 16th, 2024 at 11:36 am
On another note, Kommandant Klink was doing a happy dance and spiking his football last year, when Minnesota was voted better for business than Texas. Wonder what he’s thinking now, since Texas leapfrogged over MN to number 3, leaving MN at 6. Still not sure what the criteria is for the rankings, but going back as far as the mid 80s, my customers were deriding MN as a terrible place to do business.
July 16th, 2024 at 11:48 am
Isn’t the weakness in using official numbers for any crime except murder is that many people don’t report them? I mean, why report a robbery if nothing happens anyway? So, if the official numbers show that “robbery is up – sharply”, might one assume that real numbers are up even more?
July 16th, 2024 at 12:18 pm
What jdm says. So imagine if your police force is about two hundred officers short of the legal requirement, and it’s hard to get an officer to come by to take a report. Hence we would expect that such a police force–we might call it the “Minneapolis Police Department”–would log murders relatively faithfully (since bodies are hard to ignore), but would show overly optimistic numbers for lesser crimes. This is especially the case since a 2017 Star-Tribune study found that 80% of sexual assault allegations were not getting a good basic investigation, about a quarter of those not even being assigned an investigator. Crime victims might just say “why bother?”.
Along those same lines, if crime were rising, but not being reported faithfully, we might expect that landowners would be putting up gates and barriers to prevent unwanted visitors, like drug dealers, from using their properties. And that’s what the deacons at my church just voted to do, and that’s what my employer did a few months ago.
July 16th, 2024 at 3:43 pm
bike.
I have two customers on the outskirts of Minneapolis, (26th and Lake) that put up ten foot chain link fences around their facilities, after the riots. Used to be able to just stop in, but now, have to call them to open the gate.
July 16th, 2024 at 4:39 pm
Crooks must be a little bit more ambitious up there. Down here in Rochester, it seems that if you don’t let them drive in, they are far less likely to bother you. Go figure.
(and yes, we’re holding off on the dragon’s teeth and land mines so far….the lawn mowing crew is relieved)
July 17th, 2024 at 6:27 am
The difference between a homicide and an aggravated assault is often determine by the response time and competence of the EMT’s and the ER room – and as illustrated by the recent assassination attempt on our future president, it is often measured in millimeters.
Way back when – Kansas City did a study on this and yes, the number of reported crimes are directly related to the number of police available to take reports.
Though bodies are hard to ignore, suffice it to say Minneapolis and everywhere else does manipulate homicide numbers.
July 17th, 2024 at 10:45 am
They gots to play the stats to their advantage as best they can.