Minneapolis residents are pleading with the city council to tour their neighborhoods in person after a spike in violent crime that has left some feeling as though they live in a “war zone.”
Local Minneapolis news outlet, WCCO, went into Minneapolis neighborhoods directly affected by the recent uptick in gun violence and found that locals feel abandoned by the city council, which made defunding the Minneapolis Police Department a priority of its last legislative session.
“Honestly I really haven’t been sleeping right now I mean really I can’t. I hear every little thing that is going on police sirens like the helicopters the gun shooting everything,” resident Lisa Cruz told the network.
“You’re sleeping and all of a sudden you feel like you are in a war zone. I have four children and I’ll sleep with them all in my room because I am scared and I’m terrified something is going to happen to them,” she continued.
Cruz suggested that the Minneapolis City Council has all but ignored the problem and that none of the council members — including those who are pressing for Minneapolis to scrap its current law enforcement plan and reroute funds dedicated to crime control to more “community oriented” projects.
“Nobody sees what we’ve living nobody is feeling what we’re feeling because they’re not here,” Cruz told WCCO.
“Help us, come and see what’s going on and we’re really not getting any responses from the Mayor of city council we feel kind of alone right now,” she begged. “Come here, meet with us, face us, stay here for a weekend for the love of God just come here and say something to us the people that are freaking voting for you and depend on you to take care of us where are you show your face to us do something don’t just sit there and let your city go down to the ruins do something for us.”
Residents told WCCO that they do appreciate efforts the Minneapolis Police Department has made at addressing the spike in crime and seem to believe the City Council — which just yesterday demanded the same Minneapolis Police Department answer for the uptick in homicides — is to blame for the dangerous environment.
The city council, as The Daily Wire reported Tuesday, demanded the police answer for the surge in violence, even as city council members have spent the last several months demonizing law enforcement. City Council president, Lisa Bender, who led the effort to defund the police — an effort sidelined by the city’s Charter Commission over concerns the council had no real plan to handle crime once the police had been disbanded — even went so far as to accuse police officers of being “defiant,” and implied that Minneapolis cops were deliberately ignoring violence.
If Minneapolis residents feel less safe this summer than in previous years, they are not alone. According to an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, published Thursday, the “Minneapolis effect” as it is now being called, is a pervasive issue nationwide.
“The antipolice protests that began across the country around May 27 appear to have resulted in a decline in policing directed at gun violence, producing—perhaps unsurprisingly—an increase in shootings,” the WSJ noted. “Even as the demonstrations abated, what is commonly called “proactive” policing declined. Police department data show that street and vehicle stops in Minneapolis and Philadelphia dropped sharply in June. In Chicago and New York, arrests declined steeply. And in cities around the country, both law-enforcement and citizen reports suggest a general reluctance by officers to engage in hot-spot and other enforcement efforts that are most effective in deterring gun violence.”
Minneapolis residents will also get a visit this week from a member of the government, though not a member of their own local legislature. Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to host a “listening session” at a “Cops for Trump” event in the city next week.