At least 11 people including three minors, have been killed and 34 others were wounded by gun violence in Chicago last weekend. It’s not clear how many shooters, and how many dead or wounded were black. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that none of the shooters were policemen.
I remarked a few columns back that cities with the most violent protests (a.k.a., riots) raging against police brutality have all been governed by liberal Democrats for decades, if not generations. As often happens the Washington Post took a while to catch up with me. On June 25 Philip Bump wrote an article for the Post that contradicted my assertion. He pointed out that one of the 20 most violent cities, Jacksonville, Florida, had a Republican mayor, while two had non-partisan mayors. The 20 cities with the most violent deaths per 10,000 citizens had no Republican mayors, but one of them had a non-partisan mayor.
So, I’ve been successfully fact-checked. Apologies to everyone I misled.
Moving on, I’d thought of offering a $20 prize to a reader who identified the stupidest city in the United States. Then I thought better of that plan. There are too many choices and too many criteria. A sampling will show you how difficult it would be to pick a winner. Oakland, California’s mayor Libby Schaaf announced last week that a hate crime investigation was under way following a social media post which identified a noose at Lake Merritt Park. A police search found five ropes attached to trees. Ropes attached to tree! Symbols of racist terrorism! The horror!
Wait. Victor Sengbe told KGO-TV that the ropes were part of a rigging that he and his friends used as part of a larger swing system for exercise. He provided a video of the swing in use. He assured the public that It was really “a fun addition to the park that we tried to create,” Sengbe told the station, “It’s unfortunate that a genuine gesture of just wanting to have a good time got misinterpreted into something so heinous.”
Mayor Schaaf expressed no regrets about the misinterpretations. Officials must “start with the assumption that these are hate crimes…Intentions don’t matter when it comes to terrorizing the public,” she explained. “It is incumbent on all of us to know the actual history of racial violence, of terrorism, that a noose represents and that we as a city must remove these terrorizing symbols from the public view.” Nicholas Williams, the city’s director of parks recreation, loyally backed the mayor. It didn’t matter whether the ropes were meant to send a racist message, Williams said. “The symbolism of the rope hanging in the tree is malicious regardless of intent. It’s evil, and it symbolizes hatred.”
Mayor Libby Schaaf believes it’s incumbent on citizens to share her opinions and anxieties. She argues, disregarding centuries of legal principle, that motive or intent does not matter.
This remarkable woman was first elected in 2004. She started at 29% in the first round of Oakland’s Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) circus, reached 31% by the 11th round and was elected with almost 63% of the ballots after they were reshuffled in the 14th round. This isn’t goofy. It just sounds goofy. I’m sure Maine’s RCV advocate can explain how 29% of the voters can be turned into a solid ‘majority’ by shuffling and reshuffling decks of ballots.
The Schaaf showed up at a recent meeting of Democratic mayors to boast of Oakland’s plans to “replace the police” with “other forms of intervention, such as using trained mental health professionals.”
Having introduced police abolition into this column it is appropriate to consider Minneapolis, where on June 26 the city council voted 12 to 0 to dismantle the city’s police department. The draft of their abolition plan would create a Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention “which will have responsibility for public safety services prioritizing a holistic, public health-oriented approach.” If the voters approve their amendment to the city’s charter, the council will appoint a “non-law-enforcement experience in community safety services, including but not limited to public health and/or restorative justice approaches.”
The Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar opposes the amendment because it would leave power in the hands of the council and mayor’s office, which it said have failed for decades to control the police. It pleased me to see my point about the liberal Democrats unwillingness to take responsibility for the police they were elected to control, but I have serious doubts about their alternative proposal to place the department under the “community control” of an elected civilian council empowered to hire, fire, and prosecute officers.
Is a majority of Minneapolitans dumb enough to go along with this pandering? Some among them have been heard to object, but a New York Times article suggests the city’s population has a significant virtue-signaling booboisie element. Take Mitchell Erickson, for example. When two black teenagers cornered him outside his home, and demanded his car keys at gunpoint he got all confused and surrendered his house keys instead. The frustrated juveniles ran down the street and stole somebody else’s car.
Erickson didn’t want to call the police. He wanted to help the kids, but felt he had a right to contact the authorities since a gun was involved. He assured the NYT team that he would not, however, have testified against them. The evolution of his thinking over a couple of days led to a text message. “Been thinking more about it,” he wrote. “I regret calling the police. It was my instinct but I wish it hadn’t been. I put those boys in danger of death by calling the cops.”
Come November the vote on a new charter will tell us whether Minneapolis has enough Mitchell Ericksons to deserve a city council composed exclusively of metropolitan idiots.
A final word. Mitch appears to be one of those twits who believes that the police should be neutralized and also that guns should also be taken away from ordinary civilians. Who do those twits expect to send out to collect the guns?
John Frary of Farmington, the GOP candidate for U.S. Congress in 2008, is a retired history professor, an emeritus Board Member of Maine Taxpayers United, a Maine Citizen’s Coalition Board member, and publisher of FraryHomeCompanion.com. He can be reached at jfrary8070@aol.com.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
