August 2, 2020

Minneapolis surrenders to the criminals

By Thomas Lifson

Residents of the Third Precinct area of Minneapolis have been told by their beleaguered police department:

“Be prepared to give up your cell phone and purse/wallet,” the police said in their email, a copy of which was obtained by Alpha News. The email said citizens should listen to criminals and “do as they say.”
The message warned that “some victims have been maced, dragged, assaulted, and some threatened with a gun.”

In essence, residents are being told to “close one’s eyes and think of Black Lives Matter,” it seems.
The City of Minneapolis has now lost its most basic responsibility, the preservation of civil order. The fundamental
compact between government and citizens is that in return for paying taxes, government protects us from marauders. There really is no point having a government if it takes the position that it cannot protect its constituents.
The fateful moment in this shameful surrender was when Mayor Jacob Frey ordered his police to vacate the Third Precinct building and let the mob loot it and burn it. That triggered the riots that destroyed a large swath of the commercial district along Lake Street, the major east-west artery in South Minneapolis. Frey now ranks as a historic villain in American history, a man whose name should connote cowardice in the same fashion as Benedict Arnold connotes treason.
It didn’t have to unfold this way. Detroit’s police chief James Craig is far wiser and more courageous than the contemptible Frey. He explained to Tucker Carlson why that city has had no riots and looting despite levels of black poverty far worse than in Minneapolis:

 “We don’t retreat here in Detroit,” Craig said. “We’re just not going to do it. … We weren’t giving up ground to the radicals. We just didn’t do it.”

Detroiters aren’t tolerating violence in their city either, and the community at large is in support of the department’s efforts, he said.

I was born and raised in Minneapolis, and am saddened to my core that my hometown has surrendered to the worst among us. But that sadness is combined with fury at the irresponsibility of Frey and the rest of the Democrats that run the city and the state of Minnesota. Progressivism is toxic when it controls the elective offices in any polity.