Videos Catch Violent Mobs Running Amok in Minneapolis
With a new video making the rounds showing the extent of brutal violence that takes place on the streets of downtown Minneapolis, police are facing an uphill battle to add more officers to stop the city’s crime spree.
“I think the core of the problem is a city council that is more concerned about being politically correct than making people safe,” Ken Sherman, owner of 7 Steakhouse and Sushi, said after a recent city council meeting during which council members were less than enthusiastic about adding officers, according to KARE.
As the council hems and haws, surveillance videos show what is taking place in Minneapolis. One video from the city’s Target Field Plaza shows a man getting punched, robbed and then run over with a bicycle.
“I don’t think I have ever seen anything like what I saw at Target Field,” Sherman said. It wasn’t clear exactly when the video was shot, but Sherman told KARE he thinks it was from August.
Check out the KARE report here: (Warning: The violence is graphic.)
Sherman noted that other surveillance videos have shown men being beaten severely in cell phone thefts.
“Look, stealing is one thing. But the level of viciousness goes far beyond I think anything any of us who are civil people imagine,” he told KARE.
Minneapolis has been best known in the news lately as the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose statements about everything from Israel to the 9/11 attacks have outraged millions of Americans.
But the crime wave is a different kind of story altogether.
Numbers show the extent of the problem, according to WCCO.
Police data show there have been 240 robberies in the First Precinct, which covers downtown Minneapolis, so far this year. That’s a 54 percent increase over last year at this time.
Further, police data show there were 23 robberies in one August week.
In response, police have arrested 16 people in connection with downtown robberies.
Police spokesman John Elder a loosely organized gang had been focusing on what he called “easy targets” — those who were drunk, walking alone, or preoccupied while on their phones, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
“We can very safely say these people were a driving force behind a lot of our crime downtown,” he said, noting that the arrests have already reduced crime numbers.
According to KARE, police Chief Medaria Arradondo wants to hire 400 more officers by 2025, but he and Mayor Jacob Frey thought they could get approval to hire only 14 more officers this year.
“We want officers out there on the street walking the beat, preventing some of these serious crimes before they take place to begin with,” Frey said.
But council member Steve Fletcher said he doubted that police need more officers and is afraid of what officers might do, voicing a concern that people could be hassled by police for loitering.
“Then we do need to careful about who we’re targeting. Because you’re basically criminalizing standing on the street,” Fletcher said.
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