Council Member Andrew Johnson expressed outrage this weekend over what he feels was an overly casual police response to a North Side drive-by shooting.
Johnson wrote in a Facebook post, accompanied by a photo of a bullet casing (right), that he was helping build affordable housing in north Minneapolis Saturday when a drive-by shooting occurred a few homes away. He said in an interview that it occured at approximately 22nd Avenue and Colfax Avenue.
Police arrived six to eight minutes later, he said, in a slow-moving squad car without lights flashing.
"The officer who showed up chatted with some witnesses, then I asked why he was the only one there and why there didn't seem to be a strong sense of urgency," wrote Johnson, who was elected this fall to represent Minneapolis' south-easternmost ward.
"He said 'well, there were no victims.' Excuse me? Tell that to the grandma whose grandchildren had to 'hit the floor', little 3 and 4 year olds. Tell that to the man who was shot at. The neighbors in the crossfire," Johnson wrote. Another squad car showed up several minutes later, he said.
""If there was a drive-by shooting on my block, I would not have expected that response," Johnson elaborated in an interview.
"It's not a victimless crime," he said. "The whole community's a victim, the neighborhood's a victim. All those folks on the block who were there are victims. Bullets are flying around."
Johnson wrote that, by comparison, three squad cars arrived within 45 seconds when someone entered his yard in the Longfellow neighborhood late at night three years ago.
