Readers Write: Minneapolis

To the Minneapolis City Council: If I understand correctly, as a constituent and voter, you want me to:

Really? You have had a year and a half to come up with a plan, an outline, some suggestion as to how you want to remake Minneapolis. Nothing. Trust us, you say. Why would I? Have you seen the crime stats lately? Have you read or heard the new stories about the shootings, robberies, carjackings and assaults? Have you listened to messages or read e-mails from your constituents?

Your track record so far is abysmal. The violence "interrupters" were deployed initially only to be taken off the streets. Supposedly they're out there again doing something, but what might that be? You'd think if there were successes, you'd want to shout it from the rooftops.

You refused to work with or collaborate with the COPE crisis intervention program, which has experience and a track record, preferring instead to develop one from scratch. How's that going?

Trust you to develop and implement some of the most significant, life-impacting changes in my city given your dysfunction, lack of transparency, incompetence, ineffectiveness and silence in the wake of continued murders and chaos? I think not.

Jeanne Torma, Minneapolis

•••

The board knows that the current council would not be the group implementing the department of public safety, so any hypothetical plans the council released now could change completely once a new council is elected in November.

They know that "administrative authority to be consistent with other city departments" is language that's necessitated by the concurrent government structure ballot measure. The council proposed clearer language, then was forced to reconsider to acknowledge how one amendment depends on the other.

They know that our city government has operated with "14 bosses" for every department other than police and those departments all manage to function just fine.

If the Editorial Board opposes the amendment, by all means say so. But it should at least be willing to live up to ideas of transparency and honesty and tell readers what it is actually objecting to.

Mike Phillips, Minneapolis

From 1983 to 1988, I worked as a campus security guard at the University of Minnesota. I worked four eight-hour shifts a week. I carried a police band radio and heard all dispatches from the university Police Department. Remember, this was the 1980s. Crime was a national issue. Not once in the five years I worked as a security guard did I ever hear a dispatch for carjacking, aggravated assault or shots fired. About the worst thing I ever heard was kids smoking pot and people stealing bikes. That was it.

Now my son is at the U, and I get a text at least once a week from the university informing me of carjackings, aggravated assaults and shots fired. These crimes are happening right in the middle of Dinkytown.

I wrote the president of the university and of course she assured me that the campus really cares about the safety of their students. Yeah, right. Since I first contacted the president, my son's friend was robbed and shots were fired just across the street from Folwell Hall.

I think the people of Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs need to wake up. Minneapolis is well on its way to becoming the next Chicago or Detroit. That is not hyperbole, it is fact. Just look at what is happening at the U.

Chris Edwards, Edina

Multiple articles, editorials and letters in the Star Tribune and other media outlets have noted that morale is low within the Minneapolis Police Department. And I believe it. But many writers go on to suggest that the driving cause of the MPD's low morale is the ballot question that will ask Minneapolis voters to restructure our city's approach to public safety.

This latter conclusion seems highly unlikely, given that police morale is reportedly down across the country, far from the influence of this question. Isn't it more likely that this broad decline in police morale is the result of a decline in public confidence in police? And that this national decline in confidence in police is more the result of story after story of police misconduct?

And isn't it more likely that the loss of confidence in the MPD, by Minneapolitans, is primarily due to the memory of a major portion of our city to being burned and looted without resistance from the MPD?

John K. Trepp, Minneapolis

•••

This well intentioned but misguided referendum proposal may result in Minneapolis residents arming themselves or inviting in armed civilians to protect businesses, neighborhoods and public buildings. A new reality of vigilante or civilian security may expand in Minneapolis. Sound far-fetched? Not really, just look back to the demonstrations, arson, looting and rioting following George Floyd's killing. I drove and walked past businesses, apartment buildings and housing properties on Lake Street that were closed but had civilians sitting in chairs outside with shotguns, rifles and handguns. When I stopped to ask who they were and what they were doing, they said they had been invited by business owners and property owners to protect these properties since the police either couldn't or wouldn't provide such protection. This could increase dramatically if the Yes 4 Minneapolis referendum proposal is approved this November, since it will significantly weaken or even eliminate the capacity of Minneapolis police officers to respond to violence in our city. Meanwhile, at the same time as the Minneapolis police force would be weakened if this proposal is approved, we are dealing with a large increase in the number of gun permits issued in Hennepin County — 11,346 compared to 6,124 in 2019. According to these annual reports from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, there are more legally permitted guns in our city and county than ever before. And these reports do not include information on illegal guns on our streets.

Minneapolis is wasting too much money and too much vitriol dealing with this misguided proposal while not taking other, necessary steps to transform policing in our city.

David Gagne, Minneapolis

•••

I appreciate Star Tribune coverage of issues concerning money flowing into Minneapolis for this year's election. Now would be a good time for lawmakers, on both side of the aisle, to come together on legislation that would strengthen the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board. Its minuscule budget, and limited purview, leave municipal elections extremely vulnerable. When it comes to investigating campaign finance violations, the board only looks at state races. If something's off for municipal races, it falls on concerned citizens to take action. With no actual investigative authority, they must gather information and present their findings to the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH). From experience, I know one OAH judge might rule a postcard as campaign literature ... and then weeks and expenditures later a different OAH judge can suddenly decide it's not actually campaign literature, but over $10,000 of "anonymous pamphleteering" — worthy of First Amendment protection. The OAH also doesn't have investigative authority — it just considers the meager information that people can find.

Julie Risser, Edina