Like the Roman god Janus, our city has two faces, a beautiful World Cup-worthy face, and an ugly crime-ridden face.
On February 4 we basked in the afterglow of the Luminary Loppet, brought to us by hundreds of volunteers who create an annual festival of fire and ice on and around Lake of the Isles.
Two weeks later the Loppet Foundation hosted the Nordic World Cup in Wirth Park, and visitors from all over the world marveled at our winter wonderland of a city.
But on the intervening weekend roughly 45 serious crimes were reported in the city, most of them involving guns, many of them in the 5th Precinct and our Hill & Lake neighborhoods. And on the second day of the World Cup races we learned that two police officers and a firefighter paramedic had been shot to death in Burnsville.
Where is our city leadership?
It is past time for those on the City Council who have opposed higher pay for police officers to deal with that second face, and the reality of our public safety crisis.
Our police force is down by one-third, with roughly 580 officers now compared to 892 in 2018. Some 130 officers are eligible to retire in the next two years.
Recruitment efforts are falling short, and with good reason.
The starting pay for a Minneapolis police officer is roughly $71,000, ranked eighteenth statewide in the state’s largest city with a population of 430,000 people. Blaine, population 70,000, ranks first at $93,000. In Minneapolis, many officers work multiple shifts to make ends meet.
And as we’ve seen, the job is increasingly dangerous, with shootings of police officers in Minnesota rising from ten incidents in 2019 to 59 incidents in 2023. There is also the chance that a decision made in the blink of an eye will cost your career and earn you a prison sentence. (To be clear, I am not talking about the abhorrent racist behavior of some on the force, but I reject tarring them all with the same brush.)
As a society we need to address the lack of hope facing the young people who are committing these crimes. But as a city we need to keep all our residents and visitors — and police officers — safe. That is the number one job of local government.
Given the ideological drift of the current City Council toward a progressive agenda, how do we stand up for the majority of Minneapolitans who want pragmatic solutions to the serious problems facing our city?
Can we learn from Portland?
Maybe it’s time to create a lobby for common sense, modeled on People for Portland. Before you laugh, read on.
“We are … a voice for Port- landers to take action to rescue our broken city. Our goal is to push elected officials . . . to solve the biggest problems facing Portland: ending inhumane, unsanctioned public camping, restoring safety to our streets and neighborhoods, and cleaning up the trash and graffiti of our once beautiful city.”
There may be downsides, but it seems worth a deeper look.
Janus had one face focused on the past and one on the future. He presided over the beginning and the ending of conflict. May the force — and the city of Minneapolis — be with him!
