Minneapolis destroyed itself for BLM — was it worth it?

By Zachary Faria. 

"More than three years after George Floyd’s death at the hands of police, it is clear that Minneapolis allowed the Black Lives Matter movement to destroy it. Was it all really worth it?

Minneapolis’s police staffing shortage has now reached an all-time low, with just 585 officers on the job. For reference, the city had 888 officers in 2019 and 638 officers in early 2021. The city is now relying heavily on other police departments, and has an officer-to-resident ratio that is nearly half the national average. The decline isn’t slowing either, as the city has already lost 45 officers this year.

Unsurprisingly, crime still has not returned to pre-pandemic (before Floyd’s death) numbers. Violent crime is still up 11% compared to the five-year average before 2020, and the city’s 260 gunshot victims through the first eight months of the year is higher than any recorded number before 2020.

And all of this stems from the city being the launching point for Black Lives Matter’s resurgence. City leaders stood idly by as rioters burned down buildings and looted stores. They joined activists and some Democratic politicians in calling for the abolition of the city’s police department, going as far as to put it to a vote (which voters rejected). They made it clear that police officers in Minneapolis had no defenders among city leadership at the same time celebrities and Democratic politicians helped bail out rioters so they could continue to destroy the city.

All of this for a case of police misconduct that would have been prosecuted anyway. The officers who killed Floyd would have been fired, prosecuted, and convicted just the same as they have been. Minneapolis was sacrificed at the altar of the national Black Lives Matter movement, and as a result, crime has remained above normal levels and the police staffing shortage only grows worse.

Minneapolis residents and their leaders were used and discarded for a political movement just as Ferguson, Missouri, was before them. Activists and media crews rolled in, created havoc, left behind an unsustainable situation, and never thought twice about it. Minneapolis still hasn’t been able to recover three years later. So, again, was it all really worth it?"