In 2009 there were 19 homicides in Minneapolis. This was the smallest number since 1983, when there were 18, and less than a fifth of the record 97 homicides in 1995, when people started referring to our city as Murderapolis. Now we've had a horrifying start to 2010: five homicides, three in a single killing spree at a small grocery, in the first eight days of the year.
Back in the summer of 2005, Scott Johnson, one of the Power Line philosophers, wrote in the Weekly Standard that, thanks to one-party liberal rule, Minneapolis was returning to Murderapolis. It seemed an odd claim. There ended up being 49 homicides in our city that year. In the eight previous years, the highest number of homicides was 58 (in 1997 and 1998) and the lowest was 43 (in 2001). When David Brauer, a local journalist, pointed out that the facts of the case suggested that Johnson was hyperventilating, he replied thus. Follow the link only if you doubt the following characterization of Johnson's "argument": when discussing whether serious crime is out of control in Minneapolis, the actual number of serious crimes is irrelevant--you have to take account of what any observer (like him) purports to see with his own eyes.
R.T. Rybak was on the receiving end of Johnson's criticism. He was the mayor back in 2005, he was the mayor for all of 2009, and he is still the mayor today. Johnson is still shining reason's lamp on current events but, to my knowledge, has yet to address the events of the past week. When he does, we will learn that some member of the reality-based community is to blame for our sorrowful start to 2010.
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