Progressive Policies Driving Minneapolis Crime Wave

A spate of murders in Minneapolis last week has focused attention on the impact of the city’s progressive, lenient treatment of juvenile and habitual adult offenders. Audrey Conklin of Fox News reports that, beginning on April 29, there were six shootings over 24 hours which left six people dead and five others injured. The city has been the epicenter of anti-police policies since the 2020 George Floyd riots with violent crime and murder up dramatically since 2019, while crime has declined nationally. “Minneapolis, sadly, is experiencing the tragic consequences of years of anti-police rhetoric and failed leadership from the Minneapolis State Council and the lunatic county prosecutor of Hennepin County in which Minneapolis sits,” said Jim Schultz, 2022 candidate for state Attorney General and president of the Minnesota Private Business Council. “When city officials demonize law enforcement and slash police budgets and refuse to prosecute the criminals, the results are bought on the streets.”

According to Alpha News, murders in Minneapolis increased last year along with assault, robbery and gun crimes. Over the past five years homicide has increased by almost 60%.  Minnesota’s former House Majority Leader, Democrat Ryan Winker noted that the violent offenders in Minneapolis are getting younger and that state policies need to change to address this. He cited a report indicating that the increase in juvenile crime parallels an increase in chronic absenteeism from schools, with more than half of students absent for at least 10% of the school year.  Another contributor to high crime in Minneapolis is the dramatic shortage of police officers. As Schultz noted “We still have half the police officers that we need. Morale is shattered and criminals feel emboldened,” after years of political support for the defund-the-police movement.

In the face of rising crime and violence the Hennepin County District Attorney Mary Moriarty, whose campaign was bankrolled by progressive billionaire George Soros, has been dismissing cases and cutting lenient plea bargains with repeat violent criminals. One example is James Ortley, the habitual felon arrested for participating in the April 29th shooting spree. Over the past 15 years, Ortley has been charged with drunk driving, several assaults, illegal possession of firearms, the 2009 shooting of a 16-year-old girl during a robbery and, a 2021 barroom stabbing. Ortley was sentenced to over three years in prison for the stabbing but a judge later stayed his sentence. He was free on the streets last February when he was involved in a crime spree which left a man shot through his bedroom widow, but District Attorney Moriarty dropped the charges.

The DA is also implementing a race-based prosecution policy called “Negotiations Policy for Cases Involving Adult Defendants.”  This policy requires prosecutors to offer more favorable plea deals to minority defendants than to non-minority defendants stating that  “racial identity . . . should be part of the overall analysis” and that prosecutors “should be identifying and addressing racial disparities at decision points, as appropriate.” This sounds a lot like giving favorable treatment to certain defendants based upon their race, which violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Last Sunday the Justice Department announced the launch of an investigation into whether the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office “engaged in a pattern of practice of depriving persons of rights, privileges or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States . . . . In particular, the investigation will focus on whether HCAO engages in illegal consideration of race in its prosecutorial decision-making.”  The head of the department’s Civil Rights Division, California attorney Harmeet Dhillon is spearheading this investigation.