"In Minneapolis, Robert K. Olson, the police chief, has cut 118 officers from his 900-member force this year because much of the money for the city's police comes from the state, which is running a budget deficit. Chief Olson said he had lost another 81 police officers because President Bush had essentially eliminated a Clinton administration program that provided money to add 100,000 police around the country." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/07/national/07CRIM.html
Time will tell if this will have the effect it has had elsewhere. Once again, Minneapolis will have to test if our brainpower status makes us shrug off what makes others suffer. *************** John D. Sens, in his counterpoint, makes a very good case. If you want suburbanites to come downtown, either give them what they expect in the suburbs (free parking, easy drive) OR, more to the point, give them something they'll NEVER see in the suburbs, which I can't see happening downtown. City government should be looking at suburban development to see what NOT to do! *************** Guess renting in Minneapolis will get worse before it gets better. There were stories in the Saturday Star Tribune. One in the business section said that Minnesota was not economically so different from the nation as a whole. But the bad news is that the nation as a whole had another uptick in unemployment to 6.1 percent. Then the article in the Homes section said low interest rates were reducing the potential market of renters at the same time as 1,600 new apartments were coming on line (no building?) So there's an ever-expanding supply in a shrinking market. And what does Econ 101 tell us will happen when you have that combination? I guess not too many visionaries imagined this scenario in 1999 or 2000, did they. In some business dealings, people hedge against this sort of thing. I wonder how one would hedge in the rental business. Maybe get options on some houses to sell to former renters? Well, we know the gas prices change almost daily due to changes in the petroleum market. So I guess we also now have a volatile market in the rental business. More and more things that were a no-brainer for investment purposes suddenly are. Must be globalization because what else changed. But if a person owns a house and can hold ONTO it, suddenly it appreciates like nobody's business. Trouble is, you can't GET the wealth unless you want to join the homeless. But I guess as a hedge against a personal financial crisis, maybe it has some value. What really surprised me in "Homes" was how Minneapolis homes have now achieved parity in price with all those suburbs. If you're willing to get in the daily gridlock, you can now own a home in a suburb for no more than you'd pay intown. ************************ If you use a term like "criminality" and then tell me the "criminality of a neighborhood does not tell me the chances of getting assaulted, robbed, or murdered, you've told me that "criminality" is simply not an interesting concept. The ONLY reason to know that people are selling crack is if they are seriously increasing Part I offenses. If they are doing it in such a way to keep Part I offenses low, then I think it really doesn't matter. Those nonrecorded offenses are mostly about what some people like to do that others don't like them to do. I favor a society where my right to interfere with your life is minimal. *********************** I also think it truly stupid to restrict 2am closings to downtown. That implies downtown is somehow a dead place that needs extra help. Since when? I'd close them at 8pm, but since that's not gonna happen, then close them at the same time everywhere in Minneapolis. Spread the business and the danger around. ********************** The question was raised if we need 2 police in each squad car. But I think we're really stuck in a thinking box. Why do we need so many SQUAD cars. Why not a few foot police like in other countries. My friend Mark says in Japan, they have what look like phone boxes in every neighborhood with one officer assigned to it. I'm not saying swallow the idea whole, I'm just saying question the dominant paradigm. Bike cops is one unconventional thought. But it is only a beginning. Say you were trying to send backup to a crisis situation. Why couldnt a squad car heading there pick up another or even two or THREE officers on the way? After all, having a dozen CARS at the crime scene isn't the point. Having a dozen OFFICERS is what you want. The cars don't add to the force present. In fact, I could even see owning a small fleet of armored cars that would gather a team of uniforms to go to a scene, the sort of thing a SWAT team does now, but with larger applicability (a SWAT team by definition cannot be everywhere and is too expensive to replicate for every crime call). I think it is a sign of lazy minds that we send exactly the same response to every crime, only varying it by calling more of the same widget. Try thinking up new and more efficient tactics. The police force was invented in England on a military model. Both it and the military have changed. But I think more change is on the way. It is both wasteful and clumsy to have these two-person mini-teams that are too much for some things and not enough for others. *************** Maybe, and I'm being a bit fanciful now, we should pass an ordinance against kids dressing up like gang members. 8 out of every 4 kids you see that look like gang members are actually so. The rest are just trying to get "street cred" on the cheap. The schools, if they want, can keep that out (by requiring wearing uniforms). But on the street, the honest citizen has to look at these young thug wannabes (black or white or Hmong or even Latino) and ask "is this real or is it Memorex?". The actual level of danger is probably far below the appearance, but this wretched kid fashion that has held on much longer than fashions ever did in my youth has really made society creepy. ************ Jim Mork Cooper Neighborhood Longfellow Community In The Great and Wonderful City I Call Home, Minneapolis TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
