[Mpls] A brutal death at 16th and Portland

[Gregory W. Reinhardt]

Yesterday, a young man died before my eyes.  I had found him on the stoop of his apartment building and it was readily apparent that he was a victim of a brutal assault.  I never knew him, never seen him in the neighborhood, and never had a reason to care about him. Yet, his death bothered me and I was uncomfortable with the fact that it did.  I am a police officer.  I have seen many people dead or dying. Some natural, a few accidental, and others have been the result suicidal violence. And like the young man I had found, many the victims of homicide. I’ve learned to never underestimate the amount of brutality people will inflict upon each other and their loved ones. I should be use to it. But I am not.  In this forum, there have been meaningful and comprehesive discussions about police brutality.  However, neither a single police department nor a government has a lock on brutality. It’s everywhere you look.  Brutality is not reserved for just the “streets”. It’s in our schools, worksites, and our very homes.  It does not creep around the corner. It lives and breeds within our families. Our sons and daughters, wives and partners, young and old are daily subjugated to brutal acts of violence.  Countless lives ruined because of sexual, emotional and/or physical abuse. Some events are reported, many are not, but the affects upon our community are, at times, generational.  As a community, how do we move beyond fixing blame to fixing the problem? How do we teach our children to be less brutal, less violent?  There are many mixed messages out there.  We revel in brutality. The WWF and the XFL are cartoonist examples of this glee.   As a city, Minneapolis is certainly safer than LA, and a little less safe than Nowthen. Brutal acts, while notable, do not touch everyone lives. Reported violent crime has seen significant reductions of nearly 40% in the last 5 years.    The one thing that we must never do is let violence and brutality become commonplace. It should always bother us.  Lt. Gregory W. Reinhardt/MPD