[Mpls] Some "cost efficiant" suggestions for addressing crime in Minneapolis

[JIM GRAHAM]

Cost efficient means of addressing Minneapolis' Crime Crisis.  A few suggestions: 1.  Drug and Crime Task Force. Multiple resources from multiple sources. Re-start it!   2. ILLEGAL GUN BUY BACK PROGRAM - Give $100 for any anonymous tip that leads to the recovery of an illegal handgun. $150.00 for narcotics on a person. If the recovery accounts for a conviction for possessing an illegal handgun or narcotics give an extra $50.00.  (Think of the efficiency. For a measly 150 thousand dollars we can remove a THOUSAND illegal guns and drug criminals)    3. Create a call line where a person calls an anonymous tip on illegal drugs and illegal guns.  Assign a code that can be used to anonymously pick up the reward for the tip on illegal guns and drugs. No questions asked if correct information leads to recovery or conviction. Have the TV stations run the codes that result in "WINS" like they do the state lottery.  (The "News" shows might as well do some good while they are assisting the State in taxing the Mathematically challenged)   4. Create a "Drug Crime Institute" where non-Minneapolis officers can come to do on the job training on drug crime interdiction methods.  (This includes actually analyzing better, more effective methods. Creating such professional techniques and teaching them would also create a higher level of professionalism among our own Minneapolis' Officers.) They pay us "Training" dollars for this.   5. Every Neighborhood should identify its top ten (or twenty) worst offenders and pre write "Community Impact Statements" for them.  That way the County Attorney has the name flagged and when coming to Court to even charge already has the "Impact Statement" in hand. As the judges like to say in the movies, "Ignorance is NO excuse". No excuse for Hennepin County Judges either!   6.  Start a follow up on every one of the "most wanted" people.  Keep box scores for judges when dealing with these more frequent and flagrant offenders. Publish it on a web site.  So voters KNOW how a judge is doing come election time.   7. Start abiding by the City's own ordinances on concentrating supportive housing and poverty.   9. Most important cost effective means to better public safety:  Stop all the talk about making a silly political appointment of someone like Lucy Gerold and appoint a REAL Police Professional to be the next Chief of Police.  Either appoint a REAL "Police person" like Sharon Lubinski, or go out of the Department and appoint a real professional that the department's officers and the public can and will respect.  This talk of a fluff appointment of Gerald has both the public and the "Street Cops" worried about the future.  The public and the officers need that confidence NOW!   The last suggestion is one that may be the quickest to implement.  Robert Olson needs to be replaced with someone who will show leadership NOW.  We need someone with a history of POLICE and PUBLIC SAFETY work; not one of political organizing that the "Safe" Teams were suspected of before they were assigned and controlled by the Precinct commanders.    Crime is at a crisis point NOW in "Impacted Communities".  We need the judges to begin to insist that both they (the Judges) and the criminals take responsibility for their individual actions.  We need Mayor Rybak to immediately make clear publicly that the appointment of the new Chief will not be political fluff, but a serious effort to address this crisis.  Leadership is determined by actions in a crisis.  We need a little leadership. There IS a crisis.   For CM's that have a problem with budgeting for the public safety benefit of "Impacted Neighborhoods", possibly we need them to don a "vest" and do some undercover buying of drugs.  Who would like to bet me that these CM's, who appear on television regularly, couldn’t go to 26th and Knox, or Park and Franklin, and make a quick buy?  Think about it CM's, such demonstrated guts and leadership would be great PR for the next election.  If CM's actually did such sting operations I am sure we would have a few different priorities at City Hall.   >"Last night in response to yet another murder in Phillips, Council Member Dean Zimmermann told television reporters that neighbors have to come together to solve the problem, and that neighbors need to make sure that kids in the neighborhood are getting the parenting they need.  Good thoughts, but hardly enough to stem the current crime wave!"<   Come on Dean, of course we would have a better world and less crime if the parents of 'Gangbangers" HAD done the parenting they needed.  And if should, would and could were candy and nuts we would all have a Merry Christmas.  Sure we need to demand that those parents be better for the future.  But the crisis is NOW!  We should all get flu shots before we catch it, but after we have the fever and cough it's a bit late to start saying "well the neighbors should make sure everyone gets their shot next year".  When the Red River is coming over the sandbags saying the East Grand Forks' community neighbors should make the dikes higher before the next flood doesn't keep one drop out this year. The crisis is now!  Address that crisis and maybe there will be SOME good "neighbors" left to make sure "kids in the neighborhood are getting the parenting they need"!   The parenting the children really need is for parents to demand and fight to give them a safer neighborhood to grow up in. But that is just a suggestion, and I may have an irrational confidence in what "Leaders" can do!   Jim Graham, Ventura Village   > "Advances are made by those with at least a touch of irrational confidence in what they can do."