The Minneapolis City Council, in an unbelievable move, given the powder keg on their doorstep, voted 11-1 to oppose the use of tear gas and other non-lethal munitions in response to civil disorder. It would be fair to wonder if someone dropped these 11 elected leaders on their heads as children. In the last 48 hours, we have had a sitting member of Congress, Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), inciting violence if former officer Derek Chauvin is convicted of murder, and two National Guardsman injured in a drive-by shooting. The Chauvin trial is in closing arguments, and the jury is expected to begin deliberating with the threat of mob justice over their heads.
Luckily, this vote is, to some extent, worthless virtue signaling. Mayor Jacob Frey controls the Minneapolis Police Department, which he completely demoralized and ruined during last summer’s riots. Hopefully, he will ignore the insane members of the city council. Governor Tim Walz has activated 3,000 members of Minnesota’s National Guard in advance of the verdict, which is a significant improvement over his lag in doing so last year.
The council members don’t see it that way. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s son, Councilman Jeremiah Ellison, voted to oppose Walz’s move.
Council Member Jeremiah Ellison accused Gov. Tim Walz and law enforcement officials of approving “indiscriminate assaults, gassing, and arrests of protesters” in the name of protecting property.
“We’re just going to pump people full of fear and say, ‘Trust us, we got it. It doesn’t matter how many chemical irritants we use, and it also doesn’t matter whether or not it works,'” Ellison said.
His perspective is no surprise since the younger Ellison openly tweeted his support for antifa last summer. He was challenging the idea that antifa was involved in the destruction that took place. City Council President Lisa Bender described the vote as “a statement of the values of the City Council.” You may remember Bender from this insane segment on CNN where she was explaining how Minneapolis would defund the police and “reimagine” public safety:
CAMEROTA: "What if in the middle of the night my home is broken into. Who do I call?"
BENDER: "Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege." pic.twitter.com/WhubQ9yJIf
— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) June 8, 2020
The Chauvin trial is wrapping up just as another officer-involved shooting in Brooklyn Center, Minn., just outside Minneapolis, reinvigorated rioting and looting across the metro area. One hundred rioters were arrested Saturday night near the Brooklyn Center police station. Emotions throughout metropolitan Minneapolis are running high, and the soft bigotry of low expectations among the city and state leaders is on full display. They are resigned to the violence that will follow the verdict no matter what conclusion the jury comes to. With such a stunning closing argument, it does not seem likely they will deliver the murder conviction Maxine Waters demanded:
The George Floyd prosecutor ended his closing argument by saying its about how the bystanders felt and about how the jurors feel, rather than the actual law.
— Joel Gilbert (@JoelSGilbert) April 19, 2021
How resigned are they? Minneapolis Public Schools will move back to distance learning on Wednesday after being out of school for over a year. Middle school students were scheduled to return for the first time this week, and many will not. Families are also losing all before and after school care provided by the school district for elementary students, and no athletic events will be held.
Not only did the council members take an emotional vote to signal they want police officers defending life and property to have no effective crowd control munitions. They also unanimously voted to develop an unarmed traffic enforcement division that is not part of the Minneapolis PD. Meanwhile, they tolerate a no-police autonomous zone in the area where George Floyd died. Record levels of violence and crime in the space taken over by militants earned the area FBI monitoring in March.
Minneapolis is headed down the same path as Portland, which experiences nearly nightly riots that have escalated to frequent arson attempts. They learned nothing from the CHAZ in Seattle or the Red House in Portland. How many of our once-thriving urban centers will have to descend into Gotham-level insanity due to the threats of mob justice? That Americans are accepting it is beyond astonishing.
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