We have spent a considerable amount of bandwidth on the murder epidemic in Philadelphia, but it isn’t only the City of Brotherly Love in which this has happened. From The Wall Street Journal:

A Year After George Floyd’s Murder, It’s ‘Open Season’ in Minneapolis

Homicides have more than doubled in a year. Three children have been shot in the past month.

By Heather Mac Donald | May 24, 2021 | 5:56 PM EDT

Al Sharpton and civil-rights attorney Benjamin Crump led a march in downtown Minneapolis Sunday in advance of the first anniversary of George Floyd’s death on May 25. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of Floyd’s murder last month.

What? The Reverend Al Sharpton, at a racially-charged event? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!

It ought to be a maxim: if the Reverend Sharpton is at an event, whatever side he is promoting is the wrong one!

Messrs. Sharpton and Crump didn’t visit North Memorial Health Hospital, where two recent victims of a yearlong explosion of violence in Minneapolis are on life support. On April 30 Ladavionne Garrett Jr., 10, was riding in a car with his parents when a gunman opened fire. A bullet pierced Ladavionne’s head; doctors put him in a medically induced coma and removed part of his skull to relieve swelling on the brain. On May 15, 9-year-old Trinity Ottoson-Smith was jumping on a trampoline at a friend’s house when bullets fired from a passing car struck her in the head. She is also in critical condition at North Memorial, in the room next to Ladavionne’s.

Nineteen children in Minneapolis have been shot this year, an increase of 171% over the same period in 2020. Their relatives wonder where the protesters are. “Why ain’t nobody mad about a 10-year-old, my grandson, fighting for his life?” asked Sharrie Jennings, Ladavionne’s grandmother, at a May 17 mayoral event. “Because a cop didn’t shoot him, is that why?” Ms. Jennings warned of “a deadly summer” for kids if the mayor and police chief don’t “step up.” Later that day, Aniya Allen, 6, was caught in a shootout between rival gangs while in her mother’s car. Aniya died on May 19.

Minneapolis homicides between Jan. 1 and last week were up 108% compared with the same period in 2020; shootings were up 153%, and carjackings 222%. The crime increase began after Floyd’s death and has never let up. Nor has the assault on law enforcement that began with the arson destruction of the Third Precinct building on May 28, 2020. Officers are routinely punched, kicked and hit with projectiles. There was a near-riot in downtown Minneapolis in the early hours of May 22 following a shootout among club patrons. Two people were killed in that shootout and eight wounded. Responding officers called for backup across the Twin Cities at what the department called an “exceptionally chaotic scene.” The previous weekend, officers were maced, and pelted with rocks and debris while trying to disperse disorderly crowds.

After Floyd’s death, the Minneapolis City Council called for abolishing the police department and replacing it with a “new transformative model for cultivating safety.” Abolition didn’t happen, but “some folks” in the community got the message anyway that “they have a sort of open season on their enemies,” said Alicia Smith, the executive director of the Corcoran Neighborhood Organization.

As lawless as Minneapolis has become, it is hardly atypical. Drive-by shootings and homicides jumped nationwide during and after the Floyd riots. Homicides rose 50% in Chicago in 2020, 46% in New York City, and 38% in Los Angeles. The U.S. saw the largest annual percentage increase in homicides in recorded history in 2020. That increase has continued in 2021. The number of shooting victims in Chicago was up 43% in the first three months of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020. Through May 16, the number of shooting victims in New York City is up 78.6% over a year ago. In the Bronx, the number is up 165.7%.

Pikers! Bush league!

According to the Minneapolis Police Department’s Crime Statistics page, Minneapolis has seen 34 homicides between January 1, 2021 and May 30, 2021. With a population of 420,324, the city is a third again larger than St Louis, yet the Gateway City has more than twice the number of murders at 76. Philadelphia, with 1.579 million souls, 3.76 times Minneapolis’ population, doesn’t have 3.76 times as many homicides, 124, but almost twice as many, at least 212. th” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>The Chicago Tribune’s Tracking Chicago homicide victims page had the Windy City with 227 murders as of Tuesday, May 18^th, up from 191 on the same date in 2020, a mere 18.85% increase.^[1]The Tribune’s page states that it will be updated weekly, but the scheduled update for Wednesday, May 26th, hadn’t been posted as of 3:30 PM EDT on Sunday, May 30th. We previously noted … Continue reading

Minneapolis’ rate of increase has been what has been noted: 34 homicides to date this year, versus 18 on the same day last year, is an 88.89% increase, while Philadelphia’s is a mere uptick. While the police data did not break it down by race, but the Minneapolis Star-Tribune noted, on May 29^th:

Coming a few days before a particularly violent weekend, and in the wake of the shootings of three young Minneapolis children, the Police Department report detailed the city’s 2021 crime surge up to that point.

There had been 187 shootings in Minneapolis since Jan. 1 — two-and-a-half times the pace of gunplay in the same period a year earlier.

And 87% of the victims were Black.

Blacks make up only 19.19% of Minneapolis residents.

Of course, the evil reich-wing Donald Trump left office on January 20, 2021, while the great unifier, Joe Biden, who was going to make everything sweetness and light, is now President of the United States, and with the statistics of virtually every violent crime — rape is the exception — climbing in Minneapolis, mostly since Mr Biden took office, I suppose the left can’t blame this on President Trump.

Minneapolis is a Democratic city; the municipal government is, and long has been, run by Democrats. St Louis? Run by Democrats. Philadelphia? The last Republican mayor left office in 1952! The major cities in which we are seeing this huge spike in murder rates are all run by Democrats, and the Democrats have been giving to the Black Lives Matter protesters much of what they have wanted.

But as the distraught grandmother of 10-year-old Ladavionne Garrett, Jr., noted, nobody is upset that he was shot in the head, because he wasn’t shot by a policeman. When a black person is killed by a white police officer, the Reverend Sharpton is right there, ready with his outrage, ready to make whatever political, and monetary, capital he can out of it. Black Lives Matter, we are all told.

But when black people are gunned down by other black people, often times over trivial things, all we hear are the crickets. Their black lives don’t matter.