Violent Crime Rising in Minneapolis | City Journal
Speaking with Samuels, I learned that statistics don t capture the true impact of crime in a community. He told me of a family whose young son had been clinically diagnosed with a psychological disorder from the trauma of hearing gunshots every night. Their son is sleeping in their bedroom on the floor next to their bed, and now becoming so traumatized that he s having cold sweats and shivering. The psychologist recommended that they move, he said. People are going to the doctor, getting medication for stress on my street.
These tragic outcomes are not surprising. A body of research shows that local violence causes children to sleep less, to suffer from increased anxiety and impaired impulse control, and to experience substantial temporary reductions in cognitive performance on standardized tests. Functional communities depend on public safety and order.
The origins of the disorder plaguing Minneapolis are no mystery. The media and politicians attribute the homicide spike to economic devastation from the pandemic, but the violence skyrocketed in Minneapolis (and other major American cities) only after the riots and protests last year. In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd s death, gunfire incidents rose by more than 120 percent in Minneapolis. By the end of June 2020, they had surged 224 percent.
As University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell argued in a paper last year, institutionalized anti-police sentiment across the country visible in political, cultural, academic, and media institutions led to a reduction of proactive policing. In Minneapolis, police stops and officer-initiated calls dropped more than half, use-of-force incidents fell by two-thirds, and traffic-related incidents and patrols became far less common, Cassell wrote.