Idiot America

A comment I wrote for the fucking morons at the Washington Post:

We don't need the police. Throw out the police. How has that been working for you liberal loons?

MINNEAPOLIS — At first, it sounded like fireworks, a loud crackling noise that has become the daily soundtrack of the city in recent weeks. But when David Trueblood, a coach for the Minnesota Jays youth football team, felt a bullet go whizzing by his head and heard the rapid pings of metal spray across a fence in Jordan Park, he screamed for his players, 50 kids ages 5 to 14, to hit the ground.

“I thought somebody was going to die,” Trueblood said.

As gunfire rang out early Monday evening here on the city’s north side, Trueblood and six other coaches threw their bodies atop as many children as they could. Frantic parents took cover behind cars, desperate to crawl to their kids but caught in the middle of a gun battle between a nearby group and a car that circled the park, spraying bullets across the field where the Jays were playing.

Minneapolis officials have described an unprecedented burst of violence following George Floyd’s Memorial Day death, after an officer held him down with a knee to his neck, sparking worldwide fury and massive protests. At least 113 people have been shot since May 25, eight fatally, according to Minneapolis police, with hundreds of reports of gunfire across the city, including several shootings in broad daylight.

The spike in violence has come amid a raging debate over the role the Minneapolis Police Department should play in addressing crime in this city. Public confidence has so deteriorated that a majority of the City Council has pledged to dismantle the agency. Some residents have accused officers of purposefully curbing response to crime, which police deny. Others have decided to stop using the agency’s services altogether.

At the Jays’ practice on Monday, several parents frantically called 911, according to Trueblood. Officers, he said, still hadn’t arrived by the time they gathered up the children and fled.

“We needed the police,” Trueblood said.

On Monday, nine people were shot in a four-hour span across the city, starting around 2:30 p.m. That came a day after gunfire struck 11 people during an early-morning gun battle along a busy stretch of bars and restaurants in Uptown Minneapolis, in what officials called one of the worst mass shootings in the city’s history.

Three other people have been killed, according to police, including one in a fatal stabbing Monday afternoon in downtown Minneapolis, just blocks from city hall. The police scanner has been jammed with reports of robberies, carjackings and other violent incidents across the city.

Mayor Jacob Frey has asked for additional law enforcement assistance from several regional and federal agencies, including the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI and the Secret Service, to help investigate and stem the bloodshed. A more robust law enforcement operation featuring the additional agencies was to begin Friday.

“The violence and lawlessness that we’ve seen the last few days is not acceptable in any form,” Frey told reporters this week. “We’re going to restore order. We’re going to make sure that people throughout our city feel safe.”