The New York Post’s Dana Kennedy came to town last week to report on the condition of Minneapolis five years after the death of George Floyd (story here). Kennedy’s story is accompanied by the 12-minute video below.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara is in hot water for his comments on the “bizarre” political environment ( “very detached, bourgeois liberal mentality”) in which his department works. That’s not how I would describe it, but it’s close enough to ruffle the feathers of the local powers-that-be.
I have criticized O’Hara, among other things, for his refusal to defend his department against the charges of racist policing brought against it by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and Biden administration Department of Justice. O’Hara is a key contributor to the atmosphere he decries.
Since the death of George Floyd the Minneapolis Police Department has lost roughly half its officers. O’Hara took over the department in November 2022. “The year before I got here,” O’Hara told Kennedy, “we had more shooting victims in one year than we had total number of police officers.”
Looking at the data logged on the gunshot wound dashboard posted by the City of Minneapolis, I don’t see what he is talking about. However, he may be right and the underlying points are not simply of historical interest. The department remains woefully understaffed and violent crime too high under one-party Democrat rule.
Kennedy also interviewed Royce White on the George Floyd riots. According to White, the mob of protesters during the riots were flown in from outside the state. White is something less than a reliable narrator. I wouldn’t turn to him for advice on whether the sun is out.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of people participated in the riots. Relatively few perpetrators have been charged, with the United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota bringing a dozen or so arson cases. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives led the investigation of 150 arsons throughout the Twin Cities that occurred the week after Floyd’s death.
Though there was initial chatter that the perpetrators of the mayhem were outside agitators, the defendants charged in the crime spree were mostly based “of Minnesota,” as the newspapers love to put it. At least one perpetrator was out on probation, while others appear to have been anarchists or leftist malcontents eager to sow chaos for whatever reason, even if there was nothing to be achieved beyond destruction.
To take one example that struck me at the time, Minneapolis’s own Matthew White, previously convicted of bank fraud, was convicted of one of the arsons that did some $500 million in damage around the Twin Cities. Joined by his sister and nephew in the action, White was charged with with burning down the Enterprise Rent-A-Car building on St. Paul’s University Avenue, miles from the scene of Floyd’s death.
Mohamed Hussein Abdi was yet another Minnesota resident who got in on the arson action. Abdi committed arson at the Gordon Parks High School in St. Paul. The 19-year-old Somali refugee was arrested after he set a fire with one Jose Felan Jr. of Rochester in the school cafeteria.
According to the government’s summary of the case, Abdi began “his evening of destruction at a BP gas station, where he kicked in the door allowing others access to the convenience store.” He then “crossed the street to a Target parking lot, where he threw rocks at law enforcement officers who were trying to disperse the rioting and looting crowds.”
Abdi encountered co-defendant Jose Felan Jr., who is described as a resident of Rochester, Minnesota, but I have a suspicion that Tom Homan should be alerted. Felan was removing the American flag from a pole outside the high school. “Felan threw the flag on the ground, and [Abdi] picked it up and lit it on fire.”
Abdi and Felan broke the glass on a cafeteria door that faced the sidewalk. Abdi then poured an accelerant on the floor, lit a trash can on fire and knocked it over toward a trail of flammable liquid. From there, Abdi broke a window on a Discount Tire store on University Avenue and attempted to set fires inside.
Felan fled Minnesota with his wife and was arrested by Mexican authorities on an anonymous tip. Felan’s wife, Mena Dhaya Yousif, was convicted as an accessory after the fact.
As soon as it became apparent that the authorities would let the city burn, the city became a magnet for malicious actors from around the state who wanted to get in on the action. The arson, looting, and destruction didn’t end until Minnesota Governor Tim Walz deployed the Minnesota National Guard too late to prevent the vast damage that was done.
