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If you've got family and friends from out of town, perhaps you, too, have fielded an unusual number of calls this week that start with the same question, "What's the deal with Minnesota/Minneapolis cops?"

It should be a clue that, at least in the eyes of the rest of the world, something isn't quite right here.

Richard Carlson, a former Hennepin County public defender, asks a good question in 

 today: "I’ve had enough. Haven’t you?"

Carlson says Minneapolis has led the nation when it comes to hypocrisy on race.

"I am ashamed of my city, of its arrogant, hypocritical police force, and of its civic leaders who have shrunk from taking on the elephant in the room for fear that they will lose the political endorsements of the all-powerful police union," he writes in an unusually strident piece, even for a newspaper op-ed piece.

But he properly captures the frustration of many residents who are growing more than weary about the way we are policed, calling for the firing of the city's police chief, whom he calls "ineffectual."

It is too early to draw conclusions from the latest police killing. There isn't enough information yet and, besides, the police officer who 

apparently killed an innocent woman because he heard a sound that startled him

 in his condemnation of the entire government of Minneapolis and, indeed, the Hennepin County justice system, he says. The signs of a problem go back 

 as far as the night Minneapolis police officer Duy Ngo, who took his own life in 2010, 

Still, a cursory glance at the op-ed's comments reveal that the public's answer to his question is essentially "no." Most people have retreated to their corners, unable to distinguish between a culture in need of inspection and an indictment of every cop, unwilling to find common ground in the basic premise that innocent people reporting an assault shouldn't end up dead in their pajamas in a Minneapolis alley, cameras should be rolling and 

not at the whim of the cops who wear them

, and police should be able to answer the question, "why'd you shoot her?" before the end of their shift. Oh, and throw in the occasional racism because the officer in this case was Somali, and the stew is simmering that will likely lead to a similar story again someday.

But none of that can mask the internal voice of Minnesota that is at least whispering, "something's not right here."

Source: Cops Thought They Were Caught in Ambush

NewsCut

Bob Collins

Author

If you've got family and friends from out of town, perhaps you, too, have fielded an unusual number of calls this week that start with the same question, 'What's the deal with Minnesota/Minneapolis cops?'

It should be a clue that, at least in the eyes of the rest of the world, something isn't quite right here.

Something isn’t quite right here

Go Deeper.

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