Starting with State Street.

The City of Minneapolis is defunding police. A fall referendum seeks to replace the police with a nebulous department of community safety and violence prevention — details (possibly) to come.

Crime has surged in the months since the shooting of George Floyd on May 25. Shootings more than tripled in June to 75 from 24 a year earlier. In the first half of July, there were 43 shootings, compared with 29 in all of July 2019.

What do law-abiding citizens do in the face of this dereliction of duty? They form their own armed neighborhood patrols. Some would call them vigilantes, We call them …

Good men with guns

Law-abiding citizens trying to protect lives and property in Minneapolis are African-American. As usual, their neighborhoods are the most hurt when police pull back.

The Wall Street Journal reports “Black gun owners responded to a call from the local NAACP and patrolled the mostly African-American West Broadway business district for 10 nights, keeping the area free of looting or arson without firing a shot, said Jamil Jackson, a leader of the group called the Minnesota Freedom Fighters, which advocates for Black gun ownership.”

Residents near a commercial strip that had been looted, and the 3rd Precinct station that was abandoned and burned, were seeing a surge of shooting and drug-related crime on their block.

“It got to the point where crime had no consequences,” said Tania Rivera, 30, who runs a child-care center with her mother.

Neighborhood men began an armed patrol, kicking out anyone who didn’t belong on the block after dark.

It’s nationwide

Blaming Donald Trump for urban violence is like blaming the fly swatter for the house flies.

In Madison WI — Social justice warriors barricade the south police station house, harangue the district attorney and his family at their private home with vulgar chants for hours on end

Seattle — Violent extremists injured nearly two dozen police Sunday during an attack on the department’s East Precinct.

Portland — Wearing gas masks and carrying shields, wielding leaf blowers and hockey sticks, rioters gathered outside the U.S. courthouse. Some in the crowd threw rocks and fireworks before breaking through a section of reinforced fence surrounding the building.

Austin, Texas — A protester was fatally shot during a Black Lives Matter gathering near the state capitol.

Aurora, Colo. — A Jeep drove through a group of several hundred protesters as they walked on Interstate 225 Saturday. A protester fired a weapon, striking two people. Also, protesters broke windows at a courthouse and started a fire.

Louisville, KY — Members of two rival militias faced off on Saturday, one of whom accidentally discharged a gun, injuring three members of the group.

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Why do Democrats defend disorder?

“My party always stood for principled dissent, not lawless chaos,” a Democrat(ic) consultant laments. 

Violent crime is on the rise in cities around the country. Chicago has been experiencing a murder plague visited on mostly minority residents over many months. It seems incredible that elected Democrats are supporting initiatives to defund the police, releasing prisoners from local jails, and even removing law-enforcement officers from schools.

The current round of violence isn’t being undertaken by civil-justice or other reformers but by radicals using Jacobin street-violence tactics. The idea is to provoke confrontation and violence with constituted authority so as to discredit it, counting on a few gullible local residents to see police as oppressors.

⇒ Which is why the Resistance news media “Spins the riots with ‘the wall of moms and leaf-blower dads.’” (Read & Weep.)

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Which is why, when asked to explain the harassment of D.A. Ismael Ozanne, the Party for Socialism & Liberation “responded with derogatory memes.”

Who ya’ gonna call when they come for you?