The Daily Signal - What’s Going On in Minneapolis After City Council Vote to Defund Police

Episode Date: August 7, 2020

At the end of June, the Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to "defund" the city's police. Now crime is on the rise.  John Hinderaker, president of the Minnesota policy organization Center of the American Experiment, joins the show to explain what the future may hold for the Minneapolis Police Department and what his organization is doing to support local law enforcement.  We also cover these stories:  New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, moves to shut down the National Rifle Association.  The votes of more than 84,000 New York City residents weren't counted during the summer’s Democratic primary.  A Secret Service report reveals that many shootings are carried out with illegal guns.  Please take five minutes to complete The Daily Signal survey here. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Snap up Ancestry DNA's lowest price ever in our incredible cyber sale. With 50% off Ancestry DNA kits, it's the perfect time to help a loved one unwrap the past. And with their latest update, they'll discover their family origins like never before. With even more precise regions and new and exclusive features, their best gift, our lowest price. 50% off Ancestry DNA, only until December 2nd. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, August 7th. I'm Rachel Del Judas.

And I'm Virginia Allen. A group of conservatives are pushing back against the anti-police rhetoric in Minneapolis. John Hinderacker, president of the Minneapolis nonprofit Center of the American Experiment, joins the show to explain what is currently happening in Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd's death and what his organization is doing to support local law enforcement. Don't forget, if you're enjoying, this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. New York Attorney General Latita James is trying to shut down the National Rifle Association. James announced that she has filed a lawsuit against the NRA

as of Thursday, alleging that the leaders of the National Gun Rights Organization have violated state laws that govern nonprofits and have used the financial resources. of the 501c3 for personal expenses. The suit was announced during a press conference Thursday, per the Hill. Just a few minutes ago, my office filed a lawsuit against the National Rifle Association to dissolve the organization in its entirety for years of self-dealing and illegal conduct

that violate New York's charity's law and undermine its own mission. James continued. continued on saying that as today's complaints lays out, we found that the NRA fostered a culture of noncompliance and disregard for internal controls that led to the waste and loss of millions of assets and contributed to the NRA's current deteriorated financial state. NRA President Carolyn Meadows responded to the lawsuit in a statement saying, this was a baseless, premeditated attack on our organization and the Second Amendment freedoms it fights to defend. And she added that the lawsuit is a transparent attempt to score political points and attack the leading voice in opposition to the leftist agenda. This has been a power grab

by a political opportunist, a desperate move that is part of a rank political vendetta. Vice President Mike Penn said Thursday that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is a disappointment. Here is what Pence had to say to CPN's David Brody via CNN. Vice President Mike Pence launching a very rare and very public attack on the conservative-leaning Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts. Listen to this. We have great respect for the institution of the Supreme Court of the United States.

But Chief Justice John Roberts has been a disappointment to conservatives, whether it be the Obamacare decision or whether it be a spate of, recent division. We remember the issue back in 2016, which I believe loomed large in voters' decisions between Hillary Clinton and the man who would become president of the United States. And some people thought that it wouldn't be as big an issue these days, but I think that's all changed. Pence made the remarks to the Christian Broadcasting Network. Chief Justice Roberts has been criticized by conservatives recently for his rulings on Obamacare, Dreamers, abortion, and other high-profile Supreme Court cases.

Pence also becomes the first president or vice president to visit a pregnancy center, as the Daily Signal reported. The Daily Signals Rob Lewy accompanied Pence on the trip, and in an exclusive report for the Daily Signal, Bluey noted that Penn said in Florida, We stand at a crossroads of freedom, before us lie two paths, one based on the dignity and worth of every individual, and the other on the growing control of the state.

One road leads to greater freedom and opportunity, and the other road leads to socialism and decline. The votes of more than 84,000 New York City residents were not counted in this summer's Democratic primary. The Board of Elections revealed that 21% of the primary's mail-in ballots were not counted due to their arriving too late, missing a signature or postmark or another heir. Doug Kellner, co-chair of the State Board of Elections, told the New York Post, the invalidation rate is higher than I would have predicted. It was discovered in court last week that the city was still mailing out absentee ballots the day before the June primary, making it almost impossible for those voters to receive and return their ballots in time.

Kelner proposed a number of reforms to the mail-in voting system to ensure that the voting debacle is not repeated in November. So far, the Post reports that the Board of Elections have ignored Kellner's reform proposal. A report done by the Secret Service has uncovered the fact that a big amount of shootings were done using an illegal gun. According to report from the Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center, of the 34 mass shootings that occurred in the U.S. last year, guns were used in 24 of those attacks, and at least 10 of the attacks, or 42 percent, involved guns obtained illegally. The Hill reported. Both Nevada and Michigan declared racism a public health crisis on Wednesday. Nevada Governor Steve Sissellick said in a statement that

institutional and systemic racism has gone on far too long in this country and in this state. Based on research, we are taking a proactive approach in joining fellow leaders around the country to declare racism as a public health crisis. Cicillac cited COVID-19's disproportionately disparaging effect on the African-American community as a primary reason for the declaration, saying the state cannot perpetuate poor health outcomes due to systemic racism during and after the pandemic. Nevada's declaration came only hours after Governor Gretchen Whitmer also declared racism a public health crisis in Michigan.

Whitmer announced the declaration during a Wednesday press conference, per Bloomberg Quick Takes. Today I also signed an executive directive declaring racism as a public health crisis in Michigan. I want to thank the Michigan Legislative Black Council for their leadership. This pandemic has confirmed and highlighted the deadly nature of these pre-existing inequities

caused by systemic racism. We have a lot of work to do to eradicate the systemic racism that black Americans have faced for generations. It's going to take time. But the most important thing we can do during this time is work closely with leaders across the state in every community to find the root cause of problems and work to eradicate them. It's a critical time in our nation's

history. Now more than ever at the Daily Signal, we're committed to equipping you with the best information and insight we possibly can. And to do that, we need your help. By sharing your thoughts and suggestions through our five-minute online survey, you can help the Daily Signal improve our reporting and reach more Americans to the message of freedom. Find the five-minute survey at dailysignal.com slash survey. Again, that's dailysignal.com slash survey. Now stay tuned for my conversation with John Hinderacker, president of the Minnesota nonprofit center of the American experiment as we discuss Minneapolis's move to defund the police and what impact that is having on local crime. I am joined by John Hinderacker, president of Center of the American Experiment,

a prominent think tank just outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota. John, thanks so much for being here today. Hey, happy to do it. So before we get into what is happening on the ground in Minneapolis, in the wake of George Floyd's death, could you just take a minute to briefly explain what the center of the American experiment does? What is really your primary mission? Well, we are a policy organization conventionally referred to as a think tank. We are the conservative policy organization in Minnesota. We're very aggressive for a think tank. We put up billboards. We put ads on the radio. We write a ton of op-eds. We're very active all over the state of Minnesota as we try to swing public opinion to the right. So tell us a little bit specifically about kind of the political

dynamics in Minneapolis. I'm an east coaster. I don't know a ton. I don't know a ton. about Minnesota as a state and kind of the political leanings of the state. So just fill us in, you know, is Minneapolis a pretty progressive community? Well, it's ridiculously left wing, you know, not to not to sugarcoat it. You know, Minnesota is like so many states where there's a sharp divide between urban and rural. The Twin Cities metropolitan area is generally pretty liberal and greater Minnesota. The rest of the state is conservative and getting more conservative all the time. Within the Twin Cities metro, the city of Minneapolis itself is really left wing. You could compare it to Seattle and Portland. You know, this is Elhan Omar's district. She represents

Minneapolis and some first-tier suburbs. So that's, you know, that's the basic landscape. The suburbs are swing territory, but those cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are really on the left. So May 25th, George Floyd is killed by a police officer. and wow, it does not take long at all before there are literally cries in the streets from protesters and rioters demanding that the Minneapolis Police Department be defunded. And at the end of June, the City Council did vote unanimously to defund the police department. But what exactly does that mean? I mean, surely that doesn't mean that all of the law enforcement in Minneapolis just goes away overnight. I mean, can you explain a little bit about what that vote actually changed in the city of Minneapolis? Well, it's a really good question, Virginia, and there's no really clear answer.

Part of the background here is that the Minneapolis City Charter requires the city to fund and maintain a police department of a certain size as a percentage of the population of the city. So the Minneapolis City Council cannot legally defund the police department. And so this resolution that they passed is intended. to sort of, you know, take steps in that direction via an amendment to the Minneapolis City Charter, which its proponents wanted to have on the ballot in November. There's something called the Minneapolis Charter Commission. And so this resolution went to them. And just a day or so ago, they voted, I think 10 to 5, not to put this issue on the ballot for November. And Apparently, they've just got broad discretion to say, no, we're not going to do that.

And so I think their hope is that things cool down and that nothing really stupid happens. So as of right now, it's not like police are being laid off and sent home. Well, actually, that's a great question, too, because what is happening is that police are retiring, police are going on disability. The city canceled an incoming class of trainees. So apparently that's a year's worth of police officers that won't be brought on board. And the effective police force in Minneapolis, I believe, has now dropped below the level that is mandated by the city charter. So where that goes from here, we really don't know.

And what are the locals saying? I mean, is kind of the tone that you're getting from? from most of the people in Minneapolis, like, yes, this is good, the police department should be smaller, we should cut off funding, or are they kind of saying, wait a second, you know, when I call 911,

I actually, I want someone to be on the other end of that call. Yeah, well, it depends where in Minneapolis you live. You know, if you live in the wealthy southwestern part of the city, for example, you probably have got a Black Lives Matter sign in your yard and are happy to talk about defunding the police. If you're one of the black residents in North Minneapolis, you're probably clambered. for more police support.

Those are the people who know that they need the police. They need them in their neighborhoods, and they want more policing, not less. But let me just add this to Virginia, because one of the things that my organization, Center of the American Experiment does, is quarterly polling in Minnesota. And we've polled these issues,

these police issues, rather extensively. And what we find is that about 85% of Minnesotans support their local police department. You know, we phrased that a couple of different ways, but that's a fair paraphrase. About 85% statewide support their local police department. They certainly don't want to defund it. But the two places in Minnesota where that's not true, where where police departments really don't have majority support are the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. So you do have some kind of eccentric ideology there that really is

anti-law enforcement. And crime-wise, what is happening in those cities right now? Oh, crime has jumped. I mean, if you see a map, somebody has been maintaining a map with a yellow dot on it, wherever there's an episode of gunfire occurring within the city limits of Minneapolis. And it's unbelievable. I mean, the city is practically covered in yellow dots. Homicides are up. Violent crime is up. Nonviolent crime is up. As you would expect, this was called the Ferguson effect, you know, when it happened following the, the riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Now it's the Minneapolis effect. You know, when you have this kind of broad attack on law enforcement, police officers understandably pull back and they don't do as much discretionary work. And so stops of all kinds, traffic stops, stops on the street are down by 70, 80, 90 percent. And when that happens, you inevitably will see a spike in the crime rate. And how are city leaders responding to that? I mean, do they recognize this is a problem and we need to actually do something and begin supporting our police department again?

You know, it's really interesting because for the last 40 years, every single person who's had any responsibility for the Minneapolis Police Department has been a Democrat. And that's true today. You know, these members of the city council, they run against the police department when they're running for office. But there isn't anybody who can change the Minneapolis Police Department. There's nobody in the world who can do anything about the Minneapolis Police Department except the mayor and the city council of the city of Minneapolis. It's their police department. And they refuse to take any responsibility for it.

So it's a really dysfunctional situation. You know, Jacob Fry, the boy mayor I call him, he's like 36 or 37, something like that, of the city of Minneapolis. is on the outs with the far left right now because at a big public gathering, he said that he was not in favor of disbanding the Minneapolis police force, which is, you know, I think the only sane, you know, same position you can take. He was booed off the stage. Wow.

He's fallen into disfavor, you know, with the far left. So that's kind of where it sits. Wow. So you all at the center of the American experiment, you've stepped up. You've said, we want to give voice to kind of the other side of this debate. And so you all put up 38 different billboards around the city, which feature quotes from local media reports on the violent attacks that have taken place in your community, really just since the end of May. Can you explain a little bit about why you all chose to set up those billboards? Yeah, sure.

As you say, there's 38 billboards. Some of them are simple and just say support our police with the URL, support MN police. or you can sign a petition and get a lot of information. And some, as you said, most of them have got like a quote from the local newspapers or radio stations about the violence. And my organization loves billboards. You know, if you want to really reach a lot of people, let a lot of people know that there's something going on, billboards, I think, can be a great medium.

And we've found that here. And what we're trying to do is to speak for the 85% of the people in this state who support law enforcement, to understand that we need the police and that the vast majority of the time the police are doing the right thing. And until we came along with our billboards and now we have ads on the radio and our writing op-eds and that sort of thing, nobody was really speaking for that large majority of Minnesota. And by the way, leftists hate these billboards. And so far, they have been vandalized eight times. The eighth one, was just this morning.

And it had been a week or two since the last act of vandalism. And I attributed that to the fact that I offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any of these vandals. And all of a sudden, it stopped. But then we got another one this morning. So we'll see if they keep at it. Wow. So have you discovered who's actually behind this and who's vandalizing those billboards?

Well, we've got some suspects based on social media, but we don't know for sure. and nobody's been arrested. And when you say vandalized, what exactly have they done to the billboards? Well, I mean, in one case, you know, where the billboard said support the police, they, in red spray paint, they crossed out support and they wrote in, shoot. So it says, shoot the police with the antifa symbol of the A in the circle and a hammer and sickle, you know, the communist symbol. So it's things like that.

Wow. I mean, it's just so hard not to look at that and realize this has nothing to do with moving our nation forward in unity, in defending, you know, the rights and fighting for equality of African Americans. There is a such, used to be kind of hidden. Now it seems like a very, very blatant, highly woke, progressive, really Antifa agenda being pushed forward. Yeah, I mean, that's right. certainly are seeing that here in the Twin Cities. You know, one more example of that. There are so many, but one of these groups, and I think it was an all-white group, as far as you can see, maybe there were a couple of Native Americans in it. But they announced on Facebook that the next day at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, they were going to take down, destroy, remove the statue of Christopher Columbus on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol. So it was a crime that was

scheduled in advance. And five o'clock the next afternoon, sure enough, here come these miscreants. And the state police are there. You know, they know that this is scheduled to take place. And the state police are there apparently to protect these vandals against ordinary citizens who might come by and try to stop them. So the state police stand guard and these people get out their ropes or whatever. And sure enough, they tear down the statue of Christopher Columbus. So, you know, we've got a situation in this state where we've got a governor who's very, very far left. His name is Tim Walls, utter incompetence and very far left. We've got mayors of the major cities who are leftists. And certainly in Minneapolis,

we've got a city council that's entirely on the left. And so we have some pretty serious governance issues. So, John, one other situation I want to ask you about we were chatting earlier before we started recording about a video on YouTube that has received quite a lot of pushback from the left. Can you tell us a little bit about that situation? Yeah, so last week, we had a terrific program. It was virtual. It was live streamed. We had Heather McDonald, who was the number one expert in the country on the intersection of crime, policing, and race. Author of the 2016 book The War on Cops. And Heather did just a wonderful 40-minute presentation for us on those issues and basically debunking the whole mythology that surrounds Black Lives Matter, the whole myth of systemic police racism.

And she went through statistics on crime and race and so on, mostly from the FBI database, and really debunked that mythology of systemic racism. And, you know, many people attended live. And then my plan was that it would be archived on YouTube. And for years to come would be the definitive resource where people can go to get the real facts on this very controversial set of issues. So we live streamed the video in a number of venues, including YouTube Live. And within an hour after the program was over, YouTube just deleted the video, took it down, said it was inappropriate. I appealed that, and about an hour and a half after I appealed it, they relented and put it back up, but they age-restricted it.

And in the meantime, we got the original file of the video from the guy that produced it, and we uploaded that file to YouTube separately. So it's now actually in two different places at YouTube. And they didn't do anything to the one we uploaded, which has got 77,000 views currently according to, according to YouTube. But then last night, Heather was on the Tucker Carlson show, and she talked about this back and forth that we've had with YouTube and their age-restricting the live stream and so forth.

And apparently, as best I can tell, within minutes after that, Tucker Carlson interview ended, YouTube went in, and they now addressed the second video, the uploaded version that they hadn't done anything to before. And they put a warning on it. So if you go to look at that video now on YouTube, you see this big black, somber square where the video should be. And it says that this video has been flagged as inappropriate.

And it says viewer discretion is advised. But then if you want to proceed, nevertheless, you can click here. So they're actively trying to suppress viewing of, of this video, which by the way, at the moment, I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's got something like 4,000 likes on YouTube and like 32 dislikes, you know, so. Did YouTube reach out and explain, you know, this is why we feel like it's necessary to put this disclaimer? No.

Haven't. So we're going to do battle with them. I just haven't had time today to launch some kind of appeal there. YouTube never likes to explain why they do anything, though. They'll refer you generally to their community guidelines and so forth and allege that you violated them, although they don't like to explain why. So we're looking at the possibility of legal action. That's probably a little remote, but something I'm looking into. So you all set up a website, support mnpolice.com.

Can you tell us a little bit about the petition there and what our listeners will find there if they go check it out? Yeah, it's support mnpolice.com. And there's a lot of information there, included the poll data that we've gotten from the poll we did just recently on, you know, what Minnesotans think about, about policing and crime. Recent news stories posts on this topic from our website, Americanexperiment.org. And on that website, supportamnpolice.com, you can sign a petition. And we deliberately made the petition very broad. basically the statement of support for law enforcement in Minnesota. And we are approaching 15,000 signatures so far on that petition.

I'd like to get 100,000. Wow, that's amazing. Well, John, thank you so much for the work that you all are doing and for your time on the show today. We just really appreciate getting to hear about all the work that you all are doing. Hey, thank you. Happy to be with you. And that will do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast.

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