Another Minneapolis Murder Confirmed, Council Happy With McManus

The Red Star follows up on a story noted in the previous post. It appears the body found in a vehicle in the 3700 block of Nicollet Ave. South in Minneapolis was indeed a homicide victim. Two alleged criminals were arrested: "Two jailed in Minneapolis homicide".

Two Minneapolis men were in jail Tuesday in connection with the shooting death of another man Monday night.

The men had not been charged and police would not say what their alleged roles were in the homicide.

Police found a man dead of gunshot wounds in a car in the 3700 block of Nicollet Av. S. about 9:10 p.m. Monday. Capt. Rich Stanek said authorities believe the shooting took place elsewhere.

KvM, please update your tally.

It was the 11th homicide this year, Stanek said.

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis City Council is suddenly quite pleased with Police Chief McManus, and it's just coincidental that he's been fishing for a job in San Antonio, TX: "Council wants McManus to stay"

With a potential job offer luring Minneapolis Police Chief Bill McManus to San Antonio, City Council members were suddenly ready to try to persuade him to stay.

Just as Mayor R.T. Rybak changed his noncommittal position on reappointing McManus to a positive one, so has the council. At least a healthy portion of the support seems to derive from council members wanting to avoid another hunt for a new chief.

So McManus is essentially no dummy. He knows that the spineless Mayor and City Council will fall all over themselves to compete with the folks in San Antonio. Their reasoning is ostensibly to avoid a search for a new chief. He knows they wouldn't have the sense to consider a replacement from within the department if they could instead spend enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars to search the country for other city's castoffs.

Council Member Gary Schiff, who has been a critic of the chief, said he believes McManus will "overwhelmingly" win reappointment. "No one wants to go through a job search for the police chief -- not that he's necessarily our favorite department head," Schiff said.

Council Member Scott Benson said, "I think most council members believe stability with the police chief is a good thing."

Stability is a good thing, but do you want stability with a questionable performer? Do results mean anything in considering the position of police chief? Minneapolis has been suffering waves of violent crime out of proportion to the size of the population; is no one accountable?

Ron Edwards, a member of the Minneapolis Police Community Relations Council, said he has no doubt McManus will take the [Texas] job if offered.

Edwards and other members of the PCRC, a liaison between citizens and police, have been vocal about wanting the chief to stay. In November, a PCRC member publicly asked Rybak about McManus, and the mayor declined to commit to keeping the chief on for a second, three-year term.

The activists would love the chief to stay, because he doesn't rock the boat. He has been kowtowing to the "community" activists, and they love him for it. It would be a different story if he was cracking down on crime. In other words, there is an inverse relationship with his popularity and the crime rate. A chief should not desire to be loved; a chief should desire to be respected and feared [by criminals].

The incompetents on the City Council have no idea what they're doing:

Rather than search for a new police chief, Schiff said he'd like to focus on finding a new head of Public Works. "Let's admit [Rybak] didn't do such a good job on that one, either," Schiff said of the hiring of Klara Fabry, whom Rybak declined to renominate.

This is a priority?

It appears Minneapolis will continue to suffer.