The Reality Of Minneapolis

We read crime news stories and have sympathy for the victims, but unless you're living in Minneapolis there may be a feeling of detachment to the violence that city residents are experiencing in their everyday lives. Derek Ickler is a crime victim, and has helped us understand firsthand the nightmares such living conditions often bring.

Ruben Rosario, liberal columnist of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, brings us closer to another Minneapolis resident who is also under siege with this story: "A neighbor, at wits' end".

A neighbor, at wits' end

After being victimized by criminals three times in one week — and then by the city itself — Luke Boyd wonders whether the time has come to give up on his Minneapolis neighborhood.

RUBÉN ROSARIO

Luke Boyd of North Minneapolis hit the crime trifecta one week this year. Or rather, the trifecta trampled all over him.

He was robbed at gunpoint on a Sunday at midnight while returning home from work. His car was stolen the next day. Thieves broke into his home that Saturday.

Then, a month later, the 60-year-old home-care attendant was rolled again after his car was found. This time, it was the city holding him up for the $138 impound lot fee, which he was forced to pay.

This is no way to live. Has Minneapolis, particularly the Northside, become Detroit?

Meet Mr. Boyd, a modern-day crime victim caught not in the Twilight Zone, but within the dimension of a neighborhood waging a daily slugfest with rising crime and blight. He is a resident, like many, wondering more than ever whether he should pack things up and pack it in.

"We are indeed living in a culture permeated by crime," he said as he pointed out a former crack house on a block he has called home for 14 years now. "There seems to be no longer any respect for people or authority, and I'm getting tired of the city life."

Boyd has had his place broken into before. He personally grabbed a bucket of water and soap one day, got on his knees and cleaned a fading but still disturbingly visible pool of blood on a nearby sidewalk after a vicious bus stop mugging two years ago.

Read the whole article for a look inside the disturbing conditions in today's Minneapolis. Then call Mayor Rybak and ask him what he's going to do about it.