Minneapolis: "Wild, Wild West"

We can take comfort in knowing we're still not quite as bad as New Orleans, but we're sure trying hard to catch up.

A Minneapolis officer, probably wishing he had volunteered for lighter duty, say, in Baghdad perhaps, found himself in the vicinity of a barrage of gunfire earlier this morning, as reported by KSTP Eyewitness News: "Officer involved shooting in Minneapolis".

The shooting happened around 2:30am and Minneapolis police say an off-duty officer heard a ring of gunshots

The way police describe it, this was more like a scene from the wild wild west. Police found more than 2 dozens (sic) bullet casings in the area around 3rd street and 2nd avenue south.

It appears the "actors" are heavily armed, if in fact there was an automatic weapon involved (for you gun-controllers out there, an automatic weapon is not one that fires one round per trigger pull).

A suspect opened fire with an automatic or semi-automatic gun. It's unclear tonight what he was shooting at, but police tell 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, an off duty officer in uniform, fired his gun to try to stop the suspect but missed, the suspect ran away.

Joseph Will, a 12 year veteran of the department, is on paid administrative leave after firing his gun. Police are investigating the shooting, but so far they have no suspects.

A source with a lot of contacts in Minneapolis, particularly on the North Side, tells me that the heinous crimes we're seeing day in and day out are being committed by criminals who have come from out of state, particularly Detroit, Chicago, Gary, and Kansas City. These hardened thugs are not afraid to thrown down for any reason at all, but will mostly use violence to protect and establish their "business" turf.

This generally confirms empirical evidence.

So the question is: What's drawing the criminal element from around the region to our fine city of Minneapolis?