Students at the University of Minnesota staged massive protests, demanding that school officials ban the police from campus once and for all. However, instead of giving in to their threats, the school vice president had a better solution.
As social justice becomes the top priority in education, schools are producing activists rather than academics. So, when the “defund the police” movement came to the University of Minnesota, protests and riots unsurprisingly erupted on campus in an effort to coerce the administration to ban law enforcement from the facilities.
Demonstrators showed up in droves both on campus and at the police station, hoping to force the university to remove campus police so as to prevent them from patrolling the area. As such, the school responded by cutting ties with city cops. Subsequently, the crime rate began to soar in Marcy-Holmes, the neighborhood in which the university is located.
Immediately following their separation from the police, total property and violent crimes skyrocketed in the neighborhood to 129 incidents in one month alone, which is the highest it’s been in decades. Seeing the correlation, the university decided upon a different approach. Instead of severing ties with law enforcement, the school chose to ramp up police presence on campus.
University Senior Vice President for Finance and Operations Myron Frans explained that the decision was a direct result of the escalating crime following the push to remove police from campus, the Star Tribune reports. Within one month of adding extra officers to patrol the area, the crime rate dropped by 49, which is a 38-percent decrease.
The university may increase the size of its campus police force in response to the rising crime, Frans said. Currently, the department has 56 sworn officers.
“We currently believe that we should,” Frans said of adding more officers.
Even Mayor Jacod Frey admitted that the efforts to defund the police have contributed to the spike in crime.
“It’s just the reality of the solution, you know,” the mayor admitted. “When you make big, overarching statements that we’re going to defund or abolish and dismantle the police department and get rid of all the officers, there’s an impact to that.” He added, “We need accountability and culture shift within our department, and we need police.”
Frey confirmed that the only solution to the rising crime is more policing, much to the activists’ dismay. He added that the city would also look into alternative options for incidents that don’t necessarily require police response.
“It’s going to take a very comprehensive effort,” Frey added. “Yes, it includes safety beyond policing, and it includes police. And, you know, I’m one that has been working lock step with our Chief Arradondo, and I’m calling on the council members to try to work with him as well.”
The mayor’s office joined forces with the police department in the hopes of tamping down crime and keeping the community safe. He hoped to convince the city council to cooperate as well.
“The violence needs to stop, its unacceptable. People deserve to feel safe in their neighborhood, they deserve to be able to send their kids out to the sidewalk to play and to recreate without bullets flying by. That’s unacceptable. We should be holding these perpetrators accountable,” Frey said.
Along with more patrolling and a larger presence of officers, extra security cameras and additional lighting will be in place.
The results are obvious. When the neighborhood implemented measures that restricted law enforcement, criminals were unrestrained. Likewise, as policing was ramped up, crime immediately dropped.
The initiative to defund and ultimately abolish the police doesn’t faze criminals. In fact, the only community members who are harmed are their victims.
