In June, the Minneapolis City Council proudly announced that it would be defunding and dismantling its police department as an unseemly institution of racism and white privilege. By July, the Minneapolis City council began to approve substantial cuts to the police. By August, nearly 20% of Minneapolis police were in the process of retiring and those who remain are tentative about policing. Crime in Minneapolis has skyrocketed. And just this week, two events occurred, one hilarious and one tragic.

The hilarious thing is that the same town council that proudly announced that it would abandon all societal norms and end policing in its community complained vigorously that the police were not doing their job by controlling crime. The tragic thing was a high school principal who, upon the occasion of a student’s murder, gave an impassioned plea for a return to normalcy, something that would include a functioning police force and open schools.

The City Council got together on Tuesday, September 16, to discuss city business. The business that most occupied them was rising crime – especially murder in their respective districts:

Three months after voting to dismantle the Minneapolis police department, city council members there spent much of a business meeting on Tuesday complaining about an uptick in violent crime across the city.Several city council members told police chief Medaria Arradondo at the meeting that their constituents were concerned about increased criminal activity.

City council members Lisa Bender, Steve Fletcher and Andrew Johnson led off the two-hour meeting with questions about the crime wave.