Soucheray: We must realize we are in a world of crime

Joe Soucheray, Pioneer Press
·3 min read
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Errands twice took me through the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in South Minneapolis over the last two weeks. This is the intersection sentimentally called George Floyd Square, but there is nothing sentimental or honorable about the place where George Floyd died in 2020.

It is a dangerous place, reflecting only malignant idleness and urban decay.

On Saturday, Aug. 6, 29-year-old Mohamed Omar was found lying in the street at 38th and Chicago, dead of multiple gunshot wounds. The investigation is ongoing. On Sunday, Aug. 14, one man was shot dead and another left fighting for his life at the same intersection. That was around the noon hour. Minneapolis police reported that evidence appeared to have been removed from the scene before officers arrived.

When police arrive, which is often, they are likely to be met with disdain and suspicion. There is no honor, not when scavengers, enlisted or not, remove even the evidence of murder. The intersection is a mess, poorly kept, littered with hand-painted signs, the occasional wilted flower. There is a sculpted fist in the middle of Chicago, affecting a kind of roundabout, but it is the color of dirty rain and its hard edges look lethal.

This used to be a functioning intersection, but now, like many parts of the urban Twin Cities, it is a failed ruin with nary a memory of better times. On display is the political failure of the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, and the city council member who represents the area, Andrea Jenkins. Yes, at first, this was to be a place to grieve and to heal. But the political class let the so-called healing go on too long. They bought into the false ideological construct that rules of civility should not usurp any cultural narrative made up of whole cloth.

Why, if we only hired one more community public safety specialist. The politicians in urban America have looked the other way for too long on the decline of moral and ethical integrity. They don’t even acknowledge it. They think they can fix crime with more money. They can’t. They keep squandering other people’s money and our once great cities continue to decline.

In St. Paul, we hear the call to spend $1.5 million to improve safety at the George Latimer Public Library. Homeless people, in violation of the law and their own safety, pitch tents on narrow strips of grass alongside Shepard Road, near Jackson Street. God forbid they don’t stumble into traffic. The Green Line? Go ahead and take your chances.

In St. Paul the other afternoon, a woman was assaulted after getting out of her car in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood. The woman had arrived to take her granddaughter to a dental appointment. She didn’t even hear the thugs arrive. She felt a tug at her arm as the thief pushed past her and quickly rifled through her car, taking her keys, her wallet and her purse. It is presumed that he didn’t take the car because it was not running and the innocent woman’s loud cries for help brought neighbors out of their houses.

The thug jumped back into what turned out to be a stolen vehicle and they sped away, a female getaway driver behind the wheel. The police called it a strong-arm robbery. The same thugs were suspected of multiple assaults in quiet neighborhoods that same day. And what are we to say about the innocent woman who lost her wallet and her identity and her keys and her purse and her cheery outlook on a city she has only given to and never taken from.

We say thank God she wasn’t hurt.

We are in a world of crime and not just at 38th and Chicago.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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