Bob Collins
Even if this bombing turns out not to be a crime of hate, there have been plenty that have and it’s going to take more than leading to stop the march toward sectarian violence. It’s going to take some following. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Crime and Justice
The Legislature had a chance to increase the odds of people like Laura Elena Soto Silva getting home to her kids. It chose not to. Read more →
The Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld a district court judge’s decision to dismiss a charge against Christopher Prigge, who was stopped by a Maple Grove police officer for suspected driving under the influence in April 2016. A later search of the car discovered the gun in the center console, and, thus, the additional charges. Read more →
Open a Walmart in town, see a spike in crime. That’s the upshot of an analysis by the
Woodbury Bulletin and Rivertown Media, which analyzed police calls in six cities in the east metro and found a disproportionate response to Walmart compared to other stores, such as Target. Read more →
It’s a curious reality of the Minnesota Supreme Court that you don’t often see the ‘Pawlenty wing’ and the ‘Dayton wing’ of the court lined up against each other, but two cases today highlighted a sharp division over sentences handed to drug offenders since a change in the state’s sentencing guidelines. Read more →
Slate’s Leon Neyfakh writes today that the killing of Justine Damond (nee: Ruszczyk) has illustrated ‘the kind of flawed, ideological thinking that shows through when people need to protect their preexisting beliefs and irrational biases.’
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It’s likely that we won’t truly understand how horrific life with automobiles is until the era of the self-driving vehicle removes it from our culture. Read more →
In normal times, the United States can do worse than having Minnesota portrayed as the image of America. But these are not normal times, thanks to a cop who shot an innocent woman — an Aussie — in a Minneapolis alley on Saturday night.
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If you’ve got family and friends from out of town, perhaps you, too, have fielded an unusual number of calls this week that start with the same question, ‘What’s the deal with Minnesota/Minneapolis cops?’
It should be a clue that, at least in the eyes of the rest of the world, something isn’t quite right here. Read more →
When NYPD officer Miosotis Familia was assassinated on July 5, her friends in the department were ready to cancel the outing to Boston’s Fenway Park that she and the others in the 46th Precinct had planned to watch the Yankees play the Red Sox. After all, her funeral was just last week. Read more →
The latest victim is Austin Reeves, 26, of Hingham, Mass., who told his parents he just needed to be left alone in his room, where he was fretting over a breakup a week ago Saturday. His dog was with him. So was his gun. Read more →
Making the effort to get to the bottom of what happened more difficult, too, is the fact the two officers involved did not have their body cameras turned on, nor did the squad camera record the fatal shooting. Read more →
Donna Chan placed two small ceramic dogs on the grave of her 27-year-old daughter Brittany, who died in May. They represented her service dogs who cared for her.
Someone stole them.
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Wisconsin is the only state that doesn’t treat first-time drunk driving as a crime and that apparently is the way it’s going to stay, the La Crosse Tribune says today.
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From available evidence, a Minneapolis police officer wasn’t being threatened by a dog when he answered a burglar alarm at a home in north Minneapolis Saturday afternoon. But Ciroc and Rocko, two Staffordshire terrier therapy dogs, got shot anyway.
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