Omar: You know who's to blame for explosion in violent crime, right?

No, it’s not the Joooos, although readers can be forgiven for that guess with notorious anti-Semite Ilhan Omar as the speaker. Instead, Rep. Omar blames her other bete noire for the spike in violent crime — the police. After having supported “Defund the Police” efforts and Minneapolis’ attempts to shut down its law enforcement agency, Omar blames police for not having enough guts to tackle crime, or something:

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Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., blamed police for the recent rise in crime in Minneapolis, accusing the city’s officers of not fulfilling their oath of office.

“What we must also recognize is that the reduction in policing currently in our city and the lawlessness that is happening is due to two things,” Omar said during a town hall event Saturday in Minneapolis.

One of them, she said, is that “the police have chosen to not fulfill their oath of office and to provide the public safety they are owed to the citizens they serve.”

The lawmaker’s comments come as violent crime has surged in Minnesota over the last year, rising 17% in total while setting records for murders.

Omar’s approach to crime includes backing a Nov. 2 ballot measure to replace the entire Minneapolis police department with a “Department of Public Safety.” The measure would remove the requirement that the city have a minimum number of officers based on the city’s population.

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It takes a lot of chutzpah to spend more than a year demanding the dissolution of the police department — and then accuse officers of not enthusiastically performing their duties. The problem isn’t enthusiasm, however, but numbers. The Minneapolis PD lost over 200 uniformed officers after the riots last year and the city council’s push to dismantle the agency, and the city council blocked recruitment until only recently for replacements. Citizens had to sue the city to force the council to meet its obligations under the charter, having grown angry over the lack of law enforcement and the rise in crime that filled the vacuum.

As for Omar’s demand for accountability, she’s aiming that at the wrong city agency. The city council has punted on police policy for decades, preferring to suck up to public-employee unions rather than enforce their own authority over law enforcement. This buck-passing went nuclear after the George Floyd homicide when city council members pretended that they had no control over the police and that the only solution was to get rid of them.

The voters of Minneapolis can restore accountability in next week’s election. Rather than pass the city council’s charter amendment, they can vote it down with enough ferocity to make the council members aware of their own responsibilities for managing the city, including its police department, rather than act as though their positions require nothing more than woke posturing on social media. That would require everyone in Minneapolis to take civic function seriously in the first place, and given that they just re-elected Omar to another term in the House … color me pessimistic.

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