Nolte: Three Sexual Assaults After Minnesota Neighborhood Rejects Cops

A bunch of white liberals in a Minneapolis, Minnesota, neighborhood vowed to stop calling the police, and now there have been three sexual assaults.

Last month, the left-wing activists who inhabit Powderhorn Park, a neighborhood not far from where George Floyd died while in the custody of Minneapolis police, decided it was time to stop calling the police over property crimes — even after being car-jacked by armed thugs.

If you recall, the result was an immediate disaster. Within days, the local park was flooded with homeless people, some 300 of them, who turned what had been a nice place for kids to play or to walk your dog into an encampment where no one felt safe any longer to let their kids play or walk their dog.

“I’m not being judgmental,” one woman told the far-left New York Times back in June, but she no longer allows her young children to play in the park. “It’s not personal. It’s just not safe.”

One Powderhorn resident was anguished over his panicked call to the police after being car-jacked, and vowed to never do it again. “Been thinking more about it,” he told the Times. “I regret calling the police. It was my instinct but I wish it hadn’t been. I put those boys in danger of death by calling the cops.”

A number of residents, for obvious reasons, said they no longer felt safe, not even in their own homes. Nevertheless, they vowed to reject involving the police. Instead, they would call social workers, such as the one who didn’t answer when one Powderhorn resident found a former mental patient in his apartment elevator.

Well, that was June.

Three weeks have since passed, and June is now looking like the good old days in good ole’ Powderhorn Park.

That homeless encampment has grown from 300 to nearly 600.

There have also been three sexual assaults. One on June 26, just two days after the Times’ article ran celebrating these anti-cop residents, and two more on June 28 and July 5.

On top of this filthy encampment, what had been a nice family park now also has 24 portable toilets, 50 trash containers, and three handwashing stations.

Yahoo reported, “The Park Board has also boosted maintenance staffing to support cleaning and assistance for food shelf services” at an additional cost of $15,700 per week.

Even the far-left Minnesota Star-Tribune has been forced to describe the situation as a “powder keg,” where crime is escalating and good people are fleeing:

One multiunit property owner whose building is within 100 feet of the encampment is frustrated by what she sees as good intentions toward the homeless that have opened the door to increased crime and risks to public health.

Susan Viergever said some of her tenants “have had their cars broken into and their [homes’] windows tampered with, to name a few incidents. … Our residents are moving out. Yes, taxpaying residents are moving out of Minneapolis because there is no one protecting their rights to a safe neighborhood.”

As I wrote last month, this is why this anti-police madness can and will never last.

Once you remove the police, criminals immediately take advantage and life becomes intolerable. People can get used to pretty much anything, and human beings are amazing that way, but one thing we can never live with is no peace of mind, no place where we feel safe and comfortable, where we can exhale and relax.

And what about property values?

Can you imagine what this situation is doing to home values? I feel no sympathy for the stupid people who brought this on themselves, but what about those in Powderhorn Park who did not sign on, who have children, who — like many of us — have their life’s work and future invested in their home?

No matter where or how it is tried, leftism always fails… It fails every single time, and when we forget that, the human cost is devastating.

Because we’ve enjoyed 25 years of wonderfully low crime rates, everyone forgets how we got here. Everyone forgets what life was like before 1995. Well, anyone stupid or unfortunate enough to live in a Democrat-run city is about to get an unforgettable lesson in how forgetting the past dooms your future.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.