By LIBOR JANY AND LIZ SAWYER, STAR TRIBUNE STAFF
June 27, 2020 — 11:50 PM
… So far this year, ShotSpotter activations and 911 calls about gunshots in Minneapolis have more than doubled from a year ago, according to a Star Tribune analysis of police data.
ShotSpotter was invented in 1992 by John C. Lahr, a seismologist in Silicon Valley, during the year that East Palo Alto was the Murder Capital of America.
Out of 3,218 such shots-fired calls this year, nearly half have been filed since George Floyd was killed on May 25.
Through Tuesday, 190 people had been shot across Minneapolis. That’s up 47% from this time last year and significantly higher than the five-year average for the same time span, according to MPD data.
In one case that underscores how entrenched the problem is, authorities say a 17-year-old boy who was shot in the leg last week has been wounded in three shootings over the past month and a half.
OK, has he been shot 3 times or 4 times in the last month and a half? Heather read that as 4 times, but it might only be three.
The surge in gun violence is not confined to Minneapolis. In St. Paul, reported firearm discharges have more than doubled when compared to this time last year. The first two weeks of June were particularly violent, as shots-fired calls quintupled from 2019.
Thirty-one people in the capital city have been shot in the last month alone — a third of the year’s overall victim count. Homicides are already on track to surpass 2019’s all-time high in shooting deaths.
“My fear is that this is just the beginning,” said Steven Belton [Right] president of the Twin Cities Urban League, while visiting the scene of a quadruple shooting near Merwin’s Liquors in north Minneapolis. “Parents are overwhelmed,” he said, likening the financial and emotional toll of COVID-19 to a “pressure cooker.” “People are unemployed, stressed out because of that … looking for a way to release it.”
Thurman Barnes, assistant director of the New Jersey Center on Gun Violence Research, a think tank based out of Rutgers University, said the ripple effects from Floyd’s death may have contributed to increasing violence in Minneapolis, much as it did in Baltimore after the in-custody death of Freddie Gray in 2015. Floyd’s case, he pointed out, followed the deaths of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery in Kentucky and Georgia, respectively, two other widely publicized killings of African-Americans.
It’s almost as if each time the media hypes Black Lives Matter narratives, they wind up getting more blacks murdered by other blacks…
… “What they do is personal and it’s driven by social media,” said Ramsey County undersheriff Mike Martin, who serves as president of the Minnesota chapter of the Midwest Gang Investigators Association. “They’re still driving around selling dope on the street, but now they can wear face masks and not look out of place.”
Some youths appear emboldened by the ability to conceal their identities in public, Martin said, posting videos online flaunting cash and drugs, “laughing like it’s a game of cops and robbers.”
“My fear is that this is just the beginning,” said Steven Belton [Right] president of the Twin Cities Urban League, while visiting the scene of a quadruple shooting near Merwin’s Liquors in north Minneapolis. “Parents are overwhelmed,” he said, likening the financial and emotional toll of COVID-19 to a “pressure cooker.” “People are unemployed, stressed out because of that … looking for a way to release it.”