And in Minneapolis just this week I had to wait on the phone 45 minutes to file a police report I've heard nothing back from after being attacked in a road rage incident. The person I did finally reach was definitely a decent human, but not trained to receive the kind of report I was giving and thought she shouldn't be taking it at all. (besides a sense of insecurity, lots of tiny glass pricks, a brief blood pressure spike, and a broken window I am well enough)
I have doubts that the state is doing enough to protect me or to address crimes that have happened, not because of some panicked sense of irrational fear, but because I had to spend an hour with shards of glass in my pants on hold on Wednesday along with the delightful experience of vacuuming glass out of my hair at a car wash. The last time I had the displeasure of talking with the city attorney, they declined to do anything about death threats I had received from a known source.
Uptown, NE, all kinds of areas have changed drastically for the worse over thr past few years.
Having a friend of a friend casually explain how he just leaned his seat back when he heard gunshots sitting in a drive through was really telling. That, and a family coworker us ending his lease early and moving out of NE minneapolis after a bullet came through the wall and narrowly missed his cat's head. Another coworker had a car window smashed in overnight in uptown because he forgot to not lock thr car doors when he parked on the street.
I understand that country living isn't for everyone, but I don't think you could pay me enough to move back to a dense urban setting.
I spent the last four years up until about a month ago living in Mountain View, CA. A place so expensive that it was almost completely safe. Also intensely isolating, especially for a single person. I left for both personal and family reasons to come back to the place where I felt an actual sense of community.
I could have my own home in the country essentially for free, but I don't think I could keep my sanity. Maybe with a wife/dog/child some day but being among a sea of somewhat radical conservatives alone hundreds of miles of anywhere I'd like to go outside of my own home... let's just say I'm done being isolated for now.
What I think is that if the local government and police were actually doing a good job, the problems would be considerably reduced. I don't think the "abolish the police" party or the "law and order" party can either achieve this. But what it would take is leadership that is capable of understanding problems and enacting solutions and a population that is more interested in understanding their world than chanting slogans about it.
And in Minneapolis just this week I had to wait on the phone 45 minutes to file a police report I've heard nothing back from after being attacked in a road rage incident. The person I did finally reach was definitely a decent human, but not trained to receive the kind of report I was giving and thought she shouldn't be taking it at all. (besides a sense of insecurity, lots of tiny glass pricks, a brief blood pressure spike, and a broken window I am well enough)
I have doubts that the state is doing enough to protect me or to address crimes that have happened, not because of some panicked sense of irrational fear, but because I had to spend an hour with shards of glass in my pants on hold on Wednesday along with the delightful experience of vacuuming glass out of my hair at a car wash. The last time I had the displeasure of talking with the city attorney, they declined to do anything about death threats I had received from a known source.
I'm thinking of buying a gun.