Trump’s immigration policies deserve plenty of criticism. But voting against a tool that helps solve shootings is a real unique way of making the point.
There was a little trouble with the sink behind Arlene’s counter the other morning.
Nothing dramatic. Just a slow drip underneath, the kind that does not look like much until you find out it has been soaking the cabinet for three weeks.
Earl got down on one knee and reached for the shutoff valve. Old man Henderson leaned over and informed him that it was technically called an angle stop.
Earl looked up at him.
“Does it stop the water?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then I suppose we’re close enough.”
That is generally how we handle things up here. You can debate the terminology after you keep the floor from rotting out.
Down in Minneapolis, they have a slightly different system.
The City Council recently voted 7–5 to move ahead with a $300,000 federal grant for updated ballistics equipment. The equipment helps investigators compare shell casings and figure out whether the same gun may have been used in different shootings.
The city’s current equipment is getting old, and police officials said Minneapolis could lose access to the national ballistics network if it is not replaced.
That seems like the sort of thing a city dealing with gun violence would want to avoid.
But the federal grant paperwork included language about immigration, including the phrase “illegal aliens.” Five council members objected strongly enough that they voted against moving ahead with the grant.
Now, the Trump administration deserves a good share of criticism here.
They have a way of taking a fairly ordinary piece of government business and stuffing it full of culture-war language until everybody is mad before they reach the second page. A grant for tracing bullets probably did not need to double as a political statement about immigration.
There is just no call for that.
And Minneapolis officials are right to be wary of federal immigration enforcement. Immigrant residents need to be able to call the police, report crimes and cooperate with investigators without wondering whether City Hall is working as an extension of Washington.
But according to the city attorney, accepting the grant would not violate Minneapolis’ separation ordinance.
So the city was not being asked to round anybody up. It was not being asked to turn police officers into immigration agents.
It was being offered money for a machine that helps solve shootings.
That is where a person has to wonder what exactly the five “no” votes were supposed to accomplish.
Donald Trump was not going to change his immigration policy because Minneapolis turned down a ballistics grant. The language in federal law was not going to disappear. Immigration agents were not going to pack their bags and head home.
Minneapolis would simply have older equipment and fewer tools for connecting one shooting to another.
That is a real unique way of standing on principle.
They mean well, I’m sure, but refusing a crime-fighting tool because you dislike the fellow offering it is a little like turning down a fire hose because you do not care for the fire chief.
The house still burns.
Fortunately, seven council members managed to separate two different questions.
They could oppose Trump’s immigration policies and still accept money to help investigate gun crimes.
That does not seem terribly complicated, but these days government has a way of making a three-step job require a seminar, two resolutions and a press conference.
Minneapolis can protect immigrant residents. It can keep local police out of federal civil immigration enforcement. It can condemn language it considers offensive.
And it can still trace bullets.
The shell casings do not care what anybody calls anybody. They do not vote. They do not watch cable news. They do not have a position on the president.
They are evidence.
Back at the café, Earl had stopped the leak and was putting his tools away.
“So they took the money?” he asked.
“They did,” I said. “Seven to five.”
He nodded.
“Well, good.”
“Five voted against it because of the immigration language.”
Earl sat there for a moment, looking at the dry cabinet beneath the sink.
“Yeah, no,” he said. “I suppose the bullets were expected to appreciate the gesture.”
Trump can be wrong about immigration. Five council members can be wrong about the grant.
Both things can be true before Arlene has to warm up the coffee.
Nice writing, Lars. Hope you’ll keep blessing us with it down here. I’ll enjoy reading it between attending the seminars, reading the resolutions, and taking in the press conferences. Oh! Darn! Is that sink of mine leaking AGAIN?!?
It is amazing how many houses in this city (or cars) have been hit by bullets. It is like 20 percent of houses it is just insane.
Ballistic testing is very flawed science. They claim they are extremely reliable, but that’s debatable.
“Firearms examiners suffer from what might be called “Sherlock Holmes Syndrome.” They claim they can “match” a cartridge case or bullet to a specific gun, and thus solve a case. Science is not on their side, however. Few studies of firearms exist and those that do indicate that examiners cannot reliably determine whether bullets or cartridges were fired by a particular gun”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-field-of-firearms-forensics-is-flawed/
These five, and it would have been six, if CM Wonsley had showed up for work that day, are the CMs who will always find a way to disrupt, limit, discourage, and block anything that may, in anyway, be helpful to law enforcement. They have been consistent, and their voting record backs that up.
They are the Wonsley, DSA endorsed/ aligned voting block, which is about this, below. *
The only difference this time ( which interfered with a majority outcome for this block) is that Osman, our crime- adjacent, ill informed, and rarely prepared council member, ( who the DSA voting block knew they NEEDED, so easily gathered up when they made him VP ) decided this ONE time to do something right.
This is how slim the margins are now on the Mpls City Council.
*
https://www.dsausa.org/working-groups/abolition-working-group/
Excerpts…
DSA Political Platform
For all of the working class to achieve collective liberation we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state — from prisons and police themselves, to their manifestations in all forms throughout society.
We are committed to the horizon of abolition and the path leading us there. Our demands:
Defund the police by rejecting ANY expansion to police budgets or scope of enforcement while cutting budgets annually towards ZERO
End the criminalization of working-class survival
Freedom for ALL incarcerated people
(The caps in ANY, ZERO, and ALL are mine)