Who's down with U.P.P.?

A few years ago, my friend and Northern Alliance Radio Network colleague Mitch Berg brilliantly coined the phrase "Urban Progressive Privilege."

A summary: 

Like the concept of “white privilege” (which, conventional wisdom tells us, that “whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege”), the first rule of Urban Progressive Privilege is “I don’t believe there is such a thing”; it’s the water in which the Urban Progressive swims. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have Urban Progressive Privilege. I have come to see Urban Progressive Privilege as an invisible and group package of unearned assets that I can count on using daily, but about which it’s hard to be anything but oblivious.

Urban Progressive Privilege is like an invisible weightless NPR tote bag of special permissions, immunities, secret handshakes, Whole Foods gift cards, a virtual echo chamber accompanying everyone who has that privilege, filtering out almost all cognitive dissonance about political, social or moral questions, and a virtual “cone of silence” immunizing them from liability for anything they say or do that contradicts the group’s stated principles.

This immediately leapt to mind when reading how the proggie infested Minneapolis City Council is incredulous over citizen concerns about lack of police response. 

 

The meeting was slated as a Minneapolis City Council study session on police reform.

But for much of the two-hour meeting, council members told police Chief Medaria Arradondo that their constituents are seeing and hearing street racing which sometimes results in crashes, brazen daylight carjackings, robberies, assaults and shootings. And they asked Arradondo what the department is doing about it.

"Residents are asking, ‘Where are the police’?” said Jamal Osman, newly elected council member of Ward 6. He said he's already been inundated with complaints from residents that calls for police aren’t being answered.

“That is the only public safety option they have at the moment. MPD. They rely on MPD. And they are saying they are nowhere to be seen,” Osman said.

Just months after leading an effort that would have defunded the police department, City Council members at Tuesday’s work session pushed chief Medaria Arradondo to tell them how the department is responding to the violence.

The number of reported violent crimes, like assaults, robberies and homicides are up compared to 2019, according to MPD crime data. More people have been killed in the city in the first nine months of 2020 than were slain in all of last year. Property crimes, like burglaries and auto thefts, are also up. Incidents of arson have increased 55 percent over the total at this point in 2019.

To anyone paying a bit of attention, this is pretty simple. Resources are woefully low among the MPD. With the department being under siege (including having the 3rd precinct burned to the point of being uninhabitable) and vilified, many officers have chosen to take early retirement, transfer or leave the profession altogether. As such, they're having to scramble to beef up personnel on patrol, including transferring people from other areas of the P.D. 

Chief says they have had around 100 separations this year, compared to around 45.

— Eric Chaloux (@EChalouxKSTP) September 15, 2020

Council President Lisa Bender, who three months ago basically said having an expectation of public safety when calling 911 is "privilege," made an unsubstantiated claim that officers are deliberately not arresting people committing crimes out of defiance. Well, again, if officers are being stripped of much of their ability to restrain citizens, I would certainly understand if they're even the slightest bit hesitant to make arrests for fear of at best losing their jobs and at worst inciting more riots if someone posts video footage of a detainment. 

I hope the citizens of Minneapolis have this fresh in their minds come municipal elections next year. While they are in genuine fear of the increasing violent crime rate within their city while grappling with the uncertain response time of police, the folks who represent them on the City Council can always order up some of that private security when things get rough. 

Urban Progressive Privilege is a real thing y'all. 

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