Ex-NYPD detective: Rise in crime in Minneapolis is 'self-inflicted'

Minneapolis is experiencing “self-inflicted wounds” as it pertains to the rise in crime, retired New York Police Department Detective Pat Brosnan told “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday as the city’s police department reportedly grapples with short-staffing.

“The city council, they were harboring a fantasy and masquerading, actually, as law enforcement experts and felt that they would be able to somehow defund the police, minimize the police involvement in deterring crime and somehow this wouldn’t happen, this violent uptick in gun violence and associated crimes,” Brosnan said.

The Minneapolis Police Department is fighting a rise in crime with a high number of officers on leave, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported.

More than 70 people have been murdered so far this year, police statistics show. According to the Tribune, about 500 have been shot since the start of 2020, making it the highest crime mix in more than a decade.

“It’s really simple. It’s a cost-benefit analysis,” Brosnan said. “And until crime becomes illegal again, because it is not illegal right now in these cities … you’re going to see continued, significant upticks in gun violence and associated crimes.”

"Resources are hemorrhaging. Our city is bleeding at this moment. I'm trying to do all I can to stop that bleeding," Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo reportedly said, asking council members for additional funds.

The committee ultimately approved the additional costs by a 7-6 vote, according to the report. But the proposal must now advance to a city council vote Friday.

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Arradondo said in mid-October that the department was down an estimated 130 officers compared with the same time last year, and he expected more departures by year’s end. A lawyer helping officers file for disability leave said at the time he’d helped process about 175 claims since George Floyd’s death, according to the Associated Press.

There have been growing calls to defund or dismantle police departments across the country after Floyd, a Black man, died in Minneapolis police custody. The Minneapolis Police Department specifically has been under a microscope in the wake of the May 25 police-involved death of Floyd, which sparked a renewed sense of outrage over the deaths of Black people at the hands of police.

In Minneapolis, a majority of city council members pledged to dismantle the department, though a city commission ultimately blocked the effort to put the issue before voters this November.

“They [Minneapolis city council members] were going to dismantle the police departments and defund the police departments,” Brosnan noted.

He added that those moves would have led to “a direct path to increased violence and, honestly, to destruction.”

“This whole concept of somehow the citizenry is going to be able to fend for themselves and just dismantle, diminish, demean, desecrate and ultimately defund and eliminate the police function is just sheer madness,” he went on to say. “And We’re seeing it now. The proof is in the pudding.”

He also pointed out that “all the major cities” are experiencing an increase in crime, saying “the numbers are through the ceiling.”

In New York City, for example, homicides this year have increased by 38.1%, with 399 people killed in 2020 compared to 289 the year before, according to NYPD data through November 8. Year-to-date, there has been a 94.3% spike in citywide shooting incidents, a 41.6% increase in burglaries and a 64.7% increase in grand larceny auto crimes.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio backed a city council vote in July to slash the police budget by $1 billion and pare down the force by eliminating some 2,500 officers, with no immediate plans of graduating a new class of officers from the police academy. NYPD retirements and resignations continue to mount.

Brosnan said that when officers “put their hands up to their individual state constitutions to protect and serve, they didn’t sign on for desecration, they didn’t sign on to diminishment, they didn’t sign on to be ignored and completely disempowered by their own commanders, the media, and the politicians.”

He added that “it’s really an extraordinary trifecta of disdain for law enforcement and the rule of law.”  

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Fox News’ Stephanie Pagones, Vandana Rambaran and The Associated Press contributed to this report.