We didn't start the fire It was always burning

Let's get real and stop pretending 

As we have all seen, crime rates have skyrocketed in the US and many Cities have lost businesses. Take for example San Francisco’s Union Square which has historically been a major commercial hub in the heart of San Francisco’s downtown. It serves as a venue for many public events and is seen as a go-to tourist attraction in the city due to its high-end shops, department stores, and hotels. But lately, many well-known chains have announced exits from the area, including CB2, Anthropologie, and Nordstrom. According to data provided to CNN by market research firm Coresight, nearly 40 retail stores have closed in Union Square’s zip code since 2020, while dozens more have closed in the surrounding area. In addition to skyrocketing crime, and loss of tourism, the employees have not returned.  It's not hard to imagine why, you would want to walk past open drug use, step over the homeless and human feces.

Oakland California is suffering a similar fate with dozens of businesses leaving, including for the first time in its 75-year history In-N-Out Burger closing a restaurant due to safety concerns for their employees and customers, this was the only In-N-Out in Oakland.

Now let's look at Minneapolis, it's where the proverbial fire started, or as the media called it “mostly peaceful protests” started, and where the first calls to defund the police came from after George Floyd died.  This is where the riots started and where more than 1500 businesses damaged during the riots have remained closed.  Now a

Department of Justice reported that as of May 2023, there were 585 sworn officers in the Minneapolis Police Department compared to a force of 892 in 2018, a decline of about 34%.

Minneapolis reaches $600,000 settlement with 12 hurt in George Floyd protests  - Looks lawful to me. 

The settlement includes an injunction that bars the city from arresting, threatening to arrest or using physical force — including chemical sprays, flash bang or concussion grenades, and foam-tipped bullets — against people who are engaging in lawful protests. It also limits

officers’ use of chemical agents to

disperse peaceful demonstrators. And it requires that officers have their body cameras recording and unobstructed while at protests, according to the ACLU.

Since when are riots considered “lawful protest”, especially when they are burning buildings and police cars?  Looks to me like the “mostly peaceful protest” turned violent.

Let's look at the results from the “mostly peaceful protests,” after looking at the stats below we can see a lot of, mostly peaceful crimes.  Now that they have tied the police hands and lost 34% of their police force, this should not be a surprise to anyone.  

The crime rate in Minneapolis:

• Overall crime: 5,713 crimes per 100,000 people (137.8% higher than the state average and 143.5% higher than the national average)

• Violent crime: 1,155 crimes per 100,000 people (316.2% higher than the state average and 197.8% higher than the national average)

• Property crime: 4,558 crimes per 100,000 people (114.5% higher than the state average and 132.8% higher than the national average)

Many cities suffered from the riots but who has suffered more from defund police, it has been the minority population, with fewer officers there was a crime vacuum.  Even though I hate dividing every issue by race in this instance we have to fact-check it by race because of BLM and the media they have divided us.

There is not much data available about the ethnicity of who is committing most of these crimes but we do know that the minority communities have suffered the most.  I found one recent study where they were forced to remove the data from the study even though they still believe it to be true.  What is sad is without real data you can’t solve the problem.  I am including the one study from 1983 which we can assume since violent crime continues to increase the percentages below would follow a similar track.  I’ll let you decide.

Journal Victimology Volume: 8 Issue: 3-4 Dated: (1983) Pages: 161-169 “In about 80-90% of the cases, the Black victim was killed by another Black, and about 52% of the murder victims were acquainted with their assailant.“

So even if the trend from 1983 has not continued what we do know is the gun deaths among kids, not white or black kids, just kids have increased by 50%.  We also know kids are dying no matter if you killed yourself or someone else killed, you're still dead.

Reminds me of the Billy Joel song “We didn't start the fire It was always burning, since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it.”

So if we didn’t start it, who did?  Well it’s not one person and it didn’t happen overnight either way no one is stepping up with solutions, but plenty are willing to pour fuel on the fire.  What we need to do is stop lying to ourselves and look for solutions ourselves and not ways to divide us.  Wah wah wah no one is helping us, well you voted for them.  

Mathew 12:25 But Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. 

In recent years we have seen politicians and the media try to divide us, and from where I stand, they have done a great job. 

"We didn't start the fire It was always burning, Since the world's been turning"