Dispatch from Somaliland

well, lots of police forces have their shameful moments, eh, Greenwich?

Minneapolis Police Chief Grovels After Flagging ‘East African’ Crime In City

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara apologized at a press conference Thursday after he previously discussed crime committed by “groups of East African kids.”

…. “The Somali community here in Minneapolis has been welcoming and has shown love towards me, and I appreciate it,” O’Hara said. “Over the last three years we have been working together to try and address some of the real serious problems that we have in our community.”

“We have to be honest at times with the problems that we’re having in our community, and we need our community to help us fix those problems together because it’s real and it’s serious,” O’Hara added later. “At the same time, if people have taken anything that I have said out of context in a way that’s caused harm, I apologize, and I’m sorry for that because that’s not my intention at all.”

O’Hara told WCCO that part of the problem was gangs, as well as the fact that many of those committing crimes, ranging from vandalism to carjacking, were not from the city. Prosecutorial and judicial leniency in Minneapolis have also made addressing crime difficult, according to Alpha News.

“They aren’t the poor kids from Minneapolis that are our residents, these are kids coming down in mommy’s Mercedes-Benz to Dinkytown, and they don’t know where they are,” O’Hara told WCCO.

O’Hara said that the person killed in the Oct. 31 shooting and one of those wounded were not from Minneapolis.

“Groups of kids, groups of East African kids that are coming from surrounding communities and not just one community, kind of all over the place,” O’Hara said in the Nov. 11 interview.

Trigger warning — or should that be hypocrisy alert? Either way, we present for your amusement a tale from the same city, 10 days go:

Democrat Official Pushing Leftist Criminal Reforms Gets Carjacked, Demands ‘Consequences’

Democratic Minneapolis City Councilman Jamal Osman was carjacked days after winning reelection on a liberal criminal justice reform platform, Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Tuesday.

A 15- and 16-year-old threatened Osman with mace on Monday, stole his car, crashed into other cars and a fire hydrant and ran on foot before police captured them, O’Hara said in a press conference. Although Osman’s Nov. 4 campaign promoted “restorative justice programs for low-level offenses,” the use of “alternative” responses to some 911 calls, “violence prevention programs” and other liberal priorities, he stressed that those who robbed him must face repercussions.

“I’m not a legal expert, but there has to be some kind of consequences with the action,” Osman told reporters. “If individuals know they can get away [with] this kind of heinous behavior or crimes, they’re going to continue doing it again.”

One of the juveniles who targeted Osman was already “known” to police, and the pair were involved in another carjacking earlier that evening, O’Hara said.

“Didn’t really think it was going to happen to me,” Osman said with a chuckle.

They never do.

If you’re curious, the full story of poor Osman’s ordeal is here:

Nearly a week after sailing to re-election, Minneapolis Council Member Jamal Osman was carjacked Monday by two teenage boys, who seemingly targeted victims at random throughout the city in a violent crime spree.

In an interview Tuesday afternoon, Osman recalled how he was talking on the phone in his parked, rented Volkswagen near Lake Street and Portland Avenue, near a new coffee shop on the southern edge of the ward he represents. Around 8 p.m., he saw two boys get out of a vehicle in front of him. One opened Osman’s passenger door and threatened to mace him if he didn’t give them the keys and get out. The other indicated he had a gun. 

“They looked scared,” Osman told the Minnesota Star Tribune. But also, he said, they “looked dangerous.” 

Osman decided it wasn’t worth fighting and “quietly cooperated.” He said the vehicle was rented for his campaign to transport people to vote.

“If it can happen to a council member, it can happen to anybody,” Osman said. “We should not normalize this kind of behavior in the city of Minneapolis.”

Police tracked and arrested two teens – ages 15 and 16 – after they crashed the stolen vehicles into parked cars and a fire hydrant in south Minneapolis following a pursuit. Investigators recovered a replica firearm and later tied the boys to at least three carjackings, including Osman’s, committed over a six-hour period Monday.

In a news briefing Tuesday afternoon, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara outlined the sequence of events, where “totally senseless” behavior left residents terrorized and one woman battered and bruised. 

The spree began near Loring Park, where the boys reportedly stole a Subaru Outback, whose owner inadvertently left the key fob inside. Over the next several hours, the teens are believed to have used that Subaru to commit multiple robberies and carjackings, including one downtown where they assaulted a motorist and smashed his cellphone.

But the most egregious incident occurred on the city’s North Side, where a mother and her young daughter were carjacked near N. Elwood and Humboldt Avenues around 5:15 p.m. The suspect jumped in the front seat as the mother was attempting to strap her toddler in the back — repeatedly punching her in the face as she clung to her child inside the moving vehicle.

That 31-year-old mother, Jackie Aguirre, was leaving work at a nearby daycare facility and heading back to her parked car in the adjacent lot on Humboldt just after dark. She had turned the vehicle on and was preparing to leave when another vehicle rolled into the lot, Aguirre told the Star Tribune.

“This guy appears out of nowhere,” Aguirre recalled in a phone interview, noting that his face was obscured with a COVID-style mask. 

The teen hopped in the front and began to drive. Aguirre jumped in the back, lying on top of her 18-month-old child huddled on the floor. He turned and assaulted her before crashing about a block away and fleeing on foot.

“I was trying to protect my little daughter,” she said, adding that her child was not physically harmed. But the attack left her riddled with bruises on her face and leg and shook her sense of security. Aguirre is scared to walk to her car alone at night now.

“I know the world is dangerous...but I’ve never experienced nothing like this,” she said. “I couldn’t have reacted different. It was my baby, you know?”

“This incident is another reminder of the work ahead to keep all of our communities safe,” he wrote. At the news conference, he called on parents to take on a more active role in their children’s lives and noted that there must be consequences for these “heinous crimes.”