The city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, where state Gov. Tim Walz's wife enjoyed the magical scent of "social justice" as riot smoke wafted through her open windows in 2020, has a pretty severe copper theft problem now:
Thieves continue to gut public streetlight poles and make off with their precious copper innards, leaving neighborhoods eerily darkened in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
[...]
Minneapolis has about 22,000 streetlights. About 450 of them are out — from the Midtown Greenway to Lake of the Isles Parkway to the Bancroft neighborhood on the city’s south side, where officials held their news conference.
Thieves have hit a total of 17 miles of streetlights. Replacing the stolen copper wire with less desirable aluminum wire will cost the city $40,000 per mile.
So what's the "solution" from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey? Crack down on criminals? Not really -- it's just to spend a lot of money replacing what's being stolen and calling it "good governance":
The criminals will appreciate additional copper being provided for them to steal repeatedly:
"You need lights in a city to make sure that people are safe and feel safe, both the reality and the perception of safety," said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
The outage in Bancroft represents just a few of the 450 city street lights the city said are now dark due to copper wire theft.
"That's incredible. That is really slippery behavior on the people that are doing the work, eliminating the wire from the lights," said Kappenman.
On Thursday, Minneapolis city leaders announced $1 million from the city's contingency funds will be used to hopefully help fix the problem. The money will go toward hiring more electricians and more material for repairs.
The keyword is "hopefully."
Keeping criminals in jail? A novel concept, but lefty "leaders" like Mayor Frey would obviously rather just keep spending taxpayer dollars to replace the things that keep getting stolen.
The progressive definition of "good governance" is why nobody should ever vote for proggressives.
That would require arresting criminals, and the Democrats lately have been treating them (along with illegal aliens) as if they're the party's core demographic.