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":
Copper wire theft is a nationwide trend—and we’re tackling it head-on in Minneapolis. We’re stepping up with $1M from the City’s contingency fund to speed up streetlight repairs and restore safety.
— Mayor Jacob Frey (@MayorFrey) May 29, 2025
More repairs. More light. Safer streets.
That’s what good governance looks like. pic.twitter.com/RqhyjuhE04
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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."
Is this a joke? There's only 5 places in town they can recycle the copper to get money. Why don't you start arresting people?
— Jesse Oppenheimer (@Oppie4547) May 31, 2025
Perhaps you could consider arresting and actually jailing all the folks stealing copper?
— Jason Robertson (@JRobFromMN) May 30, 2025
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.
"Good governance is allowing 17 miles of copper wire to be stolen so that we have to spend more tax dollars to replace it." https://t.co/qu7klzEsHb
— J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) May 31, 2025
The progressive definition of "good governance" is why nobody should ever vote for proggressives.
Dude is trying to spin having 17 miles of streetlights in Minneapolis being out as a victory.
— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) May 30, 2025
This doesn’t happen when local officials actually enforce the law. https://t.co/lMmgCj2MaU
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.
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