Midwest
Minnesota Dems allegedly let tax dollars fund terrorists as police left without money to protect public: cops
As violent crime endangers communities across Minnesota, police say they were left stretched thin and underfunded while state leaders directed millions elsewhere, a gap now drawing sharp scrutiny from public-safety experts and police union leaders.
That gap is under the microscope as the state deals with a massive fraud scandal involving hundreds of millions of dollars, including allegations of taxpayer money finding its way to terrorist group Al-Shabaab in Somalia, all under the nose of Democratic leaders.
Randy Sutton, a police veteran and founder of The Wounded Blue, told Fox News Digital the crisis extends far beyond one agency or city.
“The public safety is at risk… we are in a criminal justice crisis in America,” Sutton said. “Political leadership is destroying public safety through their ideology.”
BALTIMORE SEES STAGGERING CRIME DROP AS DEMOCRATIC PROSECUTOR HOLDS REPEAT OFFENDERS ACCOUNTABLE
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara addresses more than one hundred uniformed law enforcement officers while waiting for the release of an officer who was shot in the line of duty in north Minneapolis, Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023, outside North Memorial Health Hospital in Robbinsdale, Minn. (Aaron Lavinksy/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
Mark Ross, president of the St. Paul Police Federation, says Minnesota is living that crisis in real time.
“We’ve been down anywhere from 50 to over 100 officers since 2020, and we just haven’t recovered from that,” Ross told Fox News Digital. “Right now we’re about a thousand police officers short in the state of Minnesota, and we’re on pace to lose another 2,000 to 2,500 over the next few years.”
The staffing shortages come as Minnesota recorded 170 murders in 2024, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), only slightly below the year before, with firearms involved in nearly 75% of those killings. Statewide, carjackings rose 5.5% and rapes increased 5.2% from 2023 to 2024. Assaults on peace officers also jumped up 1.5%.
Ross said recruitment and retention have reached a breaking point, not only in St. Paul but statewide.
WALZ BEARS ‘FULL RESPONSIBILITY’ FOR $1B FRAUD SCANDAL, GOP CHALLENGER DEMUTH DECLARES
Police in Minnesota are struggling with staffing shortages, experts said. (Minneapolis Police Department/Facebook)
“The overall landscape for policing in Minnesota has gotten really, really competitive. We’re losing officers to other departments paying more and offering greater incentives.”
He said the state’s massive fraud losses, now the subject of multiple federal investigations, have worsened long-term pressures on public-safety agencies.
“These billions of dollars could have been spent on public safety, but it’s gone… and we’ll never see that money again.”
TIM WALZ CALLED OUT BY WASHINGTON POST FOR REFUSING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL
Sutton, who tracks crime trends nationally, said the shortages could not come at a worse time.
“Last year, more than 85,000 American officers were assaulted… every single day an officer is being shot,” Sutton said. “We’ve never seen volume like this.”
WATCH: Police veteran warns public safety is ‘at risk’
Both experts warn that Minnesotans may not fully grasp the extent of the public-safety crisis, especially in the metro areas where crime is concentrated. While violent crime dipped slightly in greater Minnesota, the BCA reports a 1% rise in violent crime across the seven-county Twin Cities region, including Minneapolis and St. Paul, where police staffing has been hit hardest.
WALZ ‘DERELICT LEADERSHIP’ TO BLAME IN $1B FRAUD SCANDAL WITH ‘HAUNTING REMINDS OF WATERGATE’: GOP CHALLENGER
“People are afraid to even report crime… and some police agencies aren’t reporting to the FBI,” Sutton said. “The figures are skewed. We don’t even have an accurate picture of violent crime.”
Ross said St. Paul officers are doing “more with less” even as community expectations increase.
A spokesperson for Gov. Tim Walz defended the administration’s record, pointing to what they described as unprecedented public-safety investments across Minnesota.
MINNESOTA’S ANTI-FRAUD SPENDING HAS QUIETLY BALLOONED, LEAVING TAXPAYERS TO PAY FOR FAILURE TWICE
Tim Walz speaks onstage during the 2025 SXSW Conference and Festival at the Austin Convention Center on March 8, 2025, in Austin, Texas. (Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images)
“The Governor signed the largest public safety budget in state history, investing money in every single police department in the state,” the spokesperson said. Walz’s office also noted Walz’s efforts to fund a new State Patrol headquarters and the recent groundbreaking of a new state crime lab, adding that “Minnesota was recently ranked as one of the safest states.”
The governor’s office also pushed back on claims that the state’s high-profile fraud cases affected law-enforcement resources. Critics argue those losses drained taxpayer dollars that could have supported public safety, but the administration rejected that characterization.
“The fraudsters stole money from programs like Medicaid that are funded primarily with federal funding, so police funding is not affected,” the spokesperson said.
NATIONAL GUARD ISN’T THE ONLY WAY TO SHUT DOWN VIOLENT CRIME IN OUR CITIES
Walz’s office added that, “The Governor has made public safety a top priority for the state, providing hundreds of millions in funding for cops.”
Ross said the governor’s claims do not reflect what officers experience on the ground.
“Those are all projects that need to be done, but what we’re looking for is continued funding all the time. Not one-time funding.”
LIZ PEEK: MASSIVE MINNESOTA WELFARE HEIST PROVES DEMOCRATS CAN’T POLICE THEIR OWN MESS
He strongly rejected the claim that fraud had no impact on public-safety dollars.
“You can’t frame things that way. It all comes from the same pool of money. Those are tax dollars,” he said. “I think taxpayers would not be amused by that response.”
Ross said many officers fear political repercussions more than they fear criminals.
DEM-APPOINTED EDUCATION OFFICIALS FACE NEW SCRUTINY AS FEEDING OUR FUTURE SCANDAL WIDENS, TRUMP TARGETS FRAUD
“There is a legitimate fear they might be prosecuted or terminated for doing their jobs, even when they’ve done everything correctly.”
“The first thing cops think during a use-of-force incident is: ‘Am I going to jail for this?’”
Sutton echoed that sentiment on a national scale.
MINNESOTA GOVERNMENT WORKERS BLAME WALZ FOR ‘MASSIVE FRAUD’ AMID ALLEGATIONS AGAINST SOMALI COMMUNITY
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, left, talks with Michael Wilson, right, three years after George Floyd’s death at George Floyd Square, Thursday, May 25, 2023, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
“Officers are more afraid of their own leadership than of the criminal element and that is the saddest part of this whole story.”
Ross said fewer highly qualified candidates are applying, and some who might make exceptional officers simply refuse to enter the profession due to the political climate and scrutiny.
“You’re not going to get the big number of super-qualified candidates when the hiring pool is this shallow,” he said. “People would love the work and be great at it, but they don’t feel supported.”
MINNESOTA TAXPAYER DOLLARS FUNNELED TO AL-SHABAAB TERROR GROUP, REPORT ALLEGES
Ross said meaningful change must start with leadership at all levels — city, state and departmental.
“It all starts with leadership, political leadership, department leadership, union leadership. We need people to get up and lead.”
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Despite recent improvements in recruitment, he warned, “we have a long way to go.”
Sutton agreed, adding that until elected leaders prioritize public safety above politics, “communities will continue to be in danger.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of the Minneapolis mayor and police chief for comment.
Stepheny Price covers crime, including missing persons, homicides and migrant crime. Send story tips to stepheny.price@fox.com.
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Drone video shows dug‑up yard at former Michael Lock home
Drone video shows a dug‑up yard at a Milwaukee home once owned by Michael Lock, following a police search for possible homicide victims.
Milwaukee police on Monday, April 20, began digging up a home once owned by notorious Milwaukee drug dealer Michael Lock.
The dig marks another chapter in Lock’s long criminal history in Milwaukee, which has included convictions for homicide, drug dealing, kidnapping, torture and running a prostitution ring.
As of 6 p.m., April 20, police had partially dug up the concrete driveway and yard in Lock’s former home. Lock has been convicted of murders of other drug dealers whose bodies were found under concrete slabs at a different home he owned.
As the dig continues, here’s what to know about Lock:
Who is Michael Lock?
Lock was the head of a murderous criminal organization known as the “Body Snatchers” and one of the leading criminal operators in Milwaukee until his 2007 arrest.
Over the course of a decade, Lock’s organization sold large volumes of cocaine, tortured and killed other dealers, prostituted women across the Midwest and ran a mortgage fraud scheme.
A jury convicted Lock in July 2008 in the homicides of two drug dealers in 1999 and 2000, whose remains were found in 2005 under concrete slabs in the backyard of a home once owned by Lock at 4900 W. Fiebrantz Ave. He has also been found guilty of running a prostitution ring, various kidnapping and drug dealing charges and mortgage fraud.
Where is Michael Lock now?
Lock is is serving multiple terms of life in prison at Waupun Correctional Institution without the chance of parole.
Where are Milwaukee police digging on April 20?
Milwaukee police confirmed they are executing a search warrant at the home on 4343 N. 15th St. in Milwaukee’s north side. City tax records show the property is owned by Shalanda Roberts, formerly Shalanda Lock, Michael Lock’s former wife.
Why are police digging up the yard of Lock’s former home?
There has long been suspicion on the part of law enforcement that there are additional bodies buried under the yard. In 2011, police dug another Milwaukee yard looking for remains.
In that warrant 15 years ago, investigators said at least four victims are buried somewhere in Milwaukee. Before that, police had dug a half-dozen other yards. Police have found no remains in the other digs.
Who lives at the property now?
It is unclear if anyone currently lives at the North 15th Street property. Shalanda Roberts told the Journal Sentinel she owns the property where police are digging, but it is a rental and she lives out of state now.
She said she has no information on the dig and has not spoken to her former husband in years.
Read the Journal Sentinel’s past coverage on Michael Lock
The Journal Sentinel documented the case against Lock in a five-part investigative series, “The Preacher’s Mob,” published in 2009.
You can read the series below:
April 21, 2016.
Ten years later, that day still doesn’t seem real to me.
I was sitting in the newsroom of The Montclair Times in the early afternoon when word came that Prince had died.
I was incredulous. One of my musical heroes was gone. No way.
I was skeptical because I am a reporter. But also because it was Prince — a superstar so secretive and controlling of his music and public image that you could imagine he would have to give his permission to let the world know of his demise.
As the day passed, videos showed grieving fans standing outside his home and music studio complex, Paisley Park, not far from his beloved Minneapolis. That’s when the reality dawned on me.
Prince Rogers Nelson had gone 2 the afterworld at only 57 years old.
He was gone so young — he had so much more music in him to record, release and perform in public for an adoring audience. He died alone after collapsing in an elevator at his complex.
Those things made me sad.
But I was also annoyed at myself. For not being a better aficionado of his music — by never seeing him in person and not collecting every piece of music he ever recorded.
After a few days of listening to the radio and online to “Purple Rain” and “1999” being played ad nauseam, I also heard lesser-known cuts like the heartbreakingly melancholic and sadly appropriate “Sometimes It Snows In April.”
When I heard the depressing reports that he died due to an accidental fentanyl overdose, I resolved to pay proper tribute to The Purple One.
I would go to Minnesota on a Prince Pilgrimage.
‘Nothing Compares 2 U’
April to June 2016.
I said I would go to Minneapolis, to Prince’s home ground, to pay my respects to him. I didn’t think I would go through with booking a ticket on United Airlines from Newark for the weekend before his birthday.
I had used up most of my vacation days and had one to spare, but not another to stay through Prince’s actual born day. Just my luck.
At least I was fulfilling a commitment to an artist I adore.
I wouldn’t say I was a fanatic for his Royal Badness (one of the many nicknames he carried in his lifetime). But he’s one of the few musicians who really moved me.
I heard his music growing up in the 1980s in Jersey City as a matter of course when the radio dial was set on R&B or pop music stations like KISS-FM and Z-100.
When Prince’s sixth studio album, “Purple Rain,” was released in the summer of 1984, it was a revolution that pushed the rising star into the stratosphere.
I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing the screeching guitar and chanting of Prince that provided the intro to “When Doves Cry,” or the rhythmic strumming of the guitar and the clashing electric drums that start off the album’s title song.
However, it was watching “Purple Rain,” the movie, that put me on the Prince Express. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t act to the satisfaction of critics or that the plot seemed corny. I was just absolutely enthralled by him and his band, The Revolution, tearing through numbers that were a mélange of funk, rock and new wave, while in a musical rivalry with another badass, Morris Day, and his group.
My 13-year-old self also developed a crush on the leading lady, Apollonia Kotero, for her sultry voice and because she stripped nude to purify herself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. It blew my mind then (and still blows my mind now).
Prince would remain in the background of my music listening as the years passed.
If it wasn’t his voice, it was the voice of others singing his songs, because he was as adept a songwriter as he was a performer. “I Feel for You” (Chaka Khan), “Manic Monday” (The Bangles) and “Nothing Compares 2 U” (Sinéad O’Connor) are some of the major hits that came from his pen.
The first vinyl album I ever got, in my teens was “Around the World in a Day,” his 1985 anti-commercial and purposely obscured follow-up to “Purple Rain.”
In college and afterward, whenever I had a few bucks in my pocket, I bought various albums on CD: “Diamonds and Pearls,” “The Black Album,” “The Gold Experience” and “Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic,” and “Lovesexy” on cassette. I paid for a ticket to watch what may be Spike Lee’s worst movie, “Girl 6,” in part to hear Prince’s music.
But it wasn’t just Prince’s virtuoso musicianship that made me a believer. It was also his personality, confounding and infuriating at the same time, that intrigued me.
I chatted with NYU classmates about how he slept no more than two hours a day because he worked so hard in the studio, playing all the instruments and producing every track. Yet he looked like he hadn’t aged a minute.
You would hear stories of him boosting artists that he admired by having them play on his albums and in concert. Then you would hear stories of his unkindness and controlling nature toward his bandmates and others in his inner circle.
He was a man who attained a level of stardom that demanded he bask in the spotlight at all times. Then there was the man who operated in secrecy and would alternate between the public, large-scale appearances and his surprise late-night concerts at small venues.
He was a true Gemini.
In the late spring of 2016, I was taking in all of who Prince was, as he was no longer among us mere mortals, while preparing to pay homage to him.
‘MPLS’ and ‘Uptown’
June 3 to 5, 2016.
“Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Alive! (And It Lives in Minneapolis)”
Prince’s 1993 song popped into my head as the United Airlines plane landed at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport around 10:30 p.m. on June 3.
In the morning, my Prince Pilgrimage was underway as I took a bus near my hotel toward downtown Minneapolis.
While on the bus, I could see out my window why he spent nearly his entire life in or near this city, and created songs like “MPLS” and “Uptown” that presented his hometown to the world.
The widest boulevards I have ever seen outside of Paris. The streets where you saw yards with no fences and many trees. The heat normally expected in late spring was tempered by the Minnesota coolness.
I had an itinerary of the stops I needed to make on a sunny Saturday.
First Avenue and 7th Street Entry was a Greyhound bus depot converted into two music venues starting in the early 1970s. On the wall outside, a giant painted gold star etched with the name PRINCE. Only fitting, as the “Purple Rain” movie was filmed inside First Avenue.
539 North Newton Ave. in the northern part of Minneapolis is where a teenage Mr. Nelson lived with his dad for a short time until he was thrown out.
When I stopped by to view the three-bedroom house, an African American couple was chatting up a man standing outside the house. After they were done, it was my turn to engage Maurice Phillips, Prince’s former bodyguard, who married his boss’ sister Tyka.
I went into reporter mode to get the inside scoop from him on my favorite recording artist.
What was Prince like? “He’s just a normal kind of guy like us. He put on his pants the same kind of way.”
Are there other thoughts about Prince you want to share? “No. But I know Prince is looking down. I got to get done with this yard work.”
Later, I made my way to the Parkway Theater in South Minneapolis for what I thought was the best way to mourn the man: “This Thing Called Life — The Prince Tribute.”
Julius Collins, on lead vocals, was backed by members of Prince’s 1990’s band, the New Power Generation, along with other singers and instrumentalists. They regaled attendees with renditions of Prince songs while photos and videos of him played on a screen behind them.
Collins’ voice boomed as he sang, “Good times were rolling/She started dancing in the streets,” (“Uptown”), “Do I believe in God?/Do I believe in me? — Controversy” (“Controversy”), and “Police ain’t got no gun/You don’t have to run” (“DMSR”).
It was the perfect end to day one of the pilgrimage. I got back to my hotel in the late evening to have a meal and prepare for day two.
I should have skipped the takeout from the nearby fast-casual joint, because the resulting heartburn had me down for the count — and nixed plans to visit the last stop on the pilgrimage: Paisley Park.
Yet I had a Plan B for the following day, so I wouldn’t let Prince down.
At 2000 Fourth Avenue South in Minneapolis is Electric Fetus, the iconic record store where Prince reportedly made his last public appearance and last music purchases five days before he died.
On my shopping list was his shopping list:
- Stevie Wonder, “Talking Book.”
- Chambers Brothers, “The Time Has Come.”
- Joni Mitchell, “Hejira.”
- The Swan Silvertones, “Inspirational Gospel Classics.”
- Missing Persons, “The Best Of Missing Persons.”
- Santana, “Santana IV.”
I got only three of those CDs, as the others were (unsurprisingly) sold out. I couldn’t have regrets, because, in a weird way, it was the closest to being there when he was there, the closest I would ever get to meeting him.
His famous opening line to “Let’s Go Crazy” also came to mind: “Dearly beloved. We are gathered here today to get through this thing called ‘life.’”
RIP Prince (June 7, 1958-April 21, 2016).
Ricardo Kaulessar covers race, immigration, and culture for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: kaulessar@northjersey.com
Twitter/X: @ricardokaul
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — State Sen. Andrea Hunley, a Democrat representing Indianapolis, has announced her candidacy for a bid to run for mayor of Indianapolis in 2027.
Hunley, who had previously teased a mayoral run, has scheduled a launch event for May 8 as her official kickoff her campaign to lead the city, said her campaign website. The Assistant Minority Leader in the Senate announced in January that she would not seek another term in the Indiana Senate, to which she was elected in 2022.
Hunley’s website says, “Indianapolis is my city. Our city. As someone who knows this city, someone who has served this community as a public school teacher leading our children and supporting families, I am committed to the future of the people of Indianapolis.
“Indianapolis is the economic driver and a key cultural hub for our state. Our city boasts creative entrepreneurs and long-standing local businesses, vibrant neighborhoods and corporate headquarters, community-centered nonprofits and public schools. I aim to champion a better quality of life by listening to and working alongside the people, businesses and neighborhoods that make up our great city.”
Mayor Joe Hogsett has not disclosed if he’s seeking a fourth four-year term.
City-County Council Member Vop Osili in January announced his campaign for the Democratic nomination.
In the same month, Pike Township Trustee Annette Johnson announced her intention to seek the Democratic nomination to run for mayor. She’s running this year to continue in the trustee’s job, which she has held since 2019.
Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears, who had been mentioned as a possible Democratic candidate for mayor, announced in January he would seek another four-year term this year for his current job. However, he did not rule out running for the Democratic bid for mayor in 2027.
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