Alondra Cano is an agitator by choice. Her name might be vaguely familiar to those outside Minneapolis, but she was well-known in Minnesota. Cano was an elected council member when Minneapolis burned following George Floyd’s death. Cano was an early supporter of BLM and had an ethics complaint filed against her for allegedly using public resources for political purposes. Cano took the laboring oar on the “dismantle the police” movement. 13 days after violent riots cascaded across America, she and eight other Minneapolis council members appeared in a Powderhorn city park and demanded an end to policing. The daughter of illegal aliens, Cano had earned a degree at the University of Minnesota (an institution she calls “the belly of the beast”). Her liberal arts degree “with a concentration in management, Chicano studies, popular education, and the politics of identity” seems to have low utility, other than as a vehicle for agitation. Cano excelled at agitation. She was a ringleader of the defund movement.
While at the university she was part of groups protesting closing the “General College” and was part of a group called “Prosecute the Police.”
Cano was named to the council’s public safety committee and was one of the loudest voices demanding that the police department be dismantled in favor of “public safety” employees. That agitation led to petition; that petition ended with a ballot referendum.
However, like contestants in a beauty pageant wishing for “world peace,” reality reared its head. Crime in the city once called “Murderopolis” soared. With the city still smoldering from the Floyd riots and the police being blamed for not policing, police officers started quitting en masse. The Justice Department began an investigation of the department and will the blessing of the City Council. The Gang of 9 were pleased. Residents were not.
KG Wilson, a longtime resident of the Twin Cities, said police withdrew from violent neighborhoods in the aftermath of Floyd’s killing — a common sentiment among locals.
“The criminals were celebrating. They were getting rich,” he said. “They were selling drugs openly.”
A referendum to defund and dismantle the police championed by Cano and Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey and most of the city council was approved for the 2021 ballot. Also on the ballot was the position of County Attorney. The long-sitting County Attorney decided not to seek reelection and the position of “top prosecutor” was open.
A year after the Floyd riots left city blocks in ruins, the demand to dismantle the police had chilled but was still front and center on the ballot. Residents, seeing an increase in violent crime including murder, rejected Cano’s cause by a wide margin. Minneapolis residents also had a choice for County Attorney – a leftist former top public defender and no fan of the police, named Mary Moriarity, or former judge, Martha Holton Dimick.
Judge Dimick had made her position on the referendum clear. She was a hardy “no” on the defund the police question. Moriarity refused to say how she would vote – but it seemed clear what her position was. Hennepin County, in which Minneapolis is located, elected Moriarty. Oddly, residents had rejected the “defund” movement but also embraced a leftist as their top prosecutor. In the 18 months since taking office and vowing to employ “progressive methods” to justice, residents seem to have buyer’s remorse. Moriarty has been under heavy criticism for her soft-on-crime approach – including violent crimes.
In her first cop shooting case, Moriarity’s knee-jerk response was to charge the cop with murder. She was forced to drop the charges because she lacked evidence to support it. Her response to dropping the charge was expected: She wasn’t sorry she falsely accused the cop; she was very sorry she didn’t have evidence to send him to prison.
Her method of justice is to jail fewer criminals and divert others to “programs.” After her election to the $300,000-a-year job, in her first year in office, diversions for adult cases increased by 81 percent. In one instance, Moriarty was quick to offer two killers who murdered a mother, a juvenile court plea deal. The public was outraged. So the the governor who took that case away from her.
According to veterans of the County Attorney’s office, morale is in the tank; 150 attorneys and employees have quit since Moriarty’s reign began.
Martha Holton Dimick, the former judge who Moriarty defeated in 2022, said Moriarty is making decisions based on gripes she developed as a career public defender battling with attorneys from the same office she now leads.
“I told people on the campaign trail that this was her revenge tour,” Dimick said.
Moriarty’s elevation to an office that she seems ill-equipped to run is part of the wave of leftists elected to prosecutorial positions as a response to the myth that police target blacks for being black. Residents are jaded and many want Moriarty out, but short of a recall, she has two and half years left in her term. Many of the Minneapolis council members who clambered to dismantle the police department are no longer on the council.
What happened to Alondra Cano? She was one of the louder council voices demanding the end of the police in lieu of “public safety.” But she didn’t seek reelection to the council the following year. In 2023 she joined Dean Phillips’ campaign for President. When Phillips was asked about Cano’s “defund the police” agitation history, his office said:
“He supports the vast majority of law enforcement professionals who do difficult and dangerous jobs to protect the people of this country,’ the statement said. “He has also been clear that we need reforms that end the disproportionate killings of people of color, particularly Black Americans, during encounters with law enforcement.”
Phillips, like so many people on the left, continues to repeat the myth that blacks are targeted by cops. It’s a myth – a baldfaced lie, but feelings often ignore data.
What Cano is doing now, isn’t clear. Some defund proponents who were on the council in 2019, and agitated in the Powderhorn Park, are still on the council now. “Artist” Jerimiah Ellison was with Cano at the park in 2020 and remains committed to dismantling the police. Before the 2021 election, Ellison was asked if police officers should respond to “violent crimes”. He refused to answer, which itself is an answer. Ellison ran for reelection and won.
Ellson said:
We need community safety measures that replace conventional wisdom with actual wisdom. We need to address the root causes of youth violence. We need to tip the scales of power between the publicly funded, uniformly trained police force and the racially + economically diverse, collective of individuals that make up a neighborhood.
If you know what that means, more power to you, but I read that as an “I want world peace” platitude and a meaningless word salad.
Minneapolis was “ground zero” for the “defund the police” movement. That didn’t work out. Minneapolis tried a version of progressive justice by electing a leftist prosecutor. 18 months into that experiment, criminals are pleased. Residents are less than happy. Maybe defunding the police and electing leftists as top prosecutors isn’t the best idea?
Best thing about this article is that the criminal George Floyd is still dead. Yay!