The Minnesota Clown Car

Five “teens” flee from a stolen Mercedes after it crashes into St. Paul Police squad cars.

Over the summer, I was tracking the phenomenon of “feral youth” roaming the countryside unsupervised, creating mayhem and wreaking havoc.

We now have an example of a mid-winter variant. WCCO-TV reports,

 Five teenagers were arrested Tuesday in St. Paul after ramming into police cars and then fleeing from the stolen Mercedes-Benz they were driving, police said. 

Police booked two 16-year-old boys, a 17-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl, and a 17-year-old girl into the Ramsey County Juvenile Detention Center.

Police followed the car from north Minneapolis to St. Paul.

Given the ages of those apprehended, we will likely never learn their names or hometowns. Nor are they likely to serve any jail time or suffer any negative consequences.

Given that two handguns were recovered from the scene, we are probably seeing something more than a simple “teens out for joyride in a stolen luxury European sedan.” The Minnesota of 2024 has drifted a long way from the world of Corvette Summer.

KSTP-5 notes that the car had been reported as carjacked by Minneapolis police. KARE-11 reported on the incident, but only to reassure its viewers that Minneapolis carjackings are down.

Keep in mind that “carjacking” was only invented as a category in September 2020, as previously, the practice was non-existent in the area. So the idea that carjackings are “down” is bizarre.

True enough, the official Minneapolis crime dashboard website reports only 18 carjackings so far in 2024, versus 30 at this point last year and 38 in the 2021-2023 January average. However, the broader category of “car thefts” shows a January 2024 increase over the three-year average.

The dashboard shows that, for the first 30 days of the year, rates of assault, burglary, vandalism, and robbery are also trending upward, along with sex offences. Yikes!

Homicides are merely keeping pace. Four have been recorded in Minneapolis so far, matching the three-year average but falling short of January 2023’s six.

Keep in mind that all of these crime levels are well above the pre-Covid/George Floyd averages of the late 2010’s.

What will February bring?