Star Trib comments
This letter was submitted to the Star-Tribune in reference to a shooting death in Uptown, the trendy/artsy area of Minneapolis. There's more on that shooting here.
I found deputy chief Tim Dolan’s comments about the recent murder in Uptown curious, to say the least. He implied that this murder was unique because the victim was “innocent.� The robbery related shooting death of a McDonalds employee walking home from work in north Minneapolis last summer received much less press coverage, so does that imply he was less “innocent�? If a murder victim is African-American, young, and male, or even mixed up in gang activity, does that mean that they are “guilty� and thus deserving of such a fate? A murder is a murder, and the fact that we try to distinguish them along such lines says much about the lives that are and are not valued in our society.