Back in June, I read a piece in The New York Times that struck me as odd and rang false to me.

Written by Radley Balko, who used to write for the Washington Post and now has his own Substack, the data he presented seemed compelling. It also didn’t fit with my own experience, given that the city about which he wrote–Golden Valley, MN–is 3 blocks away from me and has seen quite a crime spike in recent years.

NYT: Half the police force quit. Crime dropped. https://t.co/a1CUCqiy1L#RacializedPolicing #GeorgeFloyd

— Karen Van Drie 🟧 (@worldlibraries) July 3, 2023

Let me tell you about Golden Valley for a moment, and why the story was so striking to me. Located right next to Minneapolis, it is a Yin to Minneapolis’ Yang. Wealthy, quiet, well-run, and proudly the “gayest city in Minnesota” filled with DINKs (dual income no kids), it has traditionally been a very peaceful place, if not a “charming town” as the subheadline of the story suggests. It isn’t a “town,” but an inner-ring suburb.

During the pandemic crime spiked, as Minneapolis youths ran wild both within the city and the suburbs. Carjackings in particular went through the roof, and Golden Valley wasn’t spared the crime spike being so close to the city. My grocery store is a mile away–in Golden Valley. My drug store is in Golden Valley. The nearest gas station is in Golden Valley. I live in Crime Central, and Golden Valley is 3 blocks away.

It was a miracle that the city had avoided the crime, although there is a park between Minneapolis and Golden Valley that serves as a geographic barrier.

Golden Valley is a suburb of about 22,000 that in many ways is as idyllic as its name suggests. The median annual household income tops $100,000, there’s very little crime, and 15 percent of the town is devoted to parks and green spaces, including Theodore Wirth Park on its eastern border, a lush space that hosts a bike path and a parkway.

But the town’s Elysian charm comes with a dark past. Just on the other side of the park lies the neighborhood of Willard-Hay. There, the median household income drops to about $55,000 per year, and there’s quite a bit more crime. Willard-Hay is 26 percent white and 40 percent Black. Golden Valley is 85 percent white and 5 percent Black — the result of pervasive racial covenants.

“We enjoy prosperity and security in this community,” said Shep Harris, the mayor since 2012. “But that has come at a cost. I think it took incidents like the murder of George Floyd to help us see that more clearly.” The residents of the strongly left-leaning town decided change was necessary. One step was eliminating those racial covenants. Another was changing the Police Department, which had a reputation for mistreating people of color.

You can already see where this is going: no racial covenants have been enforced since 1968 when they were made illegal. To say that Golden Valley had an epiphany after the George Floyd riots and eliminated racial covenants is…a bit of a stretch, as it turns out Balko’s entire premise that half the police force quitting led to a decrease in crime.

In other words, he is selling half-truths and lies.

Balko spins a tale about horrible racism running through the police force, and officers quitting when the town hired a Black police chief. It is quite the tale of woe and intrigue, that ends happily with crime dropping due to the reduction in the police force and the triumph of a good Black man over mean racists.

Only it is all crap, as the Minnesota think tank Center of the American Experiment shows with just a few phone calls that Balko apparently didn’t bother to make. (John Hinderaker of PowerLine is its president, by the way).

Less cops, less crime https://t.co/E3h6hqdrLT

— David Strom (@DavidStrom) November 7, 2023

In July, a New York Times opinion piece about Golden Valley, Minn. received much attention. In “Half the Police Force Quit. Crime Dropped,” author Radley Balko quotes Golden Valley Police Chief Virgil Green as saying, “crime was down” despite mass defections from his police force. Upon examination, the claims are dubious.

First, “half the police force quit” doesn’t accurately describe what has happened to the once proud and capable police force that is budgeted to have as many as 31 police officers and supervisors.

In 2022, some members of Golden Valley’s city council and its mayor decided that the police department needed reform through various diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. The ensuing transformation led to an unprecedented number of police officer resignations over the past year and a half.

Ah, DEI initiatives. With the police shortages elsewhere leading to massive signing bonuses, a bunch of cops left for greener pastures after the invasion of woke initiatives. As I recall, there was a whole brou-ha-ha where lots of accusations of racism led to anger within the department and lots of officers said “screw it, I can make more money and get less grief elsewhere.”

You can imagine how woke Golden Valley is. It is bad.

So what happens when a small city doesn’t have enough police officers to perform the tasks necessary? According to Balko, crime plummets as the citizens discover that self-control is a wonderful thing and they no longer live under the Jackboot of racist cops.

Yeah, well, no.

This level of staffing required the city to contract with the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office to cover police calls 50 percent of each day. Given the history of what has occurred in Golden Valley, the city should prepare for a long and arduous process as it attempts to attract potential police officer applicants, as has been the case in Minneapolis.

The second claim, “Crime is down,” is true only if you rely solely on data collected and reported by the Golden Valley Police Department (GVPD). But the disclaimer on the police department’s crime statistics site clearly notes: “The below reports do not include data from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office.”

Oops. If you do as Balko does and just go to the Golden Valley Police Department website, it sure looks like those crime numbers dropped.

Except the city is policed 50% of the time by the Sheriff’s Department, and those numbers aren’t included. What happens when they are?

The combined data comparison from January through June 2022 and 2023 indicates:

• Calls for Service are up 16 percent.
  Arrests are up 21 percent.
  Citations (misdemeanor offenses) are up 40 percent.
  Crimes Against Persons are up 49 percent.
  Crimes Against Property are down slightly at 4.8 percent.

Well, crimes against property are down, so there is that. But if you are a person, not a TV,  a 49% increase in crimes against persons kinda sucks.

This is what we call pushing The Narrative™. Balko has been a reporter for years, has written two books, and knows how to do research. Either he is a drooling idiot–and he had to go through the New York Times’ fact-checkers so they had to be idiots too–or they did a sleight of hand, knowing they were not telling the truth.

The author of the American Experiment’s analysis, David Zimmer, knows of what he speaks. He was a Hennepin County Sheriff’s Deputy for 33 years, and I’ve spent some time with him (not about this story) and he is as sharp as they come.

Mr. Zimmer served 33 years in local law enforcement with the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, retiring as a Captain. During his law enforcement career, Mr. Zimmer served as a deputy and a supervisor in areas including the Jail, Courts, Patrol/Water Patrol, Investigations, and Tactical Command.

Radley Balko? He is a criminal justice reform advocate, doing his best to push the defund the police narrative. I can’t say if he is sharp as they come, but I doubt he was so stupid that he didn’t know he was playing fast and loose with the facts.

This, my friends, is how it is done. Narrative building in action.