Minneapolis residents are forming armed neighborhood

Minneapolis residents are forming armed neighborhood watches as shootings triple after George Floyd's death

* Armed neighborhood patrols have been forming in Minneapolis in the weeks since George Floyd's death at the end of May.

* Floyd's death has spurred a new surge in violence and crime. According to The Wall Street Journal, the number of shootings in June tripled from last year's number.

* Residents in one neighborhood have even installed a gate on their street to keep crime out.

The Minneapolis city council voted late last week to cut more than $1 million from the police budget.

Minneapolis has seen a sudden rise in violence in the wake of the police-involved killing of George Floyd at the end of May.

In response, communities in the Minnesota city have started forming neighborhood patrols to deter crime, some of them armed, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Some Black Lives Matter movement leaders have proposed defunding the police as a means to prevent police-brutality incidents, taking taxpayer money from departments and funding other organizations that might be better equipped to deal with issues traditionally under the police's purview.

The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) says violence in the city has risen in the city in the wake of Floyd's death.

The number of shootings in May, June, and July have all risen compared to last year, The Journal reported, citing MPD data. June saw a total of 75 shooting incidents, compared to 24 in the same period last year, The Journal reported.

Tania Rivera, 30, told The Journal her neighborhood started to see a surge in shootings and drug-related crimes in late June, so they installed a gate on their road to keep outsiders out. The police signed off on the gate, so long as emergency responders could get through if needed.

"It got to the point where crime had no consequences," Rivera was quoted saying. "It was being done deliberately out in the open. Drive-through drug dealing, drive-through prostitution, everything from gunshots to assaults to sex out in the public. Everything you didn't want your neighborhood to look like."

yahoo