Luke Hellier’s Lie about 2002 vs 2009 Minneapolis Crime Stats

It should come as no surprise that Luke Hellier has problems with easily documented facts based on his recent track record. Here’s yet another example of Luke Hellier making stuff up to support his ill-conceived narrative regarding RT Rybak’s tenure as Mayor of Minneapolis:

That’s an interesting statement from Luke Hellier that’s relatively easy to prove or disprove. Using the same data source Hellier turns to for crime data, here’s what I see when comparing 2009 to 2002:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like crime is down 11.63% in the City of Minneapolis since 2002. Things aren’t perfect. Some forms of crime are up. Others are down. But overall, crime is down in Minneapolis which is a fact that counters Luke Hellier’s unsupported, undocumented tweet.

The above statement from Luke Hellier blew my mind. While aggravated assaults are undeniably up in Minneapolis in 2009 vs 2002, I have no idea where he came up with that statistic, so I asked:

He didn’t respond. To project a total for 2009, if we took the 11 months of aggravated assaults to date and added 1/11th to that, we’d have an increase of 285 over 2002, which is nowhere near the 700 Hellier projects (Do they teach division at St. John’s?). The actual number we’ll likely hit in 2009 is lower than that since December tends to be a lower than average month for most types of crime, including aggravated assaults. Notice that the annual dips in aggravated assaults tend to happen at the end/start of the year:

Historically, aggravated assault crimes in Minneapolis look like this year by year:

Looking at that chart, it seems like this form of crime peaked and reverse course during RT’s tenure. I wouldn’t expect Luke Hellier to draw the same conclusion since that wouldn’t fit his anti-Rybak narrative.

As I mentioned before: I think there is a role for opposition websites like Minnesota Democrats Exposed, but their influence relies entirely on the intelligence, authority, and influence of the site’s author(s), which is where MDE has slipped considerably. Luke Hellier’s credibility is seriously in question based on his inability to rely upon facts to support his anti-Rybak arguments.

I consider Luke Hellier’s factually incorrect comments offensive to my mayor, RT Rybak, the Minneapolis Police force who works hard to keep us safe and solve crimes, and residents of Minneapolis including myself. Luke Hellier’s misleading statements regarding Minneapolis’s crime patterns are a a disgusting political move for shallow political gains. The Minnesota GOP should be embarrassed by Luke Hellier’s behavior.