(Updated 02/04/16)
In their own words, the purpose of Meet Minneapolis Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (our city’s tourism department) is to “market, sell and maximize the visitor experience of Minneapolis for the benefit of our community.” They’ve done a great job! In fact, I propose that they have done their job too well! With their help, our city has received distinctions such as, “The Healthiest City in America” by Forbes magazine and “The Best City in America to Live” by Patch of Earth online aggregate magazine and “Best City for Bikes” and “The Gayest City in America." (Has anyone ever been to West Hollywood or San Francisco? They have a gay phonebook!! Trust me, Minneapolis is not the gayest city in America by far!)
In their own words, the purpose of Meet Minneapolis Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (our city’s tourism department) is to “market, sell and maximize the visitor experience of Minneapolis for the benefit of our community.” They’ve done a great job! In fact, I propose that they have done their job too well! With their help, our city has received distinctions such as, “The Healthiest City in America” by Forbes magazine and “The Best City in America to Live” by Patch of Earth online aggregate magazine and “Best City for Bikes” and “The Gayest City in America." (Has anyone ever been to West Hollywood or San Francisco? They have a gay phonebook!! Trust me, Minneapolis is not the gayest city in America by far!)
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While all these titles were being thrown around and championed, we were all distracted by the truth of our city. Like the fact that our city has the third highest number of reported rapes of any city in the country. Keep in mind, 68% of sexual assaults are not reported to police.
According to KSTP, in 2015 rape in Minneapolis was up 22%, murder was up 16%, and aggravated assaults were up 10% with over 450 rapes within Minneapolis city limits within the last 11 months. Meet Minneapolis has mastered the smoke and mirrors trick! Look over here at our bike paths but don’t mind the guy being beat up and robbed.
The city has been marketed so well that when I tell locals that our violent crime rate is higher than San Diego and Philadelphia, according to a Star Tribune story published on Dec. 24th, they look at me with a glazed over look in their eyes as if to say, “That's a bunch of crap! It's not true.”
No one realizes that the city of Minneapolis does not prosecute any felony arrests (shootings and stabbings are examples of felony arrests). They only prosecute petty crime. Felony arrests are kicked to Hennepin County for prosecution in county court. Unfortunately, Hennepin county has a history of reducing felonies to misdemeanors or dropping charges altogether due to over crowded prisons. For example, the perpetrator involved at the shooting a few months ago at Fifth and Hennepin, where over 30 shots were fired and three people were hit, had been arrested over fifty times before that shooting. Thats 5-0!! He was still walking the streets. How is that possible? This is a common occurrence in Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis. And guess what, it looks a lot better to visiting tourists and companies looking to relocate downtown. Minneapolis - City of Lakes has a lot better ring to it than, Minneapolis - City of Aggravated Assaults!
Click HERE to watch a short video on Violent Crime in Downtown Minneapolis
Marketing of cities is occurring nation wide. Take Detroit for example. Check out their tourism board’s website. It’s a great looking website that’s currently advertising a tour of Detroit’s “sassy street art scene.” Calling your city’s graffiti problem “a sassy art scene” and sending tourists on a tour of it by bus is merely genius marketing and it does a hell of a job of distracting tourists from Detroit’s “sassy” crime rate! Detroit has the highest number of aggravated assaults and violent crimes in the country (Don’t worry Minneapolis, we kicked Detroit’s ass in number of reported rapes per population).
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| An example of marketing a city. Detroit tourism board's website advertising a tour of "Sassy street art!" Otherwise called, 'graffiti.' |
In Minneapolis we’ve got bike paths and farm-to-table. Winter sports and sustainability! Psssst….. We're also currently ranked worst state in the United States for racial integration, “with black residents lagging their white counterparts in education, income and homeownership,” according to a recent Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal article. I have a feeling that even our leaders are starting to believe our own tourism-department-created marketing.
Marketing is hype. It’s trickery. It has a place and a purpose. Marketing sells wrinkle creams, cars and even sells tourists on cities. The citizens of Minneapolis were not the intended target of Meet Minneapolis' marketing hocus-pocus but somewhere along the line we drank their Kool-Aid. It's time now for you to open your eyes and see the truth behind the curtain that is the marketing machine. Denial solves nothing. We must face our problems in order to find solutions before it's too late. - L.A. Nik
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