Gov. Tim Walz expressed frustration Sunday with the fact that he’s being held responsible for Minnesota’s rising crime rates.
“I’m sure there’ll be a billboard up that says Walz caused the rain and the storms, much like we see with inflation,” the governor said during a WCCO interview at the Minnesota State Fair.
Gov. Tim Walz doesn't think he should be blamed for rising crime: “I’m sure there’ll be a billboard up that says Walz caused the rain and the storms." pic.twitter.com/m2cyp0XgXU
— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) August 29, 2022
“The fact of the matter is Minnesotans’ tolerance for crime is incredibly low. Minnesota was one of the three states with the lowest crime rates in America. The fact as it stands today is there are 45 states with higher crime rates than Minnesota,” Walz continued.
Walz then claimed he’s been using state resources like the Minnesota State Patrol to address crime for at least a year. According to some reports, he rejected pleas from a group of Minneapolis residents last September to send in the State Patrol or National Guard.
Walz was also asked if he has any regrets about shutting down schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Just to be clear: over 80% of our students missed less than 10 days of in-class learning. The vast majority of students were in. It depended again on population density. Many of these decisions were being made by local folks to be able to do what was necessary to keep them there,” Walz said.
Schools were closed from March 18 to March 27 in 2020 and then students learned remotely for the rest of the school year. As such, it appears the governor counts remote learning as “in-class” learning.
State test results released last week show students are continuing to fall behind. Nearly half of all students cannot read at their grade level and only 44.8% of students are proficient in math.
Anthony Gockowski
Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and wrote for the Daily Caller.
