Update on this case. WCCO reports: “The St. Paul Police Department says it’s taking over the investigation into four bodies that were found in a vehicle in western Wisconsin earlier this month, adding that the victims were believed to have been killed in St. Paul. … ‘While nothing could rationalize this loss, our Saint Paul officers will find the answers we seek, and ensure that anyone involved in this crime is held fully accountable,’ Mayor Melvin Carter said. … Last week, four felony counts of hiding a corpse with intent to conceal a crime were filed against 56-year-old Darren L. Osborne, of St. Paul. Thirty-eight-year-old Antoine Suggs was arrested in Arizona’s Maricopa County after he turned himself in.”
A synopsis of the Minneapolis police-amendment debate aimed at a national readership. In The Nation, Ibrahim Hirsi writes: “So what do you do with a department that abuses its authority and murders the citizens it’s sworn to serve? This is the question at the heart of the debate on policing in Minneapolis. There are two main groups on the opposing sides of the issue: centrist liberals who call for reforming the department and leftists seeking to dismantle it. … Both groups agree that the city’s police force has a problem. But how to solve that problem has remained a point of contention—one that’s led to months-long political feuds and legal battles over ballot language that will allow voters to decide this fall whether to replace the Minneapolis police force with a public safety agency. The latest episode came Thursday evening when the Minnesota Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling that knocked down the ballot question.”
Sahan Journal checks in on the Minneapolis Ward 5 council race. Hibah Ansari writes: “[Victor] Martinez, 35, is a City Council candidate in Ward 5. On this day, he wore a bright orange t-shirt that read, ‘Vote Victor Martinez,’ with shorts and sneakers. … It’s hard to boil down his politics into one word, he said, but he’s settled on ‘moderate Democrat’ for now, recognizing that it doesn’t exactly give him an edge in a town that boasts a progressive image. … Martinez is a Mexican American pastor at the New Generation Church, a part of the Assemblies of God. He’s been a youth pastor in north Minneapolis for the last 10 years. ‘If I try to be something that my history doesn’t say I am, I think people lose trust in you,’ he said. ‘I’d rather lose being real than win being fake.’”
Today we learned fun dot com exists and is headquartered in — where else —Mankato. The Mankato Free Press’s Tim Krohn reports: “Fun.com has grown into the world’s largest online-only costume retailer, with an army of workers needed — particularly as Halloween approaches — to fill orders for Ghostbusters, werewolves, zombies and other costumes. … But the dire worker shortage left CEO Tom Fallenstein scrambling for new ways to attract employees, including a new program to book about $500,000 in area hotel rooms to house workers from outside the area, including Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.”
In other news…
Waste not: “The Zero(ish) Co. Opens in South Minneapolis” [Minneapolis.St.Paul]
They want it that way: “Backstreet Boy laments ride-sharing apps, but offered favorable review of Lake Superior in Duluth visit” [Duluth News Tribune]
We vote for the ban on Sunday car sales: “Which rock will rule in Minnesota? Vote to decide what our state fossil will be” [Star Tribune]
