Minnesota has seen this sickness before. Not a misunderstanding. A refusal.
In 2016 the daycare fraud was on the table. Shell sites. Meals that were never served. Public money walking out the door while the people paid to watch the door called the witness a problem. Years later a federal jury and a sentencing docket did what the hearings would not. Feeding Our Future. Roughly a quarter of a billion dollars. Eighty charged. On 1 October 2026 a former senior policy aide to the mayor of Minneapolis, Abdi Nur Salah, was sentenced to thirty-three months for about $1.66 million of it. The warning was early. The listening was late. Children were the excuse. The theft was the work.
The same mouth is open again. This time the excuse is a gun.
On 2 December 2025, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said on camera there were no roving Somali gangs, and that the claim was simply a lie. She is the prosecutor. The sentence was not a slip. It was a ruling issued without a courtroom.
The record did not ask her permission.
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said in July his office had identified twelve Somali gangs under the state test: three or more people, a name or a sign, and a pattern of crime. About three hundred people out of a population he put near one hundred thousand. Fourteen killings. More than one hundred shootings in two years. He handed the Star Tribune more than one hundred cases since 2023. Deputy Ben Seidel said the sets are tied to Somali gangs in Ohio and travel that road. That road is not new. A federal indictment in November 2010 charged twenty-nine people tied to the Somali Outlaws, the Somali Mafia, and the Lady Outlaws with trafficking underage girls between Minneapolis, Columbus, and Nashville. Seventeen arrests were in Minnesota. Sixteen years later the deputy described the same corridor. Anyone who calls that a rumor has not opened a file.
On 5 August 2026 the attorney general of this state, Keith Ellison, and Ramsey County Attorney John Choi sued two of the sets. Muddy, Minneapolis-based. The Ville, south metro. The Pioneer Press reported both are primarily Somali. The Ville file is 62-CV-26-5545. They sued because the sets had advertised “the biggest battle of the summer” for 29 August at the State Fair. The attorney general’s own 20 August release lists the acts. A Ville affiliate hunting Muddy members shot three people a block from the Fairgrounds on the last night of the 2024 Fair and pleaded guilty to second-degree assault. Gunfire at the Burnsville High School graduation on 6 June 2025. A riot inside Qamiria Coffee. The Metro State graduation shooting on 4 May 2026. Handguns and extended magazines at a Somali Independence Day festival. Seven of ten named men then agreed to stay out of a Safety Zone. A judge found three who did not are Muddy members: Nasrudin Abdirashid Warsame, Bilal Abdi Farah, Mustafe Yusuf Omar. Fletcher mailed 233 letters. After the Fair he said most of them did not show. The order expired. The sets did not.
That is not a pundit’s chart. That is the Democratic attorney general, in a caption, suing the thing the Democratic county attorney had called a lie.
Friday, 3 October, Eden Prairie. Homecoming. Police said the shooting was targeted and gang-related. Two Somali males, seventeen and eighteen, from St. Paul, not students, known to police. Three law-enforcement sources told KSTP it was Somali gang activity. The dance was canceled. No set named. No arrests. A temporary fairground order does not disband a gang. A headline does not either.
Then Edina tried the daycare move in public.
On 22 September, fifty-five casings on the basketball court at Our Lady of Grace. More than one shooter. No one hit. No arrests. Yancey Park in July was the other one. On 24 September Chief Todd Milburn said Somali teens were the victims, or had some level of responsibility, and that the shootings aligned with a pattern of gang violence. He did not yet know who fired. He did not need a focus group to know the pattern. On 5 October Mayor Jim Hovland told FOX 9 he was looking at a regional Somali youth gang problem, then warned residents not to blame families for the few. That warning is fair. Three hundred is not one hundred thousand. A family is not a set. The few are still a few with guns, and the few are who the meeting was for.
The city titled the meeting Community Conversation: Addressing Gun Violence.
Read that again. The chief had said gang. The mayor had said Somali youth gang. The agenda said gun. The church had already refused the room over campus safety. Two hundred seats at City Hall. Hennepin’s sheriff, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and the county attorney who had called the gangs a lie were on the program. People who sat through it described the rest. Speakers asked for more money for Somali youth, and in the same remarks asked that the Somali community not be the focus. The mayor praised the conversation. The tool stayed on the agenda. The set stayed off it.
That is the sickness. Not a missed fact. A broken mind that cannot hold a name if the name indicts the allies.
A gun is a tool. It has no post advertising a battle. It does not flash a sign outside a graduation. It does not hunt a rival a block from the Fairgrounds. It does not travel to Columbus. Calling this gun violence is the same trick as calling the daycare theft a paperwork problem. The object is innocent. The decision is not. The phrase protects the decision by prosecuting the object. It is how a county attorney, a newsroom, and a city agenda stay clean while a parking lot does not.
Blind denial is not kindness. It is how the next parent finds out from a canceled dance. The Somali families who are not in the three hundred are not served by a meeting that will not say the three hundred exist. They are used as the shield. Fletcher asked for their help and said he was not indicting the whole community. The denial class indicts anyone who repeats him.
We told you about the meals. You called it a smear until the sentences started. We are telling you about the sets. The attorney general has already sued them. The sheriff has already counted the dead. The chief has already said the pattern. The mayor has already said the problem, and then chaired a meeting that would not say it.
A constitutional republic does not survive on a public that agrees to be lied to for the sake of a quiet room. Truth is not cruelty. The lie is. It is getting people killed, and it is being spoken by the officials paid to stop it.
Say the name. Muddy. The Ville. Twelve sets. Fourteen dead. A homecoming. A church court with fifty-five casings. Or admit the phrase gun violence is the policy, and the policy is to wait for the next parking lot.
Phillip C. Parrish Freedom Talk with Phil phillip@parrish4mn.com (612) 460-1717