“Defund the police.”

That’s what they said and the city of Minneapolis apparently decided to listen. The city council voted to do just that, but don’t worry, they said. No bad would come from defunding police, apparently.

Unfortunately, we live in the real world, and as Ed Morrissey writes over at our sister site, Hot Air, reality is a mother.

Ho hum, just another couple of months in the reduced-policing utopia known as Minneapolis. With fewer police on the street, that must mean that residents in the city that made “abolish the police” official policy must be enjoying a more peaceful and free life, right? Well, some are — and the rest are paying for it:

Over the past two months, Minneapolis police have logged more than 125 carjackings in the city, a troubling surge that authorities had largely linked to small groups of marauding teens. But an increasing number of adults have been arrested in recent weeks for the same crime.

Within a one-hour period Saturday morning, police reported three separate carjackings in southeast Minneapolis, including one where an elderly woman was struck on the head. Such attacks are up 537% this month when compared with last November.

“The numbers are staggering,” said police spokesman John Elder. “It defies all civility and any shred of common human decency.”

Five hundred and thirty seven percent in a year. Let that statistic roll around in your noggin for a few moments. What could possibly have happened over the past year to allow that sort of explosion in armed robberies, which is exactly what carjackings are? Could it be the city council’s push to get rid of the police, and the exodus of law-enforcement officers that resulted from it? Oh, let’s not always see the same hands.

Honestly, who with a functional brain didn’t see this coming?

As I’ve noted before, even if you take every dime you remove from the police budget and put it toward crime prevention measures, it’ll take years before any of them show any potential results.

Defunding law enforcement now is idiotic, and now we can quantify just how idiotic.

I mean, a 537 percent increase? That’s insane, but also think about how few carjackings there were during the lockdown. For months, few people went anywhere, which meant fewer opportunities to jack someone’s car. It was also more difficult to mill about on foot while waiting for a potential target.

That means it’s very likely these numbers have skyrocketed in just the last half of the year, making it even more insane.

It looks from here like the whole “defund the police” thing has turned into the trainwreck we all expected it to become. Don’t get me wrong, the Minneapolis PD has issues that need to be addressed, but they’re damn sure not going to be able to reduce crime with smaller budgets and less manpower.

Plus, it seems the bad guys are starting to move into wealthier parts of the city, so that means it’s even more difficult to avoid it.

If you’re in the Minneapolis area, keep your firearms close and ready no matter what part of town you find yourself in. After all, it’s not like there are enough police to save the day.