Minneapolis, Minnesota, is pretty much ground zero for the Defund the Police movement. Following the death of George Floyd, legions demanded the city defund the police department, and the city complied. I mean, the city council voted to disband the police department, for crying out loud.

In all of that lack of support for the police, did anyone really think it through? Did anyone guess where it would lead?

It leads to stuff like this.

Minneapolis reeled anew at another outbreak of carnage Saturday after three people were killed in overnight shootings, two of them outside a downtown nightclub where eight others were also wounded.

The gunfire, which erupted about 2 a.m. outside the Monarch nightclub at 322 N. 1st Av., came just a few hours after an unrelated fatal shooting in north Minneapolis. The night’s three deaths brought the city’s 2021 homicide toll to 31.

Late Saturday evening, police spokesman John Elder said that a 23-year-old Bloomington man has been arrested and booked on probable cause murder charges in the shooting outside of the downtown nightclub. He was one of two shooters at the scene, Elder said. The other was one of the victims.

The bloodshed came as a loosening of pandemic restrictions and warmer weather drew crowds back to restaurants, bars and entertainment venues, and in a city that has debated defunding or reforming the city’s Police Department in the wake of George Floyd’s death a year ago Tuesday. And it brought an outpouring of condemnation and frustration from city leaders and others.

“Last night again brought tragic news,” Mayor Jacob Frey said in a prepared statement. “Again, our collective conscience is shocked. These outcomes are not fated. We can stem crime in our city, but it will take all of us coming together.”

Frey said he continues to work with Police Chief Medaria Arradondo and Office of Violence Prevention director Sasha Cotton to address the surge in violence, and that he supports Arradondo’s recent request for more public safety funding.

I’m sure those who are inclined to shoot a pile of people will be properly chastised by the city’s leaders. In fact, I bet they’re sitting there thinking, “I was going to shoot up a nightclub tonight, but my city councilman said not to, so I guess I’ll just binge-watch something on Netflix instead.”

Minneapolis is reaping what it’s sown. Rather than admit its police department needed serious reform, and it does, they opted to talk about scrapping the whole damn thing. That tells people the police don’t have support, which means they figure they can get away with more.

Of course, part of it is the pandemic. People aren’t meant to be shut up for a year. They’ve forgotten how to interact appropriately. For most, that means stuff like oversharing or maybe getting a little snippy with your coworkers, but for others, it materializes in stuff like this.

This was far from the only shooting over the weekend. A number of similar shootings took place all over the nation.

Then again, it’s popular to bash the police these days pretty much everywhere, all because of what happened in Minneapolis.