Lowry Bridge Reopening to Reintroduce Crime to NE Minneapolis

A friend of mine asked me last night, "Hey, you hear they're opening the Lowry bridge this week?"

I didn't know it had been closed. And so I said, "No, I didn't know it had been closed."

And that was it. Didn't think anything beyond it. Just kind of looked at him with a "and?????" kind of look on my face.

He said, "Crime fell in NE Minneapolis once they closed the bridge down."

And then the connection was made. You see, the Mississippi splits North Minneapolis more or less in half into two areas; NE and NW.

NE is kind of a blue collar, lower middle income neighborhood while NW is our version of Cabrini Green. And one of the bridges that spans the Mississippi and connects the two neighborhoods is the Lowry bridge. (Lowry bridge is in Green, NW is in Red).


What gets me however is just 1 mi south of the Lowry bridge is the Broadway bridge (blue). One would think just taking out one bridge with another bridge a convenient mile away would not drop crime as the criminals to do their dirty work would just take the short mile detour, but it did.

This confirms something about criminals I've always suspected; they're lazy. If criminals weren't lazy, then they would have gone the "extra mile" and done their business. By by the fact they're criminals, that means they don't care to work or contribute to society because presumably work takes too much effort that it is worth the legal risk to commit crime.

In any case, one can certainly expect an increase in crime in the NE neighborhood.