The only strategy that supporters of defunding the police have amid the surge in crimes and homicides is to ignore reality.

Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar is committed to this. Her constituents are living through one of the most violent years they have seen, and she has to pretend none of it is real.

Omar responded to a Twitter user who said her district is “being overrun with violent crime” by definitively asserting that it is not. But that would be news to residents of Minneapolis, who sit in Omar’s district and have witnessed a staggering number of homicides over the last two years.

A woman was shot and killed earlier this week in Minneapolis, marking the city’s 92nd homicide this year. That’s well past the 84 the city saw in 2020, which itself was a staggering number. For reference, in 2019, the city saw just 48 homicides.

The city’s record for homicides is 97 in 1995. That year, it was dubbed “Murderapolis.” The problem is so bad that the city council, an early champion of the movement to defund the police, voted not to abolish its police department and ended the year by restoring the department’s funding.

But Omar can’t acknowledge the violence that her constituents are being forced to tolerate because that would require her to answer for why she advocated for abolishing the Minneapolis police department. Just as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has downplayed crime, all Omar can do is lie and hope that people don't notice the chalk outlines in the street.

Minneapolis is in its second year of surging homicides, in part because its spineless leaders listened to delusional activists such as Omar. Omar and other Minneapolis Democrats demonized their own police officers (Omar herself lied about the first officer-involved shooting since George Floyd's murder) while tacitly endorsing rioters and stripping the police department of resources needed to maintain law and order.

Omar is a remarkably unserious person, but residents of Minneapolis chose her to represent them, and now they have to live with the consequences. Maybe this time around, they will ask themselves why their congresswoman doesn’t care about the surge in violence they are experiencing.