Don and Sondra Samuels are fed up. The Minneapolis couple has filed a lawsuit against the city and Mayor Jacob Frey over its refusal to protect residents from the crime wave brought on by its open support for defunding and decreasing the number of police in the area.

During an interview with the Daily Mail, the couple explained their opposition to the “defund the police” initiative and its pernicious impact on the community. They brought up the fact that violent crime and shootings have skyrocketed since the city council openly embraced the idea of decreasing the number of police in the city.

The Samuels also lamented the lives of children that are being snuffed out due to the increased crime rate and said they were “pretty frightened and disturbed by the disrespect of the police and the institution of policing” after the murder of George Floyd. “We know there are problems for sure but when they burned down the Third Precinct, for us a new watermark had been reached and it was putting our safety at risk,” Don, a former city council member, said.

Sondra, the head of Northside Achievement Zone, a coalition of non-profits and schools, said that after the riots began, “the violence just started to swell – gunshots all the time, so many stories of people getting shot.”

She added: “We need to reform policing and police, but we need an ‘and/both’ approach, not an ‘either/or.’”

The Samuels recalled turning on CNN and seeing nine members of the council on a stage calling for the defunding of the police in total disregard of the wishes of the residents. “We both looked at each other and the reason our jaws hit the floor was that we absolutely foresaw that community violence would become mayhem [and rise] to a level of outlandish proportions,” Don said.

The Daily Mail noted:

The house where nine-year-old Trinity Ottoson-Smith was struck by a shoot-out’s stray bullet as she played with friends is a three-minute walk away on a street that abuts the Samuels’.

The corner on which six-year-old Aniya Allen was shot dead in a similar fashion is just a few minutes further. A 19-year-old was shot just a couple of streets away the night before DailyMail.com’s visit and shots ring out in the surrounding streets at all hours.

The night before the Samuels sat down with DailyMail.com, they hosted a block club meeting – one of the first since pandemic restrictions were lifted.

The couple recounted that during the book club meeting, “about 60 shots” rang out.

Don recalled: ‘We’re sitting back there [on our deck] and we hear about 60 shots. Sondra stated that the children at the house were “traumatized.” One of the younger kids looked at her and said: “Sondra. Gunshots!”

‘That just broke my heart that he knows gunshots,’ Sondra said.

But according to the Samuels, they are an all too familiar sound.

The couple also lamented the fact that the victims of the increased crime rate are getting little to no national attention from the mainstream press.

“If you are a black mother and your son is going to get murdered and you have a choice of a police officer killing your child or somebody from the community, you better choose a police officer because then people will march and rally,” Sondra said.

She continued: “I’m angry about the police in terms of the George Floyds and Breonna Taylors of this world. It has to stop. We have to have transformation.”

“But what about the harm that is coming to the black community [from community violence] in terms of businesses that are hurting? They are begging police to come open up George Floyd Square [where Floyd was murdered] so that they don’t lose their livelihoods,” Sondra added.

The lawsuit alleges that the mayor and the city are failing to meet their obligation to provide the requisite number of police officers. It states the police department should have about 743 officers patrolling the city. At the start of 2020, Police Chief Medaria Arradondo had 825 officers.

“But in the first seven months of 2020 at least 80 officers retired or quit – a dramatic increase from the annual average of 45. And that trend has only grown,” according to the Daily Mail.

To make matters worse, it does not appear these officers will be replaced anytime soon. Mayor Frey announced earlier in 2021 that he believed 100 officers would retire by the end of the year and that their eliminated positions in a hiring freeze.

Even further, police training academies have been canceled. This means the 2020 class has been eliminated.

But this isn’t the end of it.

The report also notes:

By the end of July 2020 more than 200 officers had applied for disability – about 20 per cent of the entire force.

On July 17 a total of 111 officers were on some sort of medical leave including 40 PTSD claims filed since May 26, the day after Floyd’s death.

The fact that the rocket scientists in Minneapolis’ government did not foresee the obvious consequences of signaling that they would be reducing the number of police officers patrolling the streets is vexing. In fact, it defies all reason to think that none of these nine city council members did not stop to consider the possibility that this would make the problem worse.

The bottom line is that many of these people, along with other so-called progressive activists knew that this idea could easily backfire, and they did not care. The Samuels, like most other black Americans, know that decreasing police activity will lead to more death, which is why they are pushing back through the legal system. But as we know, the far-left does not care what black people think. They have an agenda to push. What’s a few dead black children compared to the possibility of realizing their Marxists goals, right?