We’ve written before about the Somali-on-Somali violence at the Brian Coyle Center in Minneapolis. It’s the local “community” center where Somali “kids” hang out (they always call young Somalis well up into their 20’s “kids”). Here is the latest story this week about another shooting there.
From the Star Tribune:
A shooting at a Minneapolis community center that left two men wounded Monday evening renewed frustrations in the local Somali community about safety and crime at the center, a heavily used facility in one of the city’s more densely populated neighborhoods.
Some said the shooting was proof that nothing’s changed at the Brian Coyle Community Center since the fatal shooting of a Somali college student there in 2008. Some advocated even more security measures at the site, such as closing a street that runs past it.
Pillsbury United Communities runs the center and one local Somali woman tells us it is a dangerous place.
“This is a blow because we’ve done everything we know how to do,” said Tony Wagner, president of Pillsbury United Communities, which runs the center. “There’s lots of frustration.”
Wagner said the center installed additional lighting and video cameras after earlier incidents. Some of those cameras captured images of the shooter’s car in Monday’s incident — video that the police now have, he added.
[….]
That place is dangerous anyway,” she said of the Coyle Center. “He shouldn’t be there. That’s a place where families and kids hang out, but there are some bad kids over there.”
One Somali activist said one solution is for the Community Center to be turned over to Somalis to run. Incidentally this center is located in close proximity to the Cedar/Riverside section of town “Random Reader” told us about here the other day.
[Abdirizak] Bihi [described as a local activist] said several people contacted him Tuesday asking that he help set up a Somali community meeting to discuss the future of the Coyle Center. Some said it’s time for someone from the Somali community to run the center, he said.
What is the Pillsbury United Communities?
Check out their history here. One gets the impression from their website that they are a Leftist non-profit do-gooder outfit, but there is also lots of government (taxpayer money) involved.
One way to get a feel for a “non-profit” is to visit their IRS Form 990 and see how independent they are from government. Here is the most recent one available.
Note the following: Their overall revenue for 2009 was $12,577,428. Of that $7,923,270 is from grants and contributions. It used to be very simple to see how much of the grant money came from taxpayers, but the IRS has changed the form so you have to go to page 9 for their GOVERNMENT grants (that’s the money they get from you). In this case PUC got $3,406,012 from government (taxpayers).
They receive $4,632,186 from “program services” some of which may include contracts with local and state government.
They pay out almost $9 million in salaries and Mr. Wagner made $215,603 in salary and compensation in 2009. There is lots of money involved. So what do you think the chances are that the Brian Coyle Center will be turned over to Somalis anytime soon?
Dangerous year ahead? If winter is bad, summer will be worse.
Some also worried that the shooting heralded a dangerous year ahead, extrapolating that if kids were getting into gunfights in the dead of winter, that warmer months will be filled with gunfire.
Oh, great.