It's been a murderous few days in Minneapolis — as Matt McKinney of the Star Tribune points out, there have been three homicide deaths in four days. Nonetheless, according to Capt. Amelia Huffman of the Minneapolis Police Department, "The reality is, by and large Minneapolis is a very safe city." Local wag Bill Steitler was unimpressed by this, commenting on Twitter, "Minneapolis is Safe, police who carry guns and wear kevlar vests say."

In general, things probably are pretty safe — the Strib story points out that these killings tend to be gang- and drug-related, and if you don't have a toe in either world, there isn't a very high chance of you getting affected, or, at least not by drive-bys. Minneapolis may be a statistically safe city, but it's not a statistically safe world. Take domestic violence, as an example — it seems to be on a discouraging uptick. WCCO reports that, in the first six months of 2010, there have been as many deaths from domestic violence in Minnesota — 12 total — as there were all year last year. The story details an exceptionally disturbing example, in which an ugly custody case got violent when the defendant, Sheikh Nyane, allegedly took a knife to the office of his ex-wife's attorney and stabbed her a dozen times, breaking the knife. The attorney, miraculously, survived.

And then there is a malefactor in Minneapolis that the Star Tribune calls a "peeping Tom," although the headline to this story by Matt McKinney and Paul Walsh allows that he's becoming more "brazen." Brazen in what way? Well, in the first two incidents, he was content merely to threaten women through open first-floor windows. In the most recent incident, he climbed in and attempted a sexual assault. We at the Glean would like to suggest that his actions stretch the definition of peeping Tom, and that he probably should simply be referred to as an "attempted rapist."

It could be worse. There could be coyotes wandering around the Twin Cities metro area, killing dogs. And, of course, it is worse, as WCCO's Bill Hudson reports: The number of sighting of Canis latrans has jumped recently, and they've taken down at least one dog, a poor fellow named Chico.

And there's the tale of Timothy E. Carson, who you may remember: He's the rogue Minneapolis SWAT officer who robbed an Apple Valley bank in January. His attorney is claiming, in a story on the Associated Press, that he was depressed and hoped to die in a confrontation with the police. It's possible — Sarah Lemagie of the Star Tribune paints a portrait of a man "haunted by demons," including his experiences as a soldier in Iraq. That being said, why Apple Valley? Not to be too particular, but the Apple Valley police department's website uses a Comic Sans typeface. It doesn't exactly inspire dread.

It's hard to know the motivations behind the St. Cloud doe that tried to break into the Stearns County Jail; certainly it wasn't the St. Cloud Police Departments webpage, which is modest and contains no casual script typefaces. Whatever the case, the event made for an entertaining story by St. Cloud Times reporter Kari Petrie, which is a sort of masterpiece of deadpan newstelling: "Deputies tried to catch the deer, but it escaped after a short foot pursuit," Petrie writes, and it is impossible to tell if she is trying to be funny.

Rena Sarigianopoulos of KARE11 looks back at the tornado that ripped through the Twin Cities in 1981 — we'll call it the Har Mar Superstorm. It's unclear as to why Sarigianopoulos decided to tell this story, but it's an interesting one, and we're fans of history. We're especially taken with the fact that the tornado destroyed a Sound of Music business, which then sold off it's inventory in a "best buy" sale that was so popular that the business renamed itself after the sale.

There's a lot of Minnesota history floating around on the Interwebs nowadays. There's this photo of the Replacements drinking what we presume to be Grain Belt Beer in front of a Grain Belt Wall Mural, found on the Robot Cosmonaut site. The Stuff About Minneapolis blog looks back on race riots that occurred in Minneapolis in 1967, pairing them with contemporary photos of the locations. And a Facebook page called Old Minneapolis has popped up, consisting mostly of photographs (and member commentary) about Minneapolis prior to 1988, such as this photo of the old Block E, including the legendary bar Moby Dick's and the Rifle Sport art gallery. The comments are priceless, and some remind us that the past was easily as scary as the present.

In sports: MinnPost's own David Brauer takes a look at who has been honored by scuptures in downtown Minneapolis, including four professional athletes, Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, Kirby Puckett and way too many Joe Mauer statues. Mixed in with these is a "motley crew," in Brauer's words, that include Hubert Humphrey, Swedish violinist Ole Bull, and, of course, Charlie Brown. Elliot Park, where this reporter lives, is free of such statues, despite being the birthplace of two of the three Andrews Sisters, Sparky Schulz, and, of course, the Dockery Gang, who terrorized the city back in the Victorian era. When do they get their statues?