"That Urine Caked Drunk Hoarked My Tuuk!"

A story in today's Star Tribune explains that some crime ebbed during our recent bus strike:

The anecdotal stories that crime was decreasing in downtown Minneapolis, St. Paul and at the Mall of America started soon after the Metro Transit strike began in early March.

Curious about what might be happening, police began discreetly monitoring crime figures and found some intriguing numbers.

* Police calls at the Mall of America, especially on weekends, were down by as much as 21 percent.

* Arrests in downtown Minneapolis had dropped.

* In St. Paul, police calls for so-called 'quality of life' complaints, such as narcotics sales near bus stops, also had fallen.

After the metro area's first transit strike in a decade, the possible relationship between the strike and crime has become a much-debated -- and politically touchy -- issue. Critics complain that the focus unnecessarily paints an unflattering portrait of bus riders.

Painting an unflattering portrait of bus riders? For shame. Who would stoop to such lows?

"I think it's a fair topic," Bob Gibbons, a Metro Transit spokesman, said of the crime comparisons. But he said that 75 percent of transit riders use the bus to simply go to and from work, and another 8 percent use buses to commute to school. "That is the foundation of our service. That's the vast majority of our clientele," he said. "I don't think the statistics [show] that somehow we are the conveyance of choice for the criminally minded."

Jon Pratt, executive director of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, also said such comparisons are unsettling. "I wouldn't say it's a disservice to draw those connections. [But] there is kind of a sport in picking on the poor and trying to point out their foibles," he said.

Is it foibles or criminal proclivities?

"There was a lot of extreme generosity during the bus strike," he added.

And apparently, a lot less crime.

Leave it to a frothing at the mouth, rabid right wing radical to pour gas on the fire by bringing up those pesky things that cause so much consternation:

But David Strom, president of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, said that reviewing crime statistics during the strike is a valid exercise, though he said many people are "very skittish" because "there's race lines, there's class lines involved here." During the strike, Strom became a lightning rod for critics when he said that the region's bus system did little to ease congestion and ferried relatively few passengers.

"If I were a business person, I'd be really concerned about it," Strom said of the potential link between the bus strike and crime. "There's no such thing as bad facts. The facts are important."

The facts are out there. And when it comes to the Twin Cities bus service they're not pretty. Get on to the bus. And hold on to your wallet.