A Week Focused on Public Safety: A Message from Council Member Elizabeth Shaffer

After this weekend’s outrageous spate of mass shootings at 29th & Hennepin and 19th & Nicollet that left 13 wounded and 1 dead – that spilled over into this week with another person being shot on Monday and a vehicle being struck with bullets early Tuesday evening, both in the vicinity of 19th & Nicollet – my focus this week has been squarely on public safety.

Tuesday’s Community Meeting

On Tuesday night, I helped host a community meeting at Grace-Trinity Community Church, spearheaded by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) featuring Sheriff Dawanna Witt, Lt. Mike Hopkins from HCSO’s Criminal Intelligence Division, MPD Assistant Chief Mark Klukow, Fifth Precinct Inspector Ryan Kelly, a representative from the mayor’s office, Council Vice President Jamal Osman, staff from the Ward 10 office and myself. We had a great turnout, with well over 100 people in attendance. If you weren’t able to make it, you can watch the meeting on YouTube.

The conversation itself covered a lot of ground. Both MPD and HCSO were candid about how thin their staffing is – MPD is down to roughly 600 sworn officers (more than 200 fewer than five years ago) and is leaning on overtime and Chief’s Beats (a program that pulls officers not normally assigned to patrol into the highest-need neighborhoods on weekend nights) to saturate hot spots this summer, while HCSO is logging about 4,000 hours a month in Minneapolis on top of its county-wide duties. Panelists also detailed tools already in use – expanded camera coverage, a public-private camera-sharing partnership, and Group Violence Intervention outreach that pairs enforcement with off-ramps for people willing to leave group violence behind.

Inspector Kelly shared that MPD is surging resources to the 19th & Nicollet area, doing more direct, targeted enforcement. This has resulted in more than a dozen arrests. While this is encouraging, we know the residents and businesses of Stevens Square have been subjected to brazen drug dealing and use for far too long, and a short-term surge won’t fix a long-term problem.

It is clear the community is fed up with gun violence, and they want law enforcement to use every tool at their disposal to make sure that criminals aren’t terrorizing our neighborhoods. The questions and public comments were pointed and passionate; residents pressed hard for concrete answers and faster action, and that urgency is something I share.

The Reign Event Center and Uptown

On Thursday, Inspector Kelly hosted a group of Uptown business owners – including the owners and management of the Reign Event Center – at a meeting to discuss MPD’s new safety plan for Uptown this weekend. Reign’s liquor license happened to be up for renewal this week in the Business Housing and Zoning Committee (BHZ). We pulled it from the agenda for another cycle to give city staff time to do their due diligence and meet with the owners, review what happened, ensure they are operating in compliance with their license, and verify that their safety plan is adequate. The Reign owners expressed horror at the shooting and said this could’ve happened in front of any of the other nighttime entertainment venues in Uptown, with which Inspector Kelly concurred. To date, city staff has not found an excess of 911 calls or 311 calls associated with this location. We owe it to the public when something this serious happens to thoroughly vet the situation.

What to Expect This Weekend

MPD has a safety plan for Uptown this weekend that mirrors their approach in the Warehouse district around bar close. There will be a dozen more police officers present and walking the street. There will also be traffic restrictions beginning around 11pm to help officers manage the crowds at bar close, which is a tested strategy that some may remember from prior years. If you’re driving home in the late night/early morning hours, here’s what to expect:

• Fremont Ave between Lagoon and Lake will be southbound-only; north of Lagoon, it will run northbound.
• No southbound traffic on Hennepin at 28th.
• No eastbound traffic on Lake St W at Humboldt (Humboldt stays open both directions).
• No northbound traffic on Holmes at 31st, with nearby alleys blocked between Holmes, Hennepin, and Humboldt.
• No northbound traffic on Hennepin at 31st.

These measures are temporary for tonight and Saturday and will lift once late-night crowds clear.

Giving Law Enforcement the Tools They Need

After hearing from frustrated residents, police, and business owners, some recurrent themes have emerged. One is that the voices who are opposed to more proactive policing are the loudest in the city. When it comes to expanding the tools in the law enforcement toolkit – like trying drones as first responders (DFR), or expanding the scope of Shot Spotter, the loudest voices are urging the council to say no. We’re asking our officers to do more, while providing them with less, and our communities are suffering the consequences.

We’re also getting caught up in ideology. Next week, MPD is seeking authorization to submit a $300,000 federal grant application to modernize its ballistic imaging system (NIBIN), since the current equipment is at the end of its usable life. This technology identifies links between shooting incidents, connects related crimes, and helps investigators identify suspects, making it mission-critical to combating gun violence. In fact, this is the very system that processed ballistic evidence from this weekend’s shootings – and it’s the same system we’re now at risk of failing to replace over an ideological objection. Because of the current presidential administration, there’s concern that submitting this grant somehow makes us complicit in their anti-immigration agenda and violates our separation ordinance. My perspective is that if our city attorneys assure us this isn’t the case, then it is unconscionable to deprive the public of this crucial tool.

Practical Steps

In the immediate term, there are things we can do that will make a real difference. One is already happening, with local business leaders stepping up to provide space in their buildings for MPD and other first responders to use. These aren’t full-on substations, but they do provide a place for personnel to use the restroom, grab a snack, write reports, and they support a greater police presence in the area.

Additionally, I am fully supportive of the Fifth Precinct getting its own Community Response Team (CRT) instead of sharing one with the Third. A CRT is a team of officers who aren’t tasked with responding to calls for service, but who can instead do more complicated investigations and targeted enforcement – a more proactive rather than reactive approach to policing.

County Role in Violence Prevention

One thing I will be looking into in coming weeks is the important role the county plays in the violent crime cycle, both in charging gun and drug violations and in providing drug treatment and juvenile offender pathways. Our MPD officers are doing a tremendous job with the resources they have, but they need to see their arrests are supported with appropriate charges to maintain morale. If juveniles have no age-appropriate consequences to get them off the street, we are not doing all we can to help.

Staying Vigilant

While real gains have been made in reducing crime since the surge of 2020-2024, the progress we’ve made is fragile and requires constant vigilance. No one should face the prospect of being a victim of gun violence in our city, and I will continue to champion collaboration and ensuring that we use every tool at our disposal – from law enforcement, to environmental design like lighting, to youth programming, to violence interrupters – to keep our streets safe.

Via Ward 7 constituent newsletter