Most times when Mayor Frey and the City Council are at odds with each other, which is to say on even and odd numbered days, one can usually credit both sides with at least some merit to their position. You can count on the Mayor’s position to be better reasoned and better aligned with law and economic reality. But the Council, however misguided its solutions might be, often has a genuine motive to make things better for the people of Minneapolis, especially people who don’t have much power in their own right.
Occasionally there’s an issue where all of the merit seems to be on one side. The new encampment policy is one such.
Minneapolis has solved encampments. We haven’t solved the underlying causes: fentanyl first, mental illness second. But without the distraction of policy debates around tent cities, the underlying causes can receive the necessary focus.
Just months ago there were multiple encampments, with as many as 150 to 200 residents. Under the new strategy, the city just took them down. More importantly, since then, the city has refused to let new encampments form; at the first sign they are gone too, 17 stopped in their tracks as this is written. Gone, completely gone, are the murders, break-ins, fires, theft, gunfire, sex trafficking, narcotics trade. Gone is the whack-a-mole of one camp removed, only to pop up elsewhere. Calls to 911 and 311 in areas surrounding the camps are down 80%. Households and business near the previous encampments no longer feel they need to leave, abandoning the long-term investments, personal and financial, they had made toward a healthy neighborhood.
In discussing the new policy, Police Chief Brian O’Hara said that in 2024 there were 15 homicides in or near camps. Drug use was rampant. There were hundreds of overdoses. There was great harm to people inside and outside the encampments. Yet we let them continue.
“It’s a death sentence,” O’Hara said, “to allow someone to stay there with untreated fentanyl addiction.”
The City Council majority’s plan, if you can call it a plan, has been not to kick people out, to allow encampments, there was even a proposal to make homelessness camps permanent. The Council had required accounting for money that was spent on removing encampments, but did not call for accounting for money spent on MPD, MFD, EMS calls.
The Council, in short, had a vague, ideological notion that we keep the encampments and give them better support. The Mayor and the Police Chief said let’s actually solve the problem, the encampments problem at least, even if much more still needs to be done to address addiction and mental health issues.
This might be as good an illustration as we will find that maturity, judgment and experience provides real solutions, ideology just campaign slogans.
Minneapolis voters would be wise to make this distinction in the election this November.
David Therkelsen has been a homeowner in Minneapolis for 50 years, and attentive to city and school affairs for all of that time. Professionally, he headed two American Red Cross field units, and at one time was co-chief of staff to the President of American Red Cross. Later he was executive director of Crisis Connection, a state-wide mental health counseling agency. Dave held faculty appointments at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and recently co-authored a book about the history of transfusion medicine and blood banking.
Thank you to Mayor Frey, Police Chief O’Hara, our City and County staff, and our non profit orgs, that are out there working this too. Let’s start to give credit where credit is due.
Yes! We need to immediately provide services, housing, treatment to people the minute the tents go up. This avoids uprooting and traumatizing people once they have on established in the tent community. This is an absolutely great step forward. I heard the mayor of Denver on NPR several months ago this is what they are doing there. Thank you Mayor Frey and Chief O’Hara!