Listening Must Lead to Action: Community Safety Update from Council Vice President Jamal Osman

Neighbors,

Over the past several weeks, I have met with residents, neighborhood organizations, Native leaders, business owners, outreach workers, Mayor Jacob Frey’s administration, Sheriff Dawanna Witt, law enforcement partners, and many others to discuss one question:

How do we make our neighborhoods safer while helping people move from crisis toward recovery?

We walked Nicollet Avenue and E. 19th Street. We met with Southside Harm Reduction near Chicago and Franklin. We listened to residents and businesses in Stevens Square-Loring Heights, Ventura Village, and Seward. We joined Native public safety leaders at All Nations Indian Church and continued these conversations at Norway House, Grace-Trinity Community Church, and City Hall.

People did not always agree on every solution.

But they shared one expectation:

Minneapolis must act with urgency, coordination, accountability, and compassion.

What We Heard

Residents want their neighborhoods back

Residents consistently spoke about wanting neighborhoods where families feel safe walking, businesses can succeed, and parks, sidewalks, transit stops, and commercial corridors belong to everyone.

They were clear that open-air drug dealing, violence, illegal firearms, discarded needles, trespassing, and persistent disorder cannot become accepted features of neighborhood life.

Enforcement matters

There was broad support for focused enforcement against drug traffickers, violent offenders, illegal gun activity, and those who profit from exploiting vulnerable people.

At the same time, people recognized that jail alone cannot solve addiction, homelessness, or serious mental illness.

We must distinguish between those who profit from human suffering and those who are living through it.

The biggest unanswered question: What happens after outreach?

This was the question raised again and again throughout these conversations.

Where does someone go when:

• treatment or stabilization space is unavailable?
• they refuse available services?
• they have committed no crime that justifies incarceration?
• their circumstances still create risks for themselves and the surrounding community?

Residents asked this question.

Neighborhood organizations asked it.

Native leaders asked it.

Service providers acknowledged it.

Sheriff Dawanna Witt raised it publicly.

People should not have to choose between the sidewalk and the jail because no better option exists.

The goal cannot be to simply move people from one block to another.

The goal must be helping people move from crisis to stabilization, treatment, recovery, and permanent housing.

Focus on Criminal Conduct – Not Entire Communities

We should never confuse organized criminal activity with the communities in which it occurs.

Organized drug trafficking networks exploit addiction, recruit vulnerable people, traffic dangerous drugs, carry illegal firearms, and use violence to protect their markets.

Their victims come from every race, nationality, faith, and neighborhood.

Our response must follow the evidence, target the people responsible, protect the broader community, and reject attempts to blame entire ethnic, immigrant, racial, or religious communities for the actions of criminals.

Public safety is strongest when we focus on criminal conduct instead of communities, partnership instead of silos, and action instead of rhetoric.

Action Requires Partnership

The Mayor’s administration is leading the City’s operational response to open-air drug markets.

Sheriff Dawanna Witt and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office are important partners in that work.

Minneapolis Police, Metro Transit Police, prosecutors, health care providers, Native organizations, neighborhood groups, businesses, faith communities, and service providers all have important roles to play.

No one agency can solve a regional problem alone.

Our response must be coordinated, sustained, and focused on measurable results.

My Role as Council Vice President

As your Council Vice President, my responsibilities include:

• Listening directly to residents, businesses, and community organizations.
• Exercising oversight and asking whether City strategies are working.
• Bringing agencies and partners together.
• Supporting effective public safety investments through the City budget.
• Advancing legislative actions where policy changes are needed.
• Pressing for accountability and measurable results.

Where Mayor Frey, Sheriff Witt, and our public safety partners are moving Minneapolis in the right direction, I will work alongside them.

Where gaps remain, I have an obligation to identify them and push for solutions.

Building a Stronger Path Forward

We do not have to choose between accountability and compassion.

We can insist that traffickers, violent offenders, illegal gun carriers, and those who profit from exploitation are held accountable.

We can also insist that people living with addiction, serious mental illness, homelessness, or exploitation have meaningful access to stabilization, treatment, recovery, culturally responsive care, and housing.

Outreach cannot be the final step.

I will continue working alongside our First Nations and Native neighbors, Native-led organizations, and Tribal partners, whose leadership has helped shape my understanding of both the public safety challenges we face and the opportunities for healing, recovery, and protection from exploitation.

Public Safety Is a Shared Investment

Keeping Minneapolis safe requires investments across the entire continuum.

That includes:

• Police and emergency response
• Violence prevention
• Youth opportunity
• Treatment and recovery
• Housing stability
• Native-led and culturally responsive services
• Strong neighborhood partnerships

As we make difficult budget decisions, we must invest wisely, coordinate across agencies, and focus on strategies that produce measurable results.

Looking Ahead

What gives me hope is not that everyone agrees. What gives me hope is that people continue showing up.

Residents continue speaking. Businesses continue investing. Neighborhood organizations continue organizing. Native leaders continue leading. Police officers continue serving. Outreach workers continue reaching people others may have given up on.

That is how neighborhoods become stronger.

That is how trust is rebuilt.

The conversations I’ve had over the past month will not end with this newsletter. They will continue shaping my work on the City Council as we consider budgets, public safety investments, legislative proposals, and partnerships that can make our neighborhoods safer while building a stronger path from crisis to recovery.

These conversations will continue shaping my work on the City Council as we consider budgets, public safety investments, legislative proposals, and partnerships to make Ward 6 safer.

Thank you for continuing to share your ideas, concerns, and hopes for Ward 6. Those conversations make me a better representative, and they will continue to shape my work on your behalf.

Jamal Osman
Council Vice President – Ward 6
City of Minneapolis

Via constituent newsletter