MPD Stays Busy Picking up Shell Casings
On a recent trip to Chicago, we found ourselves contradicting ourselves as we explained to friends that Minneapolis is safe. We live in South Minneapolis, and we have never referred to it as “unsafe.” We still wouldn’t. But it was difficult to explain how, in the past year alone, our house was broken into and a man with a knife fled through the front window. Then a dozen neighborhood vehicles had their windows smashed in a single night. A man was chased through our yard at 7:15 AM by an extremely large and agitated man claiming the chased man had broken into his car. Days later, the catalytic converter of our car was stolen. We added to the litany: we were blocked from using Nicollet recently because of an active shooter, one that drew armored vehicles and multiple snipers to the area of Alex Pretti’s murder.
We hadn’t intended to be shocking. Our friends, visiting from Brooklyn via Chicago, laughed when we defended our city as safe. Nothing similar had happened to them on the streets of New York.
The Stubborn Statistics
There have been a few disturbing examples lately that received little attention. On Sunday, one person was shot and killed and another wounded near the Wedge Coop. Police said one group fired on another. Then on Monday, three people were shot near University Avenue Northeast, one with life-threatening gunshot wounds. Multiple rounds of gunfire erupted, and several people were seen running from the area. Here’s what we typically learn about these shootings: “No arrests have been made and MPD forensic scientists processed the scene and collected evidence.”
The lack of concern from elected officials occupying City Hall is disappointing. They seem to have plenty of time to chatter on social media about causes they personally care about, but when it comes to families and victims impacted by shootings and other serious crimes in this city, they are quiet. One gets the sense they believe that if they simply ignore what is happening, it will go away. We recognize the city has initiated its coordinated Operation Safe Summer, but recent events give us reason to think its effectiveness will be marginal.
Violence interrupters, Community Safety Ambassadors, and other programs continue to show few results, but they are liked in theory and so they continue without question. If anyone claims these programs are effective, they’re implying the level of violence in the city would be even worse than current levels without them.
Preventing crime is complex. We understand there are many factors that lead to gun violence. One of them: gangs fueled by money earned from selling destructive drugs like crystal meth and fentanyl on our streets. They have turf to protect. Grievances are settled with guns. These crimes don’t fit neatly into calls for harm reduction and voluntary treatment.
There must be a more holistic approach, one that spans multiple agencies and treats the sale and use of these highly addictive and dangerous drugs as having consequences beyond the individual user. Before that user bought their packets, a string of laws was broken and lives were ruined to get it to them.
A friend of mine showed me live video from outside his apartment building a few weeks ago. Within fifteen minutes, at least half a dozen drug deals took place. Multiple calls to police were met with resistance. He was told that if they don’t allow the drug dealing, dealers will simply move somewhere else. Neighbors feel held hostage, unable to walk safely on their street.
These problems extend beyond the user. There must be a mix of incentives that encourage treatment, education, healthcare, housing, and job placement that can slow down shootings and drug use in this city. However, we won’t get there without sustained attention from elected officials, and that is currently absent.
The Citizen Responsibility
Family. Economic development. Jobs. Education and the opportunity for improving an individual’s life, these would seem as great, or greater, determinants of crime involvement than the current anti-violence programs being funded by the city and county.
Residents and politicians who stoke the flames of righteousness will need to stop turning their backs on the problem for progress to be made. At the recent DFL endorsing conventions, some delegates literally turned their backs on Sheriff Witt. This act of performative virtue signaling accomplished nothing other than showing that the DFL is bereft of ideas for how to address the daily harm victims of crime are experiencing.
It’s easy to oppose the police with a poster or a post on social media. It’s incredibly difficult to give someone a reason to stay in school, work hard, and start a family. Those actions take time. They’re difficult. And the sense of pride they elicit contains more private joy than flash.
The violence taking place in our streets. The dismissive attitude about it. The families forced to care for the wounded and maimed. These are causes worth our attention. Until we can change the current trajectory in a meaningful way, Minneapolis will continue to tread in the murky waters of stagnation.
Terry, since I was born and raised in Chicago and most of my relatives live there still – and since I have lived in MN for 42 years, 35 of them, like you, in South Mpls. – I thought I’d comment. I think the disconnect, for you, is actually pretty simple – You have just not yet fully adjusted to a changed reality. To *this* ex-Chicagoan, Minneapolis *was* very safe. It no longer is.
I would like to say something like “That’s just a fact”, but, of course, “safe” has nothing to do with facts – including crime statistics. It is wholly subjective, or in contemporary parlance, it’s a matter of the vibe.
I was a distance runner from my early 20’s to the age of 60. A marathoner from ages 29-55, usually two per year. When I moved to Mpls in ’91, I bought a large street map and started to mark off with a highlighter the city streets I’d covered on daily training runs – until I’d covered them all. Yes, I have run on almost every block of every street in Minneapolis. I used to tell my Chicago relatives that there was *no* place in Minneapolis where I felt unsafe or would not run. And I meant it.
At this point, you need to understand that Chicagoans are raised (at least by good-enough parents) to understand that there very much *are* places in Chicago where one should not even get out of one’s stalled car – you wait, with the doors locked and the windows rolled up, for the police to happen by – which, in those neighborhoods, will not take long. When I was in my mid 20’s, an old college buddy of mine – a fellow Chicagoan – was attending grad school at the U of Chicago, and I asked him if he felt safe living there. His response encapsulated “Chicago attitude” toward safety. He said “Campus and the area immediately around it are completely safe. But to drive from there to get downtown or onto the Dan Ryan Expressway, you always go through at least one intersection that’s been on the news in the last week…”
Like you, I have been a crime victim several times in recent years, though nothing remotely as scary as your home invasion experience, for which you have my sympathies. Because mine have been “less bad”, I, like you, would still not say that *my* neighborhood is not safe. But, even though I no longer watch TV news (“If it bleeds, it leads!”), I am aware that there are now places in South Mpls. that I can access easily on foot that I no longer regard as “safe”. I do not have to go all that far.
And, again, it’s all tied up in “vibe”. It’s not just frequency of crimes. It’s the kinds of crimes that are more “popular” today. It’s the utter lack of casual police presence on most streets – something that was absolutely not the case in the ’90s and ‘aughts. It’s the knowledge that a potential criminal knows that his odds of being “interrupted” by a passing police cruiser are nil, and that masking (also new) makes it unlikely he’ll be identifiable from any video (even though there is so much more video being generated today). And, of course, in our current socio-political environment, his odds of being prosecuted, convicted, and jailed, if caught, are also diminished.
It’s ironic that “law-and-order conservatives”, during times of high concern about crime, always want to increase the length of criminal sentences – which *barely* matter, if at all. Study after study indicate that the “big four” toward reducing crime are “odds of detection”, “odds of arrest”, “odds of prosecution”, and “odds of conviction with any jail/prison sentence”. All of these are degraded today, here in Mpls., compared to even 20 years ago.
House broken into by a man with a knife, multiple car window smashing on the street, someone chasing through the yard and catalytic stolen. Seems pretty unsafe to me, goodness!
By no stretch of the imagination is Minnespolis safe, and Saint Paul isn’t far behind. I rarely go into the twin cities anymore. The last time I was there I was relucntantly meeting a friend at Key’s, only to return to my truck and find both of it’s converters had been cut off – in the morning – in broad daylight. I had to have the vehicle towed, plus pay the $6K for the converters. The police flat out said they don’t have time to figure out who did it, much less get them charged. I’ll hang out in the outer-ring burbs of Waconia, Victoria etc. thank you very much.
Another one, just in the last 12 hours, that they will AVOID mentioning, even in passing.
https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/minneapolis-police-investigate-deadly-clinton-avenue-shooting/
The City Council’s focus, the DSA aligned/ Wonsley majority, will continue to NOT be on crime because of the DSA’ s anti/ defund/ abolish platform on policing. If the focus was on crime, and not on bathhouses, etc, they would HAVE to talk about investigations, drone usage, and all manner of law enforcement activities, and they do NOT want to talk about any of that. They would never want to suggest that a police dept is even remotely necessary.
That is SAME reason that most of the CMs that represent the 26 neighborhoods within the 3rd Precinct are quite content that THAT police station is STILL missing, and over six years later.
The City of Mpls is buckling under the weight of THIS City Council majority.
https://www.dsausa.org/working-groups/abolition-working-group
Excerpt…
“We are committed to the horizon of abolition and the path leading us there. Our demands:
Defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets or scope of enforcement while cutting budgets annually towards zero
End the criminalization of working-class survival
Freedom for all incarcerated people
Demilitarize the police and end colonial policing of our cities and neighborhood”