It is December 9th, 2024 at 6.38 this is the monthly meeting of the MPD 2nd Precinct Advisory Council. We have 5 attenders in person and 10 joining us by ZOOM STATE OF THE PRECINCT
Quast: Some of you haven’t gone through this business before. The statistics on the chart are crime metrics collected on the federal level from across the country: These are the metrics for the last 28 days, only in the MPD Second Precinct.
| Crime Metrics: 28-day.2nd Pct only NIBRS Crime Metrics-28 days 2024 2023 Prev.3 yrs Assault offenses 74 79 80 Incl. Domestic.Ag.Asslt. 5 13 10 Burglary, B&E 20 20 26 Vandalism 119 74 63 Homicide, non-neg. 0 0 0 Homicide, negligent 0 2 1 Larceny theft 116 163 174 MV Theft 71 91 80 Robbery 13 6 18 Incl. car-jacking 4 3 5 Sex Offenses 8 6 4 Stolen Prop. Offenses 0 1 3 Weapons law violations 4 8 8 Shots fired calls 23 27 22 Gun wound victims 1 4 2 |
Most numbers are down or about even, but Vandalism is way up.
Inspector, what’s going on with the vandalism report?
Inspector Torborg: Vandalism is being driven by two things.
1. There are all kinds of graffiti issues northeast and southeast also. A lot of that gets reported on 311. It’s hard for us to track but if you’ve driven around northeast or southeast Minneapolis, you can see it everywhere. The city’s pretty good about removing it pretty quickly after it happens and lot of the private property owners that frequently get tagged remove it too, but there’s still a lot of it. So that’s one side of it.
2. The other side is we’ve had groups of kids breaking into as many as 40 cars a night. Sometimes they steal stuff from inside. Sometimes they just break the windows. Typically they get a stolen car, and then they’ll just drive down a street, trying door handles or breaking windows taking a quick look inside and moving, you know, moving down the road.
We identified some suspects who were tracked to the North Side in a stolen car. But, we don’t know if they’re the only ones and they’re juvenile suspects. I think everybody knows that the story is that we arrest them, and, because they are juveniles, they’re released. It’s frustrating.
Quast: I’m wondering: we used to have a much stronger block club culture, especially on the Eastside. We had very strong block clubs, and hands across the street. Do you think that would help?
Inspector Torborg: It might, but most of the car break-ins and the damage to the cars are happening between midnight and 5am. I don’t know if I’d recommend being outside marching around at that time of the morning.
QQ: Nathan from University of Lutheran Church of Hope. I have to say that if I report graffiti incident to 311, the only response I get is a letter from the city saying “You have to clean this up.”
So now, if we get tagged, we clean it up, but I’m not going to send in a note on it simply because I’m going to get it cited by the city.
Comment: That’s something to bring up with your council member. They’re punishing the victim when the emphasis should be on catching people who did it.
Inspector: We caught a kid doing some spray painting on the railroad tracks by the Fifth Street Bridge from Second Avenue Northeast to First Avenue Northeast. Hardly anything happened to him. He is from one of the suburbs.
I don’t think taggers realize the impact they’re having on people. They kind of have this romantic vision that these walls are just canvases for them. I wish when we did catch them, they’d be charged for the crime; there’s a lot of work involved in cleaning it up. If there’s any amount of graffiti, it’s going to be well over $500 to repair it. They’re often just booked for a misdemeanor damage to property charge or written a ticket and released. There’s not a whole lot of punishment for them, and that’s when we do catch them. In the big picture, though, it’s just vandalism.
Quast: No, it’s not just vandalism. It’s also livability.
Torborg: I’m right with you there, Emilie. But that’s what our prosecutors say, and that’s how the powers that be think of it.
[Quast: I didn’t say it at the meeting, but it’s also the social and financial cost of taking working officers off the street to arrest, write up and so on. That’s a significant cost also.]
QQ: We have one more question. Quick question for the inspector. My understanding is we had a homicide this summer at Lowry and Central, and one at the BP Station. I’m wondering if there’s any update on those two?
Torborg: We had a homicide at Lowry and Central. 27th and University was before that one.
The suspect in the 27th and University was identified and charged. I believe he’s in custody, probably awaiting trial. The Lowry and Central homicide case was presented to the, to the County Attorney. Here the victim was armed too, so there’s a self-defense element to it that has to be overcome.
I haven’t heard much about those cases, you know, because they’re from a while back, but the last I heard on the Lowry and Central is it was presented. I don’t know if the County Attorney decided to charge it or not.
Quast: Any other State of the Precinct comments, questions, worries? There is something that I’m bringing up because Nathan Obrestad is here.
We’ve been talking about a “frequent-flyer” trespasser, who’s known all over East Marcy Holmes and U of MN. This guy has been on our radar for as long as I’ve been in 2-PAC; that’s 15 years or more.
Right now, University of Lutheran Church of Hope at 13th Ave. and 6th St. is a particularly vulnerable target because it is also home to a high school, which makes them just that much more vulnerable than a place that is, “only a church” like St. Larry’s. I’ve asked Nathan to reach out to other churches in the neighborhood to find out if they’re also having problems with a particular brand of trespasser.
What struck me the most is: the guy shows up, Nathan yells out the door, “I just called the cops” and the guy takes off as soon as he sees the squad roll in. When the squad rolls out, he’s coming back in on the property. It’s just going round and round. I can’t believe that only ULCH is the target of this particular behavior, so we’re going to find out about that.
When we get some data that is perhaps actionable, or at least looks weird enough, I’m going to go contact a person who spoke several years ago about creating a Social Services structure across Hennepin County. I hope that we can find out what kind of services are available, not only to help the guy who’s definitely missing a few, but again it’s a “livability liability”.
Obrestad: The hardest part is that the person is a meth addict, will not ask for help, doesn’t go to treatment, does have support from family that he ignores. But yes, if we have him removed from our property because we have a trespass order on him, then he’s going to show up at University Baptist, at UCC, at the public library. Officers who have shown up have commented it’s not a good thing when every single officer in the precinct knows him by first name.
Comment: It’s a failure on the social services of the state.
Obrestad: If somebody is smoking a meth pipe in front of a rehab high school, we can’t just say, “Well, that’s OK, we’re trying to help you”. We have to clear him out.
This particular person has gotten violent; he’s threatened me on multiple occasions. I explain to our staff: If he’s seen on property, we don’t engage anymore. We don’t even say, “Hey, we’ve called the cops”. The police, I have to say, have been absolutely phenomenal in responding when they can and quickly.
A different random person accosted one of the high school students from our high school, not on our property, but in Dinkytown. The police responded immediately. They got the perpetrator, had the girl identify him.
I watched the officers interact with this high school student who was in tears and frustrated and scared. They did a phenomenal job working with her; they made her feel comfortable. They explained everything wonderfully. It’s like, wow, this is absolutely just the way it should work.
It was an unfortunate situation, but kudos to MPD for the way they dealt with it. I appreciate all the efforts and all the responses that we’ve gotten. I know this last summer I must have called 20 times and I felt guilty about calling 911.
QQ Are we talking about Josh? Yes, we’re talking about Josh.
Torborg: He was arrested at the Dinkytown Target last week, and he was actually charged because he’s been trespassed so many times. It was a third degree burglary charge. Apparently he was dropped off at the jail and they let him right out the back door because two days later he was arrested for gross misdemeanor trespassing and again was booked at the jail. They were holding him. We talked to our city attorney who was going to try to get more charges.
Josh is typical of many chronic trespassers. We have chronic homeless people, hopelessly addicted to drugs. He’s been offered housing services numerous, numerous times. He doesn’t want them, because that means he won’t be able to keep his meth habit. I personally believe the best thing that could happen to him is to get charged with a crime and held and maybe do like a year in jail or up to a year in jail because that would force him to get clean.
Basically, it’s a rescue. It sounds cruel, but so many times, the various systems we have in place are well intentioned, but end up doing nothing more than enabling a person like Josh and his situation, and allow the cycle to continue.
My position is it would be in his best interest if he was locked up for a long time — enough time to get clean and get on a good path towards recovery. But it’s been a struggle to get that to happen for some reason.
Quast: I’ve really strongly encouraged Nathan to start contacting his colleagues and find the fuller picture. Maybe if we can get a fuller picture of trespassing through Dinkytown and so on, we can get some more social security. I hope you’ll be hearing more about this social and health issue.
Part 2, Planning the annual buffet Thank You for First Responders, follows
2nd Precinct Advisory Council 