STATE OF THE PRECINCT
| NIBRS Crime statistics 2025 2024 3 YR. AVE |
| Assault 50 92 74 Inc. Dom. Ag. Aslt. 1 2 2 B&E 11 23 24 Homicide negl. 0 0 – Homicide non-neg 0 0 0 Larceny 119 150 160 MV Theft 60 64 76 Robbery 6 17 12 Inc. car jacking 5 5 7 Sex offenses 1 8 10 Stolen property 1 2 2 Weap. Law Viol. 2 7 5 Gun Wound Vics. 0 2 2 Shots fired calls 13 28 21 |
Inspector Torborg: We’re down across the board, which is really good. But I don’t take anything for granted. We also had some very cold weather that usually slows things down.
There are some patterns that usually coincide with spring break — we get hit with a high level of crime. Then it drops off.
We have some events coming up this weekend. We’re preparing for the Northeast Pub Crawl, [EQ: Google www.crawlwith.us/minneapolis/bigne This is the 8th Crawl.] which is getting bigger and bigger every year. A lot of people will be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday. That is followed by Spring Jam, which is not solely our problem. Then graduation, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, 4th of July. [the list goes on].
Obrestad: You bring up a point for us. ULCH is three blocks off campus.
About safety: University students who live by us do not have access to Blue Light Emergency Phones. The closest is three blocks away. I would like to see those expanded.
Another thing is the Safety Center in Dinkytown. ULCH has the PEASE Academy, but our students are not part of the U of M, so they don’t have access to the center. There is no walk-in. I’m wondering if there’s a way that maybe that could be adapted to PEASE students. Maybe they could get a card or a pass? These are high school students who are in the area.
What can we do to open that Center a little bit more to the community? One of the pastors from the University Baptist Church went over and, no, they wouldn’t let them in because the center is for University students. I would think the pastor of the University Baptist Church should be able to walk in the door.
This looked great when it was first advertised. Now I see there’s this section of people that could use that, but don’t have access to it.
Inspector Torborg: Former Chief Clark and I had a lot of conversations about that safety center and their vision for it. I think they envisioned it as more of a student center, a place where students can go and study.
Obrestad: I’m thinking of that as a place where [other people] can go to say, “I don’t feel safe.” It would be a place to go for people in a crisis situation. They could say, “Hey, if you feel scared; if you’re at the high school and your ride doesn’t show up, go right here.”
[EQ: as a former homeowner on 13th Ave SE, half a block from ULCH, I agree having “Something” in the n’hood for all residents and students to access would be great.]
Inspector Torborg: Before I forget: I talked to a Channel 11 reporter on the phone tonight for Channel 11. They’re doing a story on the U of M Safety Center and also the Memo of Agreement we have with U of M. They’re the primary responder to 911 calls [for part of East Marcy Holmes] They interviewed somebody with the U of M and then she talked to me on the phone.
It was a phenomenal switch. The UMPD took over a share of the 911 calls to relieve pressure in other areas. The year before we took about 500 calls from there. The couple of calls a day that they handle makes a difference. Plus many of the calls we handled there involved U of M students and sometimes the issues that were involved were U of M policies. So it was all intertwined.
In the long run, the U of M students who called 911, typically had less wait time for police service there. It was a win for them, and it helped Minneapolis residents because it freed up Minneapolis officers to answer other 911 calls or do more patrols in the Dinkytown area.
We had people who didn’t want to “put a burden on the system for ‘frequent flyers'”. When that switch happened, [people realized] they were not taking something from someone else by calling and reporting.
One more thing that’s vexing is the auto thefts. They’ve been all over the board in our case.
Three weeks ago, we only had four auto thefts in the whole precinct, which was an all time record since I’ve been here. This is great! Our projects are really paying off. Everybody was rushing to take credit for the 4, which happened to be when it was about 20 below.
But then the next week, we had 30.
Then last week, we’re down to 18. For a while, we’re averaging in the low 20s. So that’s a little bit lower, but we’re still around 20 to 30. About 25 to 30% of the vehicles are Kia’s or Hyundai’s.
Question: What is the attraction with a Kia or Hyundai?
Inspector Torborg: They’re easy to steal. You can get in, you don’t need a key. As fast as the companies update them, somebody figures out a workaround and posts it online. Then they drive around and commit other crimes. They steal more cars, do carjackings, do robberies. We have days where some kids will get into a couple stolen cars and there’s a spree of crime in a given area.
Comment: Change topic. 19th Avenue. I look out my windows onto 19th Avenue. Cars are parked there all the time and never get a ticket. [Discussion on parking over 72 hours on the street. See Minneapolis Code of Ordinances 476.250 (a) EQ]
Inspector: We only work off complaints. Parking violation calls are routed to traffic control, a separate department. If they get a complaint, they’ll go out, mark the car and then come back. Call 311 for that.
Question: I know now we’ve hired people, and they’re getting up to speed, but it wasn’t as many as the police department lost. When we were at the lowest point, do you know how many numbers, what percentage?
Inspector Torborg: Right before 2020, we had about 850 officers. Since 2020, almost 500 officers have left the department. But we never went down to 300 officers because we were hiring and training new officers while [while others were leaving. I heard 37 this month.
I don’t think people understand that Minneapolis has had a long history of running very lean for a police department. We always had very few officers compared to the size of the city and the population of the city.
And, our reporting requirements have never been higher. We’re required to do much more reporting now than we used to in the past and that takes time. Many things that pull us away from the street and make us less efficient than we used to be.
We are aggressively recruiting people, and that’s going pretty well considering the intense competition. It takes a long time to get through the Academy. It takes a long time to get your field training.
People don’t understand — you don’t just walk in and say, “I want to be a cop.” Even if you were a cop in another state, you still have to go through all the training to become a police officer in Minneapolis. I know every law enforcement agency, at least in this state, is struggling to get candidates.
We’re doing pretty well. We have an internship program now because we’re trying to get candidates under our wing as early as possible, literally right out of high school. If somebody’s thinking about law enforcement, we’ll give them an internship and pay them. It’s not a lot, but we’ll pay them basically to be an intern, we’ll find stuff for them to do, just to get them in the system.
When they get in college, they can work for us as a CSO, and we’ll help them pay for college and slowly get them trained in. Not every other agency can afford to do that or has the ability to do that.
Why are we attractive to candidates? I think there’s a good pay internship. In the past, we used to have a fair amount of people who’d come here and get trained up and then leave. Today, our pay isn’t bad compared to other agencies. Plus, when you factor in the amount of overtime that’s available, and it’s going to be available for a long time, there’s potential to make a lot more here, than in other places. Plus, some people like to be busy and they want to work in a place where they get to practice their craft.
They want to have a meaningful job and they don’t want to be bored. We have so many different things you can get into once you get hired. After a couple of years, there’s horse patrol, SWAT, we have a drone unit now. There are just so many opportunities. If you don’t like what you’re doing, something’s wrong, because you should be able to find something you like, at least part-time.
For a long time, we were at a financial disadvantage. We couldn’t compete with some of the suburbs for pay. We’re better now, and with the potential for overtime work, it’s tough to beat us.
Question: In about 2015, in North Minneapolis [describes the Special Operations Center] It has a big gym, and they had activities for the kids. They don’t do that anymore, do they?
Torborg: We’re slowly resurrecting it. I think there’s two officers assigned to it now. It evolved. It used to be strictly the Police Athletic League. Then it became the Police Activity League. They did all kinds of stuff, and they had quite a few officers assigned to the unit full-time. Officers would get involved on a part-time basis too. With the staffing crisis, that pretty much went away. We’re slowly, slowly bringing it back. We know that’s important. It’s an investment in the future.
When you don’t have enough cars or squads to answer 911 calls in a timely fashion, it’s a tough balancing act. But slowly, things are getting better.
Emilie Quast, Member
MPD Second Precinct Advisory Council
2nd Precinct Advisory Council 