| NIBRS Crime Statistics ’25 ’24 3 yr. Ave Assault 89 74 89 Incl. Dom.Ag.Aslt. 3 7 8 B&E 25 37 32 Vandalism 263 82 72 Homicide, Non-neg. 0 0 Homicide, Negligent 0 1 Larceny 114 179 189 MVT 88 80 82 Robbery 8 12 15 Incl. Car-Jacking 0 1 2 Sex Offenses 6 9 7 Stolen Property 1 1 4 Weapons Law Violations 1 3 6 Gun Wound Vics. 1 4 3 Shots Fired 17 21 23 |
Quast: Most of the categories are on an even keel or getting smaller, except Vandalism. I checked it 3 times, and that’s real. What’s happening?
Inspector Torborg: Unfortunately, those numbers are right. It’s 263 in the last 28 days compared to 88 last month.
That’s driven by the car break-ins. We’ve had three different rashes of people breaking the windows out of cars.
They go in neighborhoods, literally break 20, 30 windows in a row. They take a quick look inside for valuables and then move on to the next one.They’ve even gone into unlocked cars, checked the inside, and then closed the door and broken the window, just out of spite, So this past weekend, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, [Aug.9-11] is the first in three weeks we haven’t had a spree of damaged cars. Two or three weeks ago, I think we had over 100 cars total.
Typically, they start out in the 2nd Pct., then go to the 5th. Now they damaged a bunch of cars in the 3rd. It’s typically juveniles in a stolen car.
In several instances, officers have caught them in the act, the car was stolen and it wasn’t taken in a robbery. MPD policy is that we don’t pursue stolen cars.That’s just a property crime offence, so the cops find the suspects, but they get in their stolen car and take off. Our hands are tied as to what we can do after that. We can’t chase that car.
Comment: I’m saying something doesn’t fit in there.
Torborg: It’s a balance between public safety and putting an end to the crime.This is O’Hara’s pursuit policy, basically. We have made some arrests, but I’m sure there are still several suspects at large.
In fact, we made arrests. The suspects were released and committed more sprees. But cross your fingers to the primary suspects. One of the suspects was in Northeast.
It was quiet this weekend. I’m hoping we finally put a stop to it or we’re making some inroads there. It was getting ridiculous, especially in the western part of the 2nd Pct. You can drive down Marshall or 2nd. St., and it’s like every other car had a window broken out. Or you could see three or four piles of glass every block for a mile from cars with their windows broken out. It’s very frustrating.
Question: Do you anticipate that type of activity quelling when school starts? Is it a summer thing or not really?
Torborg: That’s a good question. We always notice a spike, but not just when school’s off for the summer. One of the worst spikes is when spring break starts for Minneapolis Public Schools. It never fails, especially if weather is nice. We’re hoping that makes a difference.
A lot of our suspects aren’t big into attending school in the first place. A lot of them have issues and their families have issues. And, some of them get visits from the Juvenile Unit. A lot of it is 15 or 16 year old kids, sometimes even younger, 12, 13 year olds, actually. There’s just a lot missing in their lives and they don’t see a future. They don’t understand the gravity of the situation and they don’t care.
Question: Inspector, a lot of this is occurring in residential areas. Several of my neighbors have reasonably high quality security cameras. Is this activity being documented on video?
Torborg: We’ve got a lot of video. They wear masks, though, most of the time, which doesn’t help. But, sometimes just people will even see them in video and with a phone.
Another issue that makes this a challenge to deal with is a procedural problem. Sometimes we ‘ll get “in progress” calls where a witness will see somebody breaking windows out of cars or breaking into cars. They’ll call 911 and a squad will be dispatched because it’s an in progress crime.
But this damage occurs at night when most people are asleep. They get up and go to work in the morning and see their car window broken. They’re referred to 311 or they’re told how to make an e-report. [EQ: because it’s not a crime in progress]
Actually, some calls were coming in to 911 while the windows were being broken. But because callers couldn’t see the suspects, they were also directed to 311 or instructed on how to make an e-report. When you’re a police officer, you’re hoping to figure out where they’re going next. Then you find out the next day, they went over to this apartment building and broke 30 windows out.
I have a meeting tomorrow with the other precinct inspectors and the supervisor of our MECC to try to come up with a protocol so that, when we recognize there are sprees occurring, call takers have to at least let the officers know, or send a message out to the precinct, or notify a precinct sergeant that we just got a call here.This happens for other crimes sometimes where we get a message on our MBCs that, you know, this just, caller just witnessed this but is making a report on the 311, with 311.
Quast: Well, we were kind of told to do that two months ago, by 311/911 managers. The base rule: If there’s a crime in progress or within the last 10 minutes, that’s a 9-1-1 call, but if it’s more than 10 minutes ago,they refer callers to 311.You’re going to have to start there because that’s the information we got from 9-1-1 and 311.
Torborg: To be honest, it depends on the call taker. If the same call taker got two or three calls about multiple damage to property incidents, they’d push the info out, but [that response from call takers] hasn’t been reliable. That’s probably the biggest problem in northeast and southeast Minneapolis.
Question:What are the consequences for [window breading sprees] like that?
Torborg: There’s still no place really to put kids. It’s not a crime of violence. When we arrest somebody, they’d go to our juvenile unit, and would be interviewed. The juvenile unit will try to contact the parents. If they can’t, they walk the kids over to the Youth Connection Center (which connects them with either a parent or responsible person), then there’s an investigation, and if the kid is charged, the case is presented to the county attorney, and it goes to court.
Question: Do you think apprehending those two or three juveniles is what made the difference this weekend for there to be less activity?
Torborg: I think there’s a good chance. I can’t say for sure, but it seems like an awfully big coincidence that these two were arrested, in the fifth precinct, and then, lo and behold, we don’t have any this weekend.
Question: I have two questions: If this is really pervasive, and it spreads and becomes a TikTok thing (people documenting themselves breaking windows) can the ShotSpotter technology be tuned?
Torborg: I don’t think so. We don’t have ShotSpotter in northeast Minneapolis or southeast anyways.
2nd Question:Some of my neighbors were active in Restorative Justice.Juvenile offenders would have to do some community service supervised by neighbors as a way of giving back or restitution. Is that active anymore?
City Atty Okoronkwo:I can’t speak to juvenile, but we use a program called Diversion Solutions in our office to offer diversion, which is an opportunity to keep certain arrests off your record, similar to what Carl just talked about. We find it to be pretty effective for first time people that, you know, may have just been on a spree doing silly things. But restorative justice is a good way to address some of those when people are actually caught and charged.
The city of Minneapolis has contracts for Restorative Justice, Community Action, and a few other organizations to provide diversion opportunities to low level or first time juvenile offenders. And in addition to what the city offers, Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, also through their juvenile prosecution division, has additional contracts and opportunities for diversion, either pre-charge or post-charge.
So the system is really set up to try and give youth as many chances as possible and to connect them with restorative justice providers, if they’re open to it, right? It’s always something that they can choose to accept or decline.
Torborg: The other big thing that’s been affecting the 2nd Pct.has been groups of juveniles, mostly young adults, sneaking into apartment buildings and taking over their party areas. We control it by educating residents and management about securing their buildings. Last weekend, groups of juveniles got into an apartment building on Central, 4 days in a row. A large crowd gathered in the party room, then dispersed into the street and a fight ensued. Shots were fired and two people received minor gunshot wounds.
The management company wasn’t happy about it and called the precinct. An officer spent about an hour, meeting with management and doing a premise survey of their building and explained to them what was happening.
We got a call later that night, and there’s another bunch of kids in their party room. I cleared them out, searched the building, and found out that they had tampered with a door, and gained entry.
It’s a flash mob situation: once they get into the building, they send out a message on social media and everybody flies in. So it turned out the next night, they got in again. We headed out, but unfortunately, they went to the McDonald’s and created a problem there, kind of a mini-riot or takeover of the McDonald’s over in southeast. We identified a couple of suspects in that incident; they should be facing charges.
A week ago Monday, CPS Teila and Lieutenant Schoenberger met with the management company. Council Member Rainville happened to run into the owner, too, and mentioned the issues. They’ve hired security now.
I’m aware of one more attempt on a resident. The resident was walking into the building and some juveniles pushed past him. This time the resident called 9-1-1 and explained what happened. On-site security found the kids and sent them on their way before it got problematic.
Question:No holding?
Torborg: No. Well, here’s the thing. Say we find a group of kids in a party room –even a party room in my basement, for example. What’s the crime, actually? If they’re not breaking anything, just being loud.
If we go there, if we ask them to leave and they don’t leave, then we can get them for trespassing. But we get there and we tell them to leave and they leave. So what is a crime?
Now, if you had video of one person breaking in, then there might be a crime.Or if security was on-site and told them to leave and they refused to leave. Or if they’ve been read a trespass notice and issued a trespass notice in the past, and return, we could arrest them for trespassing. Other than that, it’s not a really a charge. In some of our more extreme cases, you could probably go with a disorderly conduct charge, maybe. But you’d have to spend a great deal of time articulating the circumstances.
And you have to have a resident or a witness or a victim — somebody who’s willing to identify themselves that they were impacted by the behavior. Loosely speaking, disorderly conduct is conduct that causes fear, anger, and annoyance of another. You have to have somebody who’s willing to go on record as saying, I’m that person. Without that, you got nothing.
Then, we go in and send 50 or 60 or maybe 100 or 200 people out into the street,and then hope they don’t just sneak into another apartment building.
People initially get in, but then the other people, “Oh, I just saw my friends posted on social media to meet them in this party room. I didn’t know. “We first started seeing it about a year ago, maybe.Most of the time they just piggyback in on a resident.
Quast: If anybody has any more questions for the inspector?
Question: There was an article in the S’Trib. Victims who feel they didn’t get justice. These were people who were really mauled by dogs. It was horrific. Then a dog bit a woman on Grand — she wasn’t mauled but had to have stitches at the hospital. What would it take for someone to say, you can’t have this dog anymore?
Torborg: it’s the same thing. They’ll investigate the case based on the witnesses and all the injuries that were heard.Then, essentially, it goes through a review process. And then a dog can either be declared “dangerous dog”, which is the highest, meaning we’re going to euthanize the dog because of public safety concerns. “Potentially Dangerous Dog”. Then no declaration. Those designations are set by the state.
QQ How many times does a dog have to bite people?
Torborg: It all depends on the circumstances, ultimately. If they’re deemed a dangerous dog, the state requires them to be registered, neutered and microchipped. They have to wear a muzzle and a three-foot leash. It’sall case by case.
QQJust a quick question. Can people be prohibited from owning an animal?
Torborg: Absolutely.
Quast: Okay, if that is it, I’m going to thank everybody for coming. And I hope a few of you will stay for an in-person meeting where we can just begin to strategize on how to build a board. For those of you who have tuned in, 2-PACabsolutely needs to have an active board, not just two or three more board members.
2nd Precinct Advisory Council 