The March 2025 2-PAC meeting was called to order at 6:37, 9 attending in person and 6 by Zoom.
Our topic tonight is MPD Outreach to Youth, and our speaker is Lt. Kelly O’Rourke.
Lt. O’Rourke: I’ve been with the police department for 28 years. For 22 of those, I’ve been an investigator, either managing or investigating in one capacity or another. Right now, I manage our juvenile investigation division.
I’ve been told you are interested in hearing about the Curfew Task Force. I refer to it as Youth Outreach.
I’ll start with the inception.
Everybody has heard about juvenile crime getting more violent, and offenders getting younger, committing carjackings, auto thefts, robberies, burglaries — all violent crimes. I’ve spent the last two years managing the juvenile unit, but prior to that, I focused on gangs, violent crimes. I was told to figure this out.
In August ’24, we met with Community Outreach for a two-week pilot project, “Barclose”. The project put us together for two weeks on foot patrols and in meetings to gather info and plan strategy. We decided we would focus on groups of kids who were coming downtown.
Outreach teams would approach the kids, advise them of curfew issues, and ask them if they needed services, like, do they need a gym to play in? Do they need a ride back home?
We found the Outreach groups are very useful in working with law enforcement; they have firsthand connections in the community. We used nine different organizations: about 66 personnel from the community, and 10 law enforcement officers.
In two weeks, we were able to divert over 70 kids back into their homes or other family before curfew, giving them rides from downtown or networking with the community to get them back home. There were some contract issues that didn’t allow for some of these Outreach groups to stay out that late, but the kids actually stopped going downtown in those huge groups.
Next, we focused on the kids who were chronic reoffenders and carjackers who we’d see involved in the big sprees throughout the city. We teamed up with Outreach and visited the kids’ homes when they were out of custody.
Our procedure: I or one of my team knocks on the door. We say, “Hi, Ms. Davis. I’m Kelly from the Juvenile Unit. We’re here just checking on Jameer. Do you guys need any services? Is Jameer home? Does he need a place to go tonight? Does he need a ride to practice? Do you guys need anything?”
We’d get answers like, “Everything’s all good.” or “Sure, my kid would love to go to the park.” or “My kid would love to go up to the gym.”
Then we’d call up Outreach, and “Hey, Jameer would like something to do tonight if there’s somebody that wants to come and have fun with them, go teach them some things, or hang out with them.”
The alternative home response we met was confrontation, and the door slammed. Then you’d hear the parents saying, “Hey, we don’t want the cops here every night. This is embarrassing. You need to get your act together.”
In those scenarios, we keep coming back every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, every single week.
You’ve probably seen in the media that parents are often single. If their 12 year old is out with other kids in the neighborhood, mom or dad can’t chase after them because they’ve got a 6 and a 4 year old too. Now they can call law enforcement. Then law enforcement contacts Outreach, or vice versa, and we go track down their kids.
Doing this, we’ve developed a good relationship with the parents so they’re real time texting us, with social media locations, like Snap Maps, iPhone locations, AirPod locations, and we’re able to catch up with the kids that much quicker. We either get them back home, or to one of the outreach programs, educational groups, or athletic groups.
Also, when a crime is occurring, we get real time information from moms and dads to tell us where these kids are right now, or where they’re going and who they’re hanging out with. This has increased our ability to identify groups of kids and the networks they’re in and what may or may not be causing the arguments.
Now we’re working with the community and the Office of Neighborhood Safety, to rewrite some RFP [Requests for Proposals] to make these Outreach contracts sustainable. We’ve revamped Our Diversion and Youth Group Violence Initiatives to partner with this model.
We saw a 60% reduction in the numbers of youth entering the criminal justice system from January 1, 2024 to February 6, 2025. We also saw a 44% reduction in all violent crimes involving juveniles. [applause from attenders] Thank you.
The exciting part of that news is that when I say violent crime, that’s homicide shootings, carjackings, aggravated robberies, robberies. Then we added in auto theft, because auto theft is the gateway to all those.
When you add in auto theft, that hurts your numbers. If we took auto theft out of there, we’re closer to the 80% range and the 60% range on those figures. Citywide, I think everybody’s feeling it.
We’re growing a network of families by working directly with the community to keep kids out of trouble. We’re seeing more parks open up longer hours. We’re seeing more schools allow for gym times. We’re seeing churches open up just to have an educational component.
We’re now working on funding and program building at a church [EQ: unnamed] that’s already got a media center set up for the kids, a theater, a kitchen, an art studio, a gym. So, any questions?
Question: Is there any way to participate in what you’re doing and helping?
O’Rourke: Definitely. We’re still working on getting outreach fully contracted to partners. A couple of them — Salem Incorporated, Change Equals Opportunity, and Touch Outreach — volunteer to do this. Obviously, there’s some funding that they get too, when these kids enter into their programs, but a lot of the work they’re doing now is outside the scope of all their contracts and is strictly voluntary.
If you want to join one of the outreach groups, email me when you’re available. As the model grows, there will be opportunity.
Question: What are your plans for the future?
O’Rourke: As Inspector Torberg will tell you, we’re not always in charge of our plans. I think we will get back to where we’ve been in the past, where parks, gyms, schools are cooperating with us, and there’s more ways to reach these kids when they’re younger.
One of the wrongs that we’re righting is that when we go in and deal with criminal behavior in a family, we see younger kids witnessing criminal behavior when they are still very approachable and have a clean slate. We’re making sure that community services come in to handle those younger kids so they get taught that some of the things they’ve seen are not appropriate. That’s [a service] we’ve never had before.
CPS Ali: How do you see that momentum of reduction in violent crime going into the summer?
O’Rourke: I think the word is trust.
There’s been a lot of debate over the last few years about brain development, consequences, restorative practices. I don’t know if anybody listened to Walter Hudson** speak at the [MN State] House last week. There’s a happy medium.
There are definitely consequences that are needed. I can tell you that it’s a small number of kids — I mean less than 50 in our whole city — that need real, serious timeout consequences. Restorative practice also has a place.
The biggest thing we need now is getting secured facilities, so the kids have a break from the past. When practitioners are able to get in touch with these kids, they’re able to make solid headway with restorative treatment.
But when the system returns them to the presence of a violent crime, [treatment] does not work at all. There has to be a breaking point, like a stop point. They need timeout, essentially.
The county is starting to put money into secured facilities. Back when things were much better, before COVID and the George Floyd era, we had county home schools. A big difference: back then they didn’t focus on mental health.
Right now, there’s no place to bring these kids that’s permanently funded. They can have service providers but it’s hard to get to those kids. That’s the biggest barrier.
Advocating for the middle ground: know that we in law enforcement, aren’t here to lock up every kid. But we’re also not here to let violence multiply tenfold either.
[Discussion about the former Bike Cops for Kids team. EQ: we’ll follow up in a later meeting]
O’Rourke: We’re going to add a mobile response for outreach to the juveniles through the city. That’s the next step in this program. I forgot that piece. We’re going to get to that point for sure.
O’Rourke: One thing within the precincts that Outreach uses to build confidence in these kids is finding local barbers or people who do hair, within the community who are willing to donate time in their chair. It’s a common expense that these outreach people are paying out of their pockets because it’s difficult to get reimbursed, but it makes a huge difference in the confidence of a kid. And, that’s a lot of time where an adult male can spend some time with a young male, just talking and sitting down and engaging. Just talking about life skills that the kids weren’t given when they were younger.
So, think about finding people within the community who have services that they can donate or, you know, or odd jobs. Outreach is very good at figuring out how to put kids on a payroll, whether it’s mowing lawn, washing cars, cleaning up the trash on the sidewalks in the neighborhood. They use their Outreach budgets to pay these kids.
Money’s always an incentive, teaching them how to budget. There are a lot of life skills that the outreach groups are teaching these kids. Ways to provide an opportunity to develop life skills is something that most people don’t think of when they’re volunteering.
Question: Who do we contact if we know somebody who wants to do haircuts for these kids or teach them a skill or whatever?
O’Rourke: Right now you can contact me. It’s a work in progress. We’re getting to a point where if this model keeps growing at this pace, if we can keep hiring and developing these relationships, so the network just gets bigger, we’ll be able to spread out resources.
This started out with the 10 of us chasing carjackers every Friday and Saturday night. Now we’re walking up to doors and figuring out where we can find entertainment for these children for the night.
Comment from Obrestad: We have a good focus on children at University Lutheran Church of Hope, and we have the PEASE Charter School there.
I think we don’t connect enough with the community to understand what some of those needs are. I think there’s a lot of times where if somebody reached out to us, we could possibly provide some support and volunteers, but we don’t necessarily know where to go for that. I think the more communication we have with this group, the better we can provide some of those services.
We’ve got a great organization, but we don’t necessarily know what the needs are.
O’Rourke: One of the things I can do here that’s very simple is I can send a list of the vetted outreach organizations that we’re working with. If you have a space that could be utilized for activities we can give the outreach a call. They can work with you to figure out how to staff it. [Discussion of coordinating with the Outreach teams.]
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 NortheastPub 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.
Inspector: MPD officers don’t ask about immigration status. First: We are forbidden to ask about it by city ordinance . Second: we have so many other things that we have to deal with that we don’t have time to deal with immigration status.
I know there’s been a lot of concern in the immigrant community, especially in NE MPLS. Recent immigrants are concerned that the MPD will help ICE with raids or taking people into custody.
We don’t do that.
All I know about ICE activity is there have been some cases in Minneapolis, where ICE has taken some criminal suspects into custody, but I’m not aware of any major operations in MPLS or in NE MPLS.
Now, know that if an officer from any other agency is in a situation where they need help, we would definitely go and assist to stabilize the situation and make sure nobody was injured or in danger of being injured. That’s where our assistance would end.
If you see Minneapolis officers on the scene with ICE officers, it’s because something went wrong and we had to go there to stabilize the situation. I imagine, if that happened, the ICE officers would back out fairly quickly.
I’m working with a consulate to try to spread this message. Recent immigrants aren’t afraid of MPD officers and they’re not afraid to come forward when they’re either a witness or a victim of crime. But, they’re concerned. The MPD is trying to reassure residents that [assisting ICE] is not one of the things we do. We hope the word is getting out.
Quast: Thank you.Our guest speaker is here.
City Council Rep. Elliott Payne: Hello. Apologies for running late. [Quast explained what has been covered]
Payne: My staff put out a set of resources as well. I have some “Know Your Rights” printouts . My staff has been doing some training on this topic.
Payne: The biggest question I’ve been getting relates to immigration enforcement. People are spreading false rumors. We’re being vigilant about that, to stop “fear mongers”. The Trump administration is flooding the zone with action after action after action to keep people distracted.
We don’t want people living in fear. We want people to know what their rights are. We want people to know what the role of MPD is as it relates to enforcement. The critical thing for safety is: we don’t want people to not go to MPD because they’re fearful, especially if they’re a victim of a crime. If people are fearful of going to law enforcement, they might be victimized and not get help for that. That’s why we created the “Know Your Rights” document.
We want to have accurate information out there. If you’re receiving information from the government, can you trust it? We want to balance information from Minneapolis officials with information from other organizations that might have more of an authentic connection into the communities. I have reached out to a South American consulate so we can communicate with each other.
The rumor mill has triggered negative consequences for a lot of immigrant owned businesses. They’re seeing fewer customers because people are listening to rumors. People are not shopping or eating at restaurants.
These rumors are not limited to immigration. Many executive orders are coming out right now. A lot of them are probably going to be judged unlawful orders, but the simple fact that an order has been published through the official channel of the White House might make people believe that it’s a valid order and change their behavior.
The technically correct answer: all of those [executive orders] are going to get challenged in court. They’re going to go through a legal process. On the tail end of that legal process, we’ll discover whether or not it’s a lawful or unlawful order. But that takes time.
QQ How do we educate the public about immigrants whose citizenship is “in process”?
Payne: That’s the aim of our separation ordinance. The administration is trying to revoke the legal status of folks who have a legal “in process” status.
This is outside the jurisdiction of local government. I say “separation ordinance ” on purpose because “sanctuary city” actually doesn’t have any legal meaning. We want to be clear that even when people colloquially say that we’re a sanctuary city, that doesn’t mean you’re safe.
Federal agents have the authority to enforce federal law, whether a city has ordinances on the books or not. We need clarity from the courts so that people who have legal status can feel confident in their status. But for folks whose citizenship is “in process”, I don’t want to say anything that would lead people to believe that they are safe. As long as the federal laws are on the books, and you have a federal government that wants to enforce them, they’re not safe.
Part of the reason for our separation order ordinance is certainly political and it’s a reflection of our values of creating a community that’s welcoming, but a lot of it is also practical. Our immigration system is fundamentally broken, and it needs to be reformed at the federal level.
We get into a philosophical place of: how should we, as individual American citizens, respond to unlawful orders? And who determines what’s a lawful order? Well, we have a formal judiciary process that’s supposed to come to a final determination of that. But while that’s all under appeal, how should we be responding to [those orders]? That’s something that we have to ask ourselves individually as part of our commitment as citizens.
As a City Council member, I have sworn an oath to the U.S. Constitution. I have sworn an oath to the Constitution of the State of Minnesota and to the Charter of the City of Minneapolis. We have legal processes to question and submit legal actions that can just slow this process down a little bit, legally, all within the right process.
I think that we need to be intentional and thoughtful about all of those tools. At the state level, there are even more tools than we have at the city when it comes to those protections. What will help to slow things down? To solve the problem? What if we don’t have the right tools?
That’s my question, because we can slow the process down. To me, slowing it down seems anticlimactic. I think we need to be more proactive and intensive. To be nope, nope, nope. This is not tolerated. This is not okay. We’ve dealt with this before. To slow it down, seems out of whack.
The best example of what I’m talking about is there was an executive order to revoke birthright citizenship, a protection that’s in the Constitution. Our state attorney general signed on with other states’ attorneys general to sue the federal government about that. And they got a restraining order on that executive order that paused that executive order. Other executive orders have either gotten a temporary stay or a restraining order, meaning, “This needs to go through a judicial process before you can enact this executive order”.
[The City Council] signed on to a lawsuit affiliated with some of these topics. Cities have some jurisdiction, states have some jurisdiction, while nonprofits and other organizations have been doing lawsuits.
For instance, some of the actions at the executive level are attempting to force people out of their federal jobs. The unions that represent those workers have sued the federal government, and they’re getting temporary stays as a result of that and it’s working through the courts. You have to ask: are our institutions going to be able to be resilient to all of these actions, and will the courts get us resolutions? And, if enough lawsuits pause this agenda long enough, . . .
I don’t have a lot of faith in Congress changing their perspective on this issue, but there was a bipartisan immigration bill last administration that didn’t come to a vote, but was aiming to resolve some of these broken aspects of our immigration system. The root cause [of this immigration problem] is that the immigration system isn’t functioning correctly.
There have been attempts in Congress to fix some of that. Those actions wouldn’t solve all of our immigration problems, but it was some of the most substantive reform in generations. There’s the legal course of filing lawsuits and kind of gumming up the system. Maybe some mass protests on the streets would change the attitude of Congress to come back to the table in a bipartisan way, or maybe it will slow it down in the courts long enough to get to the midterms where we can elect people who want to actually solve this problem.
Quast: City Attorney Nnamdi Okoronkwo is here also.
Okoronkwo: I know that there is a working group on inquiries about immigration status, as well as inquiries into people’s just legal status. The city doesn’t have a basis for asking those questions, but we’re going over a lot of this information with employees that touch pretty much every area of the city enterprise There is concern about what we can and can’t do as a city regarding ICE immigration or any federal authority that’s here working in that regard. We know that several attorneys general have filed suits to slow a lot of this, because of Constitutional issues.
We are seeing some of the results of the immigration questions. We’re noticed that in domestic issues, we’re not seeing a lot of Spanish-speaking people going to jail. With any sort of domestic, response tends to be a mandatory arrest if the person is at the house when officers arrive. The numbers are down.
Payne: I can build on that. So that working group that he’s talking about, is giving a presentation to the City Council Committee of the Whole tomorrow. The presentation is posted online. It’s going to go through all of the executive orders. Our attorney’s office did some analysis on what the impact of those executive orders would be to our city. Also, I am a co-author on a resolution encouraging the city attorney to participate as amicus curiae. Basically, we give our city attorney the authority to bring forward litigation [against? executive orders that are] counter to our values. When the federal administration brings forward policy that is counter to the city’s values and we have standing, we want our attorneys to pursue that legally. Normally, you need council approval for that for each action. This resolution is basically giving the city attorney the authority blanket for the next two years to use their judgment to bring forward litigation. [contact EQ for links to the presentation]
It’s in the city’s interest and one of the things that we can do at the local level. We signed on to an amicus brief that can create some political conditions to slow the process down or even change the political climate if it grows with enough momentum. Those are the little sparks and seeds that we’re trying to start or plant here locally.
Quast: Elliott, you’ve been looking at your watch. What do you want to share with us? Payne: I went on a ride-along on Friday night with our juvenile task force. They’re focusing on 15 or so kids, children, who are named in many car theft and carjacking cases. MPD knows who they are. The challenge is they’re like 10, 11, 12 years old. You can’t charge them as adults, they’re children, but they’re not successful at home. And their families need support. The lieutenant I was riding with, Lt. O’Rourke, is trying to do intervention at the family level and bring in resources at the family level. We were sitting outside of one of the family’s houses, actually a couple blocks away from here, talking to the mother. As we were having this conversation, a car pulled up and all of a sudden the squad car license plate reader set off an alarm. It was a stolen car. It was probably the kid’s friend coming to pick him up.
We need to think about doing interventions that can prevent this kind of stuff from happening in the first place. How do we can partner with community organizations that have authentic connections with those kids and can provide mentorship to those kids? This ties into the criminal justice system: Does a prosecutor have enough information to charge. Is the kid old enough to charge?Do we even have an out-of-home facility? Would you even send a 10 year old to jail? How do we make those kids be more successful?
In this case, the parent is a very engaged single mother with 3 or 4 kids. The kids and their friends engaged with [legal] social media challenges. Then, the game became “Who can steal the Kia and get chased by the police?” It’s actually terrifying. COMMENT FROM ATTENDER (had a car stolen recently) I would just add that, it’s one thing to want attention, but these are violent kids. They were holding guns at Royal and me two weeks ago. They each had a big pistol. There’s a different level of antisocial that’s brewing.
It’s pretty, it’s pretty freaky being held up by a gun. They’re numb to that kind of stuff. My understanding is that they are so numb to the violence of certain behaviors, that they don’t even understand the repercussions of what’s going to happen to them, or what they’re doing, or the value of life.
I found that out. I was robbed by a few kids; one was a 14-year-old girl. I’m out on the sidewalk. They bull rushed her [nodding to companion]. Pointed a gun at my head for 50 seconds. I’m surprised that we stayed as calm as we did. But it crossed my mind, they could shoot her. [Details of the armed robbery] The sad thing is — these kids are numb to that stuff.
Payne: The lieutenant was sharing with me that part of what he’s doing is he’s building a relationship with the parents. He’s getting intel from the parents. He showed me one of their Snapchats. They have a little flyer for an event. They’re all going to meet somewhere. Steal Kias, and wait until the police show up. Then everybody’s going to run at the same time, because they want to get chased. That’s the thrill of it.
It’s not only that they’re numb to the violence; it’s that they have to keep ratcheting it up to feel the thrill. Inspector Torborg: It’s frustrating from a law enforcement perspective. Officers have to talk to the victims, and to respond to these violent carjackings. I’m rarely the responding officer, but occasionally I’m out on the scene where there’s a carjacking. Sometimes I have the opportunity to talk to the victims afterwards; sometimes I just happen to know the victims, and I talk to them about it. Our focus has been: what do we do about the juveniles? Some are very young. If you lock up a 13-year-old, 14-year-old, 15-year-old, it’s going to have negative consequences for them for the rest of their life.
What is forgotten in our current criminal justice system is public safety. While everything might be true about the suspects and the kids, the bottom line is people are having their lives threatened. And the first thing we have to do is keep people safe. I think too often we forget about the victims. There’s all kinds of social workers and effort and everything else being placed into figuring out a productive solution to what do we do with these juvenile chronic offenders. But how much help do the victims get?
If they’re lucky, the victims get to chat with an investigator and they’ll get maybe a call from the county attorney. And they get to talk to their insurance agent later about getting their car replaced. And then that’s probably all they get.
Comment from the victim: This crime happened in the third precinct and the cops were excellent. Three young guys, just respectful, professional. I just can’t say enough about that. So I’m going to sing their praises.
Inspector Torborg: I want to thank Councilman Payne for going on a ride along and that’s his 2nd ride-along he’s done with the MPD. I’ve known many City Council members over my career. A lot of them talked about going on ride-alongs, but only a few did. So thank you, Council Member for that. “President”, I should say. Payne: I appreciate that. I wish the bar was a little higher. It’s important to really understand these issues. You can get into an ideological place about these topics because they’re so sensitive, but it’s important to see it firsthand. Then you see that there are so many gaps. Payne: We get a lot of “What are you doing about crime?” calls. Actually, our role is limited — We approve the police budget and the police contract. I would like to be able to give eye witness reports on what the failures in our system are. With that, I could talk about filling the gaps, whether that’s advocating for victim services and resources, advocating for more out of home placements for young people or other gaps. We’re not going to put juveniles in jail, but they don’t have the support they need at home. They may need separate facilities, but a related topic is that we don’t have enough facilities for mental health. So how do we advocate for those things? [conversation on what consequences juveniles could face for their misbehavior] Quast to Payne: Your time is limited. Let’s spend time on what you want to cover. Payne: The ride-along was the number one thing I wanted to talk about here because it just revealed a lot of the realities. It was grounding. I think grounding before we approach policy in reality, is critically important. I wanted to share with this group that this was a profound experience I had. QUESTION: After everything that we’ve talked about, how can all of us help all the issues that we’ve talked about?
Payne My real hope is that we begin having these more nuanced conversations on the topic of safety. I think that we all went through something traumatic in this city in the last few years. And that has really activated our more primal nature. What would be very helpful is for us to really think about how we can move forward together in a way that is supportive of solutions, rather than inflammatory, ideologically, pointing fingers. The fact that you’ve all decided to volunteer to be in this setting says something about your commitment to this work. That is like above and beyond most civic engagement. And I think that you have access to networks that I don’t have access to. I’m a representative of city government, and you are also a representative of your neighborhood.
If you and your networks can start fostering a nuanced and collaborative approach to this topic, that would be a start.
CM Payne’s final words at PAC is the perfect introduction to the next topic: What can we neighbors do to recreate the structures that support community safety.
That’s something we’re going to be working on over the next six months or year.
BLOCK CLUBS
Neighborhood Safety is one of the things that COVID destroyed for us. The Second Precinct used to have the strongest collection of block clubs in the city.
We have to start reaching across the street. Keep your eyes open and talk to neighbors. Plan an agenda. Send one representative to a place like this. Send another to city council hearings.
But it can’t be just Southeast Minneapolis, which actually still has a few block clubs. It has to be Block Clubs in neighborhoods all across the Precinct. You start out by getting to know the people on either side of you and then across the street.
This is something that will be happening here, starting here.
I have already been approached by somebody, one person remembered that the 4th Precinct used to have the strongest block clubs in the city. Two other people from the 3rd Precinct contacted me also. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Precincts are about the way it’s going to go.
This is something that can be built up in the 2nd Precinct, for sure, over the next year. So, get started. It really doesn’t take a lot of money. We don’t need it. It takes meeting people across the fence, offering a hand and accepting a grin. (It’s also nice to have an occasional potluck in somebody’s garage, though.)
The Southeast Como Improvement Association started out in living rooms, back yards, and garages. That is how it happens. We had it and we have to go back to that. If we wait for the city to “do something”, we lose. Anyway, that funding was cut before covid.
Future meetings will be addressing the topic.
STATE OF THE PRECINCT
NIBRS Crime statistics 2025 2024 3 yr. Ave
Assault
79
68
65
Incl. Dom. Ag. Aslt.
7
11
9
B&E
14
79
63
Homicide negl.
0
0
Homicide non-neg
0
1
0
Larceny
145
175
174
MV Theft
41
75
74
Robbery
10
16
14
Incl. car jacking
3
2
4
Sex offenses
7
17
8
Stolen property
1
2
1
Weap. Law Viol.
7
4
2
Gun Wound Vics.
2
2
1
Shots fired calls
18
22
15
Inspector Torborg: Most of the crimes were trending down. We had an uptick in car jackings — we had three, two of them occurred last week: one on Thursday and one on Friday.
On Saturday night, we had a shooting, or, you could call it an assault or a robbery. It was in on 6th Avenue SE on Saturday night, at a party. An attempted robbery went bad. The victim didn’t have any money to hand over, and the suspect reportedly fired a shot at the victim. The victim was just grazed by the bullet and didn’t go to the hospital. He was treated at the scene and then released.
It was pretty concerning that we had three violent crimes in the second precinct in three days, because usually that doesn’t happen for us. Hopefully that’s just a blip on the map.
The second carjacking was on Friday; the suspects were all apprehended. I think it got some media coverage. The vehicle was spotted in North Minneapolis and tracked until the occupants fled from the car and hid in a garage. All the six suspects were taken into custody. They are all known to us. They are all involved in other crimes. So at least, you know we got them in custody.
They’re juveniles though, so who knows what’s gonna happen to them. At least we had an arrest in that case though.
[City Attorney] Okoronkwo has been putting in a ton of work on Josh Poplowski. We’ve arrested him him for gross misdemeanor trespassing, for repeated trespassing offenses. But then he was also arrested with some narcotics. We’re trying to get him to a plea deal so he’s held at the workhouse for 364 days, [over to City Attorney Okoronkwo]
Okoronkwo Thank you, Inspector.
Josh Poplowski is one of the frequent flyers in the second precinct at U of M. His activity over the years has been ramping up. He’s had an adult probation officer for the last couple of years, Ron Cunningham, who was excellent at working with him and kind of keeping him on the straight and narrow. Josh tends to frequent the West Bank area and U of M, as well as Dinkytown, because there’s a lot of commerce there.
Our office and the county attorney have been working to try and get him considerable time because he has a lot of cases. Some of the cases we don’t charge, but the county has, so they get to pick and choose what they want to go forward with. He’s actually a hard guy to actually go to court with. (Just before I joined this call, I realized he’s out of jail again.)
He has a court appearance tomorrow, and he also has a lot of conditions on him, one of which is that he’s not supposed to be in Dinkytown at all. I’ve been successful at convincing a judge that a geographic restriction is probably the best thing we can do with him right now; with that in place, we can get him into programming. I would say he’s probably got about 25 cases, 12 of which we’ve charged very recently.
The goal is to get him committed so that he can get some help and stop stealing and causing problems at a lot of the area businesses in Dinkytown and Stadium Village.
He also has a Probation Officer now. That P.O. is new to the game, but I’m communicating with him regularly so that he can get up to speed with Josh. Hopefully we can get better handles. Josh is one of the people that I work with who has mental health challenges.
He doesn’t do anything serious enough that they actually can hold him for very long, unfortunately.
The sheer quantity, though! He’s one of four people I have to chase around the Precinct any given week. I think he admits to having an addiction problem. He’s frequently arrested with meth.
I think everyone’s hope is that we can keep him in custody long enough that he gets sober and maybe get some help for his addiction and some help for his mental health. He’s living a miserable existence. He’s creating misery for all the people who work in the businesses that he’s constantly stealing from. He just needs some help. It’s clear he isn’t able to help himself.
Quast: For those of you that don’t know, Josh has been on the 2-PAC agenda for about 15 years. Recently he started circling the University Lutheran Church of Hope (ULCH), and the Administrator contacted me, asking for help.
ULCH is an active church but is also home to P.E.A.C.E., a special high school for people in recovery. Mr. Obrestad was spending too much time warning Josh off the property and Josh was seen using drugs on the property. Then some of Josh’s friends started joining him on the church campus. I hope that 2-PAC has done a little more to keep Josh in the spotlight.
There was one other event, Inspector. Someone asked why we had helicopters, lots of squads, streets blocked off recently.
Torborg: Were they referring to Saturday night? We had a good burglary call. The crime was in progress. A couple of suspects were burglarizing in an apartment building, but when they left, the apartment manager followed them.
Squads got into place and did a felony stop. They took the two suspects into custody. Between UM PD and MPD, it was a pretty large police presence. Because it was in Dinkytown, a bunch of the late night safety plan officers were working too. Also the State Patrol is pretty good about having a helicopter above Minneapolis on weekends.
Quast: Well, that answers that question.
One other: If the State or cities like Minneapolis at some time receive orders, like an executive order, to go beyond what the law is right now, would you care to speculate the action?
Torborg: There hasn’t been such a mandate, but I think there’d be such an outcry from the public and our elected officials that it wouldn’t happen or there’d be immediate legal action to get an injunction.
But the fact of the matter is, with the resources we have now, even if we were mandated to track down undocumented immigrants, I don’t know where we’d get the resources to search for them, to be honest.
We have enough on our plate, just answering 911 calls and trying to do a little proactive police work. We don’t have the bandwidth to deal with immigration issues or be worrying about somebody’s immigration status.
Another 2nd PCT update: I can tell you that the Second Precinct construction project is done and we will have a community meeting room we can use. We’re still probably two months away from using it. They call it a team room. It’s wired to have meetings that can be broadcast on media. Sooner or later, we should have that.
QUAST That presumes we’ll have enough staff in the to watch the doors.
Torborg: That’s true. That’s a bit of a problem.
Quast: Thank you, Inspector, for being here, and thank you for your answers and your clarity.
and,
Thank you all for joining us here. MEETING END.
Emilie Quast, Member, MPD Second Precinct Advisory Council (2-PAC)
The meeting was called to order at 6:37 with 6 in person and 6 on ZOOM
2024 10-Hour Buffet for First Responders.
We’re Back! Our in-person and carry out numbers are back to pre pandemic numbers. We served over 130 people from all 5 precincts, 10 fire department stations, UofM PD, MPRB Police, Henn. Cty. EMS, the BCR, and the 988 Teams. We also delivered 166 meals to 911 operators and Metro Transit West Station staff who can’t drive in.
In addition, the Moose delivered 110 meals to HC Jail staff, who are also “shut-ins”.
I’m also happy to write that the volunteers who host this buffet can handle whatever happens. We’re all growing and we’re all learning how to handle the next crisis.
Livability Issues: Homeless people in Dinkytown. It’s a forever problem. One of them is known by name to most of the officers in 2nd Precinct, the U of M officers, and many merchants in Dinkytown. 2-PAC has been hearing about him for 15+ years.
He or his friends have amped up confrontations lately. However:
Two days ago, I found a statement by W.3 CM Rainville in the City of Minneapolis Daily Digest Bulletin. CM Rainville represents part of the 2nd Precinct. He wrote:
“I have authored a legislative directive to conduct a landscape analysis of state and municipal actions to expand access, incentivize and/or introduce court-ordered mental health and substance use disorder treatment.
“This will give the city council more information on what the city can do to help solve the substance abuse and mental health crisis, which is resulting in the many homeless encampments in Minneapolis. It will also assess the degree to which quality treatment is currently available, particularly for individuals experiencing homelessness.”
People have suggested that some repeat offenders do not want treatment. We can’t brainwash them, and we don’t currently have the facilities to lock them up, even for their own safety; those places have been closed. So, we have to find something, somewhere else. I’m hoping that some of the recently created social service agencies can come up with a plan.
Know that Precinct Advisory Council goals are to I.D. community issues and help find solutions.
Inspector Torborg: Most of our crime is trending down compared to last year.
At one point last summer, we were regularly having over 20 auto thefts a week. Recently, that’s been down to 9 to 11, which is encouraging.
Robberies: Two weeks ago we had 0 robberies and we talked about it. Then we had two. One was a Facebook robbery: in Facebook, the victim met someone who wanted to buy his computer. When they met in front of an apt. building, the suspect grabbed the computer and ran into the building. That’s a preventable robbery, but we still have to own it.
Livability Issues: The biggest problem in the 2nd Pct. is constant livability issues in SE Mpls. created by just a few people who use a lot of time from many agencies. The U of M PD is working on this issue with us. One of the frequent offenders is now, finally, geo-restricted from U of M property, but he isn’t geo-restricted from Dinkytown itself. He’s been trespassed from many businesses in Dinkytown too.
When he’s picked up, he’s taken to Hennepin County Jail, probably gets a meal, and is released about 4 or 5 hours later, without any kind of treatment.
The long-term goal is for him and the others to get in front of a judge who will commit them to a facility instead of releasing them back to the streets. Some are getting more aggressive, and people are getting more angry with them — not a good recipe for the future.
Problem Properties: The other growing issue we have is tenants in a few apartment buildings are generating a lot of 911 calls. We don’t have the tools we used to have. Back then, we’d contact Licensing and Inspections, they’d write citations for too many 911 calls, and conduct on premise. Those tools have gone away. All we have left is Fire Inspections.
Here’s an example: I grew up about three blocks away from a nice NE three story apartment building. In the last few months, today’s tenants have triggered dozens of 911 calls.
On New Year’s Eve, we were called for a stabbing. We had to arrest three people: one was fighting with us and kicked a couple officers, another one was just being belligerent. I was hoping we could get somebody in to write some violations, but the only response we got was a Fire Inspector.
Nothing is done about the litter, the holes punched in almost every door. The fire suppression system was in place, the smoke alarms were good. There weren’t any fire code violations, but the place is in bad shape.
QQ Where is this building?
Torborg: 759 Washington Street NE. It’s on the northeast corner of Washington and Broadway, a three-story apartment building.
There are several apartment buildings that are problems, especially the newer ones. 2301 California is a huge apartment complex.They opened last summer, and we started getting an inordinate number of 911 calls. So, we’ll do what we can and hopefully we’ll get a few more officers here in this coming year. The more officers we have, the more effective we’ll be.
QQ: I don’t understand how this is happening even if it’s “only” fire inspections.
Torborg: Early in my career, I was placed on an unpopular shift in North Minneapolis. Part of my duties were to go around with a Housing Inspector and visit various properties. If the properties were in disrepair, if there was bad conduct on the premise and stuff, the Housing Inspector would issue citations. That doesn’t happen anymore.
The Housing Inspector would point out to the landlords that they’re expected to rent to people who are decent tenants. He would point out if they were renting to people who had a record of livability violations. Those housing inspections are gone, now. So now as long as the owners of the properties maintain the fire codes, we don’t have leverage for them to keep their places clean, to keep decent tenants in their apartment buildings.
Also, when they do try to evict problem tenants but the tenants refuse to leave, the owner must file an unlawful detainer. The whole process takes months.
QQ: Landlords used to get inspections based on the number of violations. Is that system gone too?
Answer: It’s still on for all rental. [EQ: Google “Minneapolis rental license tiering”]
QQ: How is Police recruitment looking?
Torborg: We just welcomed 32 cadets and CSOs. That’s the most people in the pipeline in five or six years. As of this morning, we had 530 officers. Last summer, we had 499 at one point.
Quast: One thing: I’d like you to clarify. What is a CSO and what is a cadet?
Torborg: A CSO [Community Service Officer] is somebody on the pathway to become a police officer. All you need is a high school diploma, and we’ll hire you. Then you work part time as a CSO doing things like driving squad cars to the shop, getting supplies for the stations. They do non law enforcement (housekeeping) work when they’re on the clock for us. At the same time, they’re taking law enforcement classes. The MPD pays for classes that lead to an Associate’s Degree in Law Enforcement. Once they get their Associates Degree, they can enter our Police Academy.
MPD Cadet program was started to get a more diverse group of people applying for the job. They hire anybody with a two year degree in law enforcement OR a four year degree in any field. The candidates get all the law enforcement classes they need before they go into the Police Academy. About 9 months later, they can be sworn in.
To simplify it, Cadets already have their classroom education; they only need to go through “rookie school” to get them up to speed. CSOs haven’t had classroom training, so the MPD is helping them along the way — two years or four years.
QQ: How long does the Police Academy last? What courses are involved in that?
Torborg: Whether it’s a CSO or somebody else, it’s a 4 month academy they need to graduate from rookie school. Since a typical Cadet doesn’t have any law enforcement classroom training, it’s longer. You have to complete those classes, pass the POST test [EQ: Police Officer Standards & Training], and then go through Police Academy. That’s about a nine month process or a little longer. You do get paid at least, so it’s actually a good deal. We’ve hired a lot of cops that way.
After the Academy, you ride with a Field Training Officer for five months. You’re evaluated every day at the end of the shift in 28 different categories. Then, when you’re done with that five months, you have 10 days where you ride with a Field Training Officer, but he is supposed to just be a ride-along. He doesn’t do anything other than observe you and step in if somebody’s safety is in danger. After you complete the 5 months of field training and the 10 day evaluation, you’re finally able to work in a squad by yourself.
FTO is an important part of our training. A lot of police work can’t be taught in a classroom. A good FTO fine-tunes you into being a good cop.They are offering wisdom and steering you in the right direction.
Quast: Thank you. Over the next several months, I’ll be asking more people to talk to us about better management of livability issues in Minneapolis. If anyone has questions or suggestions, please contact me directly. And with that, I wish you all a good evening.
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.
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
This is an annual Thank You to all our First Responders. It’s a 10-hour buffet, created by residents, business owners and other shareholders in the 2nd Precinct. 2024 will be the 41st anniversary of the first event, which, I understand, started out as a block club program.
A couple of friends were walking around on Christmas Eve and suddenly realized that they were coming from a house full of family, good food, excitement. But the Second Precinct had all the lights on and heads walking back and forth and phones ringing and cars going in and out of the parking area. People were working in there. Somebody said, “You know, this isn’t right”.
So the next Christmas Eve, neighbors of the Precinct brought a Holiday dinner to the Precinct so the people there didn’t have to miss everything. The bright idea grew over the years until it got to be a deal. This year is the 41st anniversary.
We have only missed one year, 2020, because of COVID, but we were back in business in 2021, thanks to Larry Ranallo, who knew we couldn’t have it at the precinct. There was no place to do social distancing for 150 people in that small building, so Larry offered his Event Room in the Moose Grill and Bar.
Officers came in one precinct shift at a time. They had already been in close contact, so they all ate together but distanced from officers from other areas. We had our event and it’s good.
We solicit donations of food and help only from people and businesses in the Second Precinct. However, any First Responder who is scheduled to work on December 24, who walks in the door, will be welcomed and fed. That includes people from the fire department, the police department, EMTs, and others.
We deliver to the people I call “shut ins” — they are people who can’t leave their stations during their shifts. These are the 911 operators, and others who can’t take time to travel to the 2nd for a meal. That’s fine. On the 24th, we will deliver their food to them.
The event starts at noon, although if somebody comes in early, they will be fed. It ends at 10, but if somebody comes in at 10:30, they’re going to be fed.
We need people to pick up food donations, from Dec. 18th to the 21st, and again on the 23rd and the 24th. Those gifts will be delivered to the kitchen staff at the Moose (356 Monroe St NE) We need drivers to take food to the “shut ins” on the 24th, especially in the middle of the afternoon. It’s best if all drivers have someone riding shotgun and no one goes alone.
We need people to set up the Event Room with our gear, greet the guests as they enter, make sure they sign in, and get them started on the buffet. (Set up starts 8:30-ish. Noon is zero-hour.) Places must be wiped & cleared after every guest. Hosts are scheduled on 2-hour shifts, but you can sign up for as many shifts as you want. We need some people with a little energy to pack up and clear out from 10 PM to done. Usually we’re done in about 45 minutes and just sit and joke around before we head out.
Dinner Plans Continued: We deliver to shut-ins mostly in the afternoon, because most cops are out working then.
QQ: Do we know who’s been contacted and who’s not been contacted? We don’t want to be hitting up multiple people calling the same places.
Quast: Anybody that’s on last year’s list is being contacted, but the 2nd Pct has a couple hundred other restaurants that are very, very good. The point is, if you like it, if it’s food you’d want to brag about, think about contacting them, but DO CHECK WITH ME FIRST. I also don’t want the same place getting multiple requests.
We are trying to tamp down on the sweets this year. Many generous people bring their seasonal goodies to the local Fire Station or Police Precinct. A light dessert is nice at a sit-down event, but we need a few more main entrees.
I have one other thing: I hate food waste. Previous years, I was sending out carry outs for guests to take back to their stations. I suspect some of those gifts weren’t really needed. This year we’re going to send out reasonable amounts.
I have already contacted Second Harvest and they will coordinate with staff at the Moose. Any food that’s left over will be kept safely by the Moose staff until Second Harvest rolls in. They’ll take it to where it’s needed so there will be no waste.
Again, we solicit. If you have a restaurant you want to contact, contact me first. I will tell you if I know someone else already named that contact so we don’t have dups. My goal is to bring these restaurants into the community a little bit more, to create a professional community. We’ve got professional cops. We’ve got professional restaurant owners. Let’s see if we can make connections so we’re all pulling in the same direction.
Again, if you have any questions about what you could do, how you could help, contact me. AND my new email is emilieinmpls@gmail.com
Comment: I know you said to contact you, which I have, Emilie, but I think this might be of broader interest. If we want to make cash donations, what’s the process for that?
Quast: Thank you! Make the check out to: Second Precinct Advisory Council
Mail it to : MPD Second Precinctthe precinct. 1911 Central Ave. Northeast, Minneapolis 55418.
And with that, it’s been a long evening, and I appreciate the hard work you did. Thank you so very, very much. Take care.
The meeting was called to order on 11/11/24 at 6:38 pm, with 8 attending in person. On Veterans’ Day, government employees are on leave and not attending.
Introductions:
Stephanie Zakhia announced that this is her last meeting as a technical assistant. She introduced her replacement, Rhana Elhassan, so WELCOME Rhana!
Marie Meyer lives in Marshall Terrace. She feels safe in her neighborhood, and likes coming to the meetings to be sure she’s informed.
Carol White lives in Monroe Village and also likes to stay informed.
Cheri Martin is the Community Administrator of Monroe Village. She feels safer with the Precinct right across the street and having a relationship with the officers. “I’m so pleased that we could bring 2-PAC back in person, back to our building.”
Gayle Bonneville lives in Waite Park. She’s always interested in what’s going on with the police and trying to separate fact from fiction.
Rhana Elhassan is a student at the U of MN and lives in Marcy Holmes. She graduates next year. She represents the Office of Off-Campus Living at the U.
Jeff Meehan is from Nicollet Island East Bank Neighborhood Association. He’s been involved with 2-PAC for about 8 years and involved with his neighborhood organization going on 16 years.
STATE OF THE PRECINCT:
NIBRS Crime Metrics-28 days
2024
2023
Prev.3 yrs
Assault offenses
89
75
77
Incl. Domestic.Ag.Asslt.
12
5
9
Burglary, B&E
23
25
27
Vandalism
100
89
73
Homicide, non-neg.
0
1
0
Homicide, negligent
0
0
Larceny theft
213
185
88
MV Theft
80
116
88
Robbery
17
18
22
Incl. car-jacking
1
1
5
Sex Offenses
11
5
7
Stolen Prop. Offences
0
4
4
Weapons law violations
4
10
10
Shots fired calls
34
20
28
Gun wound victims
7
1
1
Second Precinct crime was definitely up this month. Check the stats: assault, vandalism, larceny theft, and shots fired.
Emilie pointed out that while our numbers are up, the 2nd Precinct actually has the lowest crime numbers of the 5 precincts in Minneapolis. She contrasted 2nd Pct statistics with the numbers reported by the 3rd Precinct which reports numbers in the middle of the five.
Our crime stats are not what we want to see, but compared with all the rest of the city, we’re in pretty good shape.
An attender asked if those numbers are really reporting all the incidents. For example, does it include U of M crimes on campus?
There are a couple of things to unpack here.
The report only collects felony crime, punishable by imprisonment of one year or more, or by a death penalty.
Misdemeanor crimes may result in a fine, probation, community service. Trespassing (such as when protesters won’t leave a public place) is a misdemeanor, and so is speeding or loitering. The definitions here may vary by state.
The list of felony crimes is mandated by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. The list is called National Incident-Based Reporting System.
While Dinkytown has been headline news for way too long, the area is now covered by MPD, UMPD, the Transit Police. Officers from the MPRB also are working there as needed. Be aware that this double coverage is not just Dinkytown. That coverage is for all of East Marcy Holmes from St. Paul to the Freeway, and from the river to the train tracks north of UMN campus. This includes Stadium Village, and the U of M and Augsburg campuses.
There are also non-police groups watching over us, like Metro Transit Homeless Action Team (HAT), Madd Dads, Somali Youth League, and several Crisis Response teams. That puts a lot of uniformed people on our streets, even if some of the uniforms are t-shirts.
When you check the MPD Crime map, you’ll see that crimes committed on University campus and nearby are reported. Also be aware that the crimes found on the NBIRS are on the felony level, not misdemeanor. A sit-down protester is likely to be charged with 5th degree misdemeanor trespassing. Those stats don’t go on this chart because they are not collected on the national level. FFI: on how to research the data, check Rashid’s presentation here: https://youtu.be/bk81Ll1Lbmk Give yourself time to learn how to use this resource.
QQ: I’ve been asking about non-part one crimes for a long time. Those are the crimes that make people move away. They are livability issues. We need ideas on how to handle them.
Quast: The 2nd Precinct includes 17 neighborhoods. Only SE Como, NIEB, Waite Park, Windom Park, and the University area are represented at this meeting tonight. How do we get the others to join us? They all have insight on livability crimes in their area. I wonder if OCL and Kendra would have insight on how to make that happen.
Comment: Emilie is emailing all of them every month. What do they do with those emails? I don’t know; they do not respond. How about if we actually go into these other meetings that they have and just introduce ourselves?
Comment: I communicated with Emilie probably 10 days ago regarding social media and our neighborhood organization. Our neighborhood organization [NIEBNA] added Instagram and Facebook. The reality is, since our neighborhood organization has gone with social media, we’re getting a lot more [attenders]. The point is, I think more people are paying attention to social media than to emails.
Comment: Another thing when you had sent in your email, you wanted to discuss more about how to get more people here, how to get the word out. Northeast does have a paper newspaper still, and they will do your event announcements for free in that whole big section. So I’m thinking we should get an announcement every month in there.
Quast: It would be nice if you would approach him, because Margo, Vince and I have colluded about a few things over the years. It would be nice to get somebody else into the mix.
Comment: Sure, I can do that.
Quast: The reason that neighborhood communication is important, is MPD staffing. We’ve all been talking about cop staffing at 55% of what it should be, and the city council has passed enough budget money so that we can hire more but they’re not on the force yet. That makes neighborhood communication so important!
We had a lovely woman come in several years ago to report high speed car racing up and down the residential streets near her home. The area is close to 37th Avenue, meaning the racers could make a quick exit if they were spotted.
We can’t pull a squad away from a critical response (person in danger or crime in progress) just to see if they could catch a speeder. But if someone in the next neighborhood had said, yeah, they’re coming past us too, and then a third person down the street chimes in, (maybe noting when the racers start up on what days or jotting down a license plate number) then the cops have something to act on. Now it’s a whole lot more than one report, and it’s actionable. That fuller picture is what builds safety.
Comment: This was probably 15 years ago now, but there was a house in my neighborhood where the people who bought the house were actually selling drugs. My neighbors would literally go out and take down license plate numbers as people came and went. Then one day, the officers came in the front, they came in the back, the cars with big lights, and they took them away, We never saw them again.
Quast: Presumably those plate numbers got reported to the police, who looked them up and got a much bigger picture, so they had info they could act on. That’s the picture of neighborhood safety, right there.
FINALLY: DECEMBER PLANS!
On December 24th, this year, we will be having the 41st 10-hour buffet for all First Responders on duty that day. I will be checking with Larry Ranallo, to see if we can have it at the Moose again. I’m sure he’ll say yes. (Because otherwise, we’re dead in the water.) That’s at the Moose on Monroe in the event room downstairs.
[Jeff passed a list of previous contributors] These are the ones that have contributed in the past. If you have a favorite restaurant that’s not on the list, I would appreciate you naming them and telling us why. We’ll ask them.
I’m looking mostly for places that offer main dishes and appetizers. My reason is that many people bring local Fire Stations, Precincts, and similar holiday sweets. They have plenty of that. Two years ago, we absolutely ran out of entrees. A dozen hungry firefighters walked in about 9:45 pm. Larry Ranallo, our host, stepped up and told his cooks to prepare 12 pizzas and just send them out. The spirit of the season: Give freely to people in need.
QQ: Are these times set in stone?
Quast: Yes. The reason for that long spread is that that way we get to feed all three shifts. Most shifts overlap. The last time I looked, the 10-hour shifts were:
Day Watch – 5:45 AM – 3:45 PM
Midwatch – 3:30 PM – 1: 30 AM
Dog Watch – 8 PM – 6 AM
With our event the Moose, we get to use professional coolers. Larry’s trained, professional staff manages the food: store safely, heat properly, and get it out there fresh. That is a big, big help.
QQ I was just a newbie last year, so it was all new to me. But it seemed like, at least the time I was there, maybe two and a half, three hours, it was pretty slow.
Quast: The middle of the afternoon is very slow which is why I ask new volunteers to do their first shift at that time. That is when we do a lot of packing up and delivering to folks who can’t come in. I have a list of “shut-ins” like the Transit Police, 911 staff, and more.
By the way, we also need teams of two to make deliveries. Many of those are scheduled for mid-afternoon. If a station just doesn’t have enough staff, the people behind the service desk can’t leave either. Then we send boxes out with their precinct mates. I have two cartons of restaurant clamshells.
QQ: How does the word get out to the troops, so to speak.
Quast: It’s broadcast by the MPD from HQ. One of the MFD Lieutenants broadcasts to the MFD. Jeff and I also visit fire stations. EMTs often travel right out with the fire department.
Jeff Meehan’s Report of Donation Progress: Silver Fern is going to resubmit their six loaves of homemade pumpkin bread. Surdyks will send the cheese trays again, as they always do. Lunds — we talked about their crustless chicken pot pies, which is good comfort food. We have a new manager at Max Industrial Sports Bar. I’ve asked them for some containers of pandemic marinara. The manager of All Saints called me today; my favorite dish there is Peppardelle — very good.
I saved the best for last. Our number one most popular thing, Ginger Hop Wings, went away on us [during Covid]. I met with the manager of the Stray Dog and he said, “Yeah, we can give you up to 25 pounds of wings”. That might be too much. [EQ: doubtful)
I’m about a month early on purpose. I just wanted to get some things done. Plus, I wanted to get some new people with some new business because, as she said, we ran short last year and that’s not a good thing.
Comment: If we have suggestions for other restaurants, just let you know then? Emilie, there are some amazing restaurants that are within like three blocks of here that aren’t on this list. So I’m curious to see if we’ve approached them before or if not, can we approach them now?
Quast: I would love to see more people doing recruiting. Please follow Jeff’s procedure: He picks a dish he likes and lets me know what it is and why he likes it. I check the list to see if we have too much in that category. Then: Go Ahead!
OK, three years ago, all I could see was that we had food left over, people couldn’t leave their stations or they were sending somebody in. I was wrapping up, sending out, and then we started to run short, so the servings got a bit smaller. It was the first time that this had really happened. I didn’t want to have food left over, because I didn’t know what to do with it.
This year I’m going to find a place that will want it.
Important: We only accept donations from people in the 2nd precinct. Any First Responder ON DUTY who walks in the door gets fed.
On 9/9/24, the meeting was called to order with 7 attenders in person and 6 attending by ZOOM.
Our invited speaker, Nicholas Juarez, Director Juarez U of MN Community Engagement, is here to present the new U of MN Safety Center, which officially opened on Sept 13, at 315 14th Ave SE, in the heart of Dinkytown.
In April of this year, Inspector Torborg and Director Juarez outlined the new cooperative plan to increase safety in East Marcy Holmes and Dinkytown. [See https://courtwatch2pac.com/2024/04/14/] This was the first outline we heard of the scope of the double coverage and of the plans for the proposed Safety Center in Dinkytown.
The University’s statement of commitment to public safety [ https://safe-campus.umn.edu/neighborhood-safety] says, in part, “We are unwavering in our commitment to provide a safe environment for our students, faculty, and staff both on campus and in our neighboring communities. . . . [W]e rely on our many partners including local communities, city and transit police, state policymakers, landlords, and merchants to elevate safety and a vibrant community.”
“Enhancing Public Safety in Nearby Neighborhoods” has three strategies, so far.
Dinkytown alerts
SAFE-U Alerts are sent to notify the community of crime occurring in the limited Dinkytown area (east of 35W, south of 8th Street SE, and northwest of the East Bank campus). Neighbors or parents can download this Everbridge app by entering keyword UMNDINKYTOWN on their device
Dinkytown Safety Guides and others
Contracted through Block by Block, around four Dinkytown Safety guides patrol Dinkytown Thursdays through Saturdays from 2:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. They provide safety escorts, report suspicious activity, and overall give friendly neighborhood interaction with residents and visitors. [EQ: also see https://www.blockbyblock.com/cities/minneapolis-did/ ]
Director Juarez: We have partnerships with Somali Youth Link [EQ: https://somaliyouthlink.org/]. They’ll be in the area Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. The Off-Campus Safety Center will be their base of operations. They will start their tour at the Center, walk the Dinkytown area, and then can come back for their breaks.
The Off-Campus Safety Center, operated by the Department of Public Safety, brings resources and community to the heart of Dinkytown. Along with opportunities to connect with UMPD, the Safety Center will offer community engagement, safety classes, and student space.
Any officers working the Dinkytown area, whether they’re on traffic details or just walking the Dinkytown area, MPD or UofM PD, can use the space. They can have a cup of coffee, use the restroom, or just take a break. We also have a “secure room” for any officer who needs to do a report.
We have a a five-year lease on that space. It’s a really strong commitment from the University Dept. of Public Safety. We will be a continued partner with the city, trying to improve the livability, and to reduce the opportunity for crime that we see in the Dinkytown/Marcy Holmes East neighborhood. [EQ: See the official opening video from 9/13/24: https://www.linkedin.com/company/umnpublicsafety/posts/]
Anybody have any questions, comments, concerns?
QQ: Thanks! Will the staffing consist of sworn officers?
Other officers, including Sworn Officers, will be in and out, but won’t be stationed there. It’s not a police substation.
QQ: I live near Stadium Village, and I’ve noticed that there’s an increased presence. There are more cop cars in Dinkytown and near Stadium Village. Also, I’ve seen people who are not police, but authority on the train. Is this a new initiative — more authority in Dinkytown and other parts of campus?
Juarez: Metro Transit Ambassadors ride the trains, but they’re community officers. They’re usually in large groups — 5 – 8 people. They check for fares, check on people on the train. They’re the blue shirts you’ll see on the trains.
Usually the first couple of weeks of school, we bring in a lot of law enforcement partners. The Minn. State Patrol has has been sending in cars every weekend. We also step up our staffing during the weekends, to do traffic enforcement in the Dinkytown area.
We signed a contract with Metro Transit Police Dept. because they’re shorthanded as well. One of the things that we do is to put two officers on the trains between East Bank and West Bank, morning and afternoon. Our officers do ride the train in the mornings. They start about 6:30 to about 8:00, and are back again from about 5 to 7. We’ll do that for about six weeks. People tend to get a routine after that. It’s good to have a visual presence until new students get used to the transit system.
Juarez emphasized: That’s one thing Chief Clark made clear. When we have our officers on the street — when they’re doing traffic detail and out of their vehicles — they must be a visible presence and have their lights on, so people see the squad cars.
We’ve also done some safety walks. We did one on Friday and on Saturday. Our safety walk on Saturday included three 2nd Pct. officers with us.
Again, just walking Dinkytown, and the neighborhood. Just having that visibility. I’m working on other initiatives and opportunities to get some more uniformed personnel to do the Dinkytown walks, to be more visible by walking around.
We have a safety walk planned for this Saturday night. It will involve U of M personnel and some city personnel. We will also try to get students, parents, and people who that live in the area to be part of that safety walk. If we show there’s some ownership, more people will call 911 when they see suspicious activity, or a crime being committed. That helps build up the strength of the community.
And that is what we’re trying to do: to have more eyes on the street, to be very visible. Chief Clark has made it clear: he wants his officers on the street, and if they’re NOT doing traffic detail, he wants them on the corner being very visible.
Comment: We always appreciate your updates and miss you in the 2nd Pct. Two questions for you. How did the first football game go, with the road construction, and, I’ve heard that this is the largest incoming class at the U ever. What are you watching for with the huge increase in numbers?
Juarez:, I think we’re over 8,000 freshmen, which is incredible. Part of my team’s responsibilities is to do all the freshmen orientation. We talk to as many parents and as many students as we can, to give them that awareness: be aware of your surroundings, lock the doors, buy good quality locks for bikes, and know where the blue phones are. We really try to educate as much as we can.
One of the benefits of the Safety Center is we’ll continue to do those education classes, even though orientation is over. If we can draw more people in, that will benefit all.
Football: You know the second game we won. The first game, it rained like crazy, it got delayed. [EQ: L: 17-19 heartbreaker]
Roads update: 4th St.: They’re laying asphalt today [9/9] on 4th. University Ave. is next. What they did on 4th, they’ll do to University: every corner will be redone. 4th went from 4 four lanes to 2 lanes and 2 bike lanes. University will have a bus lane, a bike lane, and 2 lanes. The construction has created some hazards.
We’re doing a safety walk on Saturday. There are a lot of dark intersections down there as well. The County doesn’t leave street lights when they’re reconstructing, but we have our portable light trailers and portable camera trailers (with lights) on those intersections, plus someone on the street.
Inspector Torborg: First of all, the UofM Police Dept. has been a huge help for the 2nd Pct. Obviously with the Safety Center now, but back in March, they agreed to take 911 calls along University and 4th St. That’s about 500 calls a year that MPD squads won’t have to respond to.
You mentioned the heavier police presence down there. We’re teamed with U of M Police Dept. every weekend, Friday and Saturdays. U of M officers do a traffic detail, usually around 4th St. This means, where traffic is restricted, they enforce any traffic or equipment violations they see.
We’ve been doing this all summer. We have six officers down there on overtime. Their job is to be on the corners, (University from 13th to 15th Aves) just for that presence. So far it seems to be working out very well. What we’re trying to do is to dissuade the people (who have caused trouble there in the past) from coming to Dinkytown. It seems to be working.
Last Saturday, somebody with a gun posted that they were going to meet in Dinkytown. We were waiting for them, but they never materialized, which was good.
We’re very indebted to the UofM PD. I appreciate Matt Clark and Nick and everything they’ve done to help out down here. Last year at this time, it was a different story.
Comment: Don’t you wish that the Bloods and the Crips would have a website so we could know in advance when they were gathering.
Torborg: That’s almost the case now. Kids can’t resist posting stuff on social media. We have Intel people and good cops who just monitor that stuff on their own time. Actually a post by a person posing with a handgun and urging people to join them in Dinkytown was picked up by one cop on his own and by our Intel people at the same time.
Comment: You mentioned 911 calls. When are they concentrated?
Torborg: I think our peak time is between 8PM and midnight. [EQ will contact the 911/311 to get peak times in the in the 2nd Pct. ]
SOMEONE: That’s why the day watch and the dog watch overlap between 8:30 and 1:30
CM Rainville: I wanted to come tonight, Nick, to thank you personally for your leadership over there, working with the Mpls Police Dept. [and] carrying this vision of that actual piece of land that belongs to public safety. I think as you learn how to use that with the students, it’s going to be an incredible success.
EQ: See Part 2 of this report for STATE OF THE PRECINCT.
Quast: That is the last 28 days from 9/9. You’ll notice, robbery, car jacking, and sex offenses are the only areas where we had an increase. Everything else is down. I think this is one place the double coverage is showing up.
Torborg: Earlier in the year we had a few robbery and carjacking sprees. The suspects would start in South Minneapolis, the 5th Pct, do two, three, four robberies down there. Then they’d come to the 2nd Pct, do several robberies or steal a few cars, then move on to No. Mpls. That happened a couple of times. We noticed the pattern, and caught them as they’re trying to flee to the Northside.
Since then we’ve had a couple of incidents: kids get a stolen car and head to 2nd Pct. They work the area between Broadway and a couple of blocks north of Lowry, from Central to the river. They stop a person or small group and rob them, usually at gunpoint. Sometimes they use force and assault the victims too. The incidents happened two or three times at night and then a couple of times a week. Those have come to an end.
The other thing, we average about 20 cars a week stolen in NE and SE Minneapolis. We’re below last year’s pace, so at least we’re moving in the right direction. One week we’ll have a bunch of auto thefts in the north end of the 2nd Pct so we divert some resources there. The next week they pop up in Marcy Holmes and when we put resources there, we push them over the line. Our numbers will go down, but they go up on the other side of the river. It’s kind of a whack-a-mole game.
QQ: Do people leave their keys in the car?
Torborg: No. About half of the [stolen cars] are Kias and Hyundais. There’s been a lot of hype about how easy it is to steal them. They installed a safety upgrade on a lot of the vehicles, but I think it took about two weeks before somebody found a workaround and posted it on social media.
The fact of the matter is the Kias and Hyundais are not any harder to steal than your average car was in the early eighties to nineties, but people on social media are showing how easy it is.
Unfortunately, a lot of our auto thieves have been kids. That’s kids 10-14 years and up.
It’s been a catch and release situation. There are very few consequences for them. Typically, when we take the younger kids, we identify them and they’re transported home, or their parents are required to pick them up at our juvenile supervision center. That’s the extent of their punishment.
It’s frustrating for police officers. It’s dangerous for the kids who are risking their lives with crazy driving.
Q: What was the story about those four kids who were killed after they had stolen a car in North about two weeks ago.
Torborg: They were in a stolen car when they were shot. It’s public info. that the shooters were also in a stolen car. It’s an open case. One of the victims was 12 years old.
[Exchange about the Colt Grey school shooting in Georgia]
Question: Inspector, now that the new pay package is falling into line and, of course, lateral transfers, how’s staffing?
Torborg: The CSO program is going well. We have 50 or 60 new CSOs and we’ll find places for them. You do know that CSOs typically are two to four years out from being police officers. They must have a minimum of two years of college and then the police academy after that. It’s not something you can just turn on.
Laterals: There’s a class of five laterals who are finishing up their training. Also, a couple of officers who had left the department for other agencies are coming back. Unfortunately, we’re still losing some to other agencies and to normal attrition. The number I saw this morning was 515 able-bodied officers — that’s officers who aren’t injured, full duty officers who are in uniform. We hit a low a couple of months ago — 499.
QQ: How long does it take to get a lateral transfer onto the street?
Torborg: They have an accelerated training program; it’s three months. Then, every Police Dept. has its own rules and regulations, record keeping system and so on, and there’s learning the geography.
The Eastside of Minneapolis is a huge area. It’s concerning when we have only eight cops working total. Now with the U of M coordination, if an MPD cop is alone in SE , a U of M Officer will back up our officer if they need it.
EQ: Since we have City Attorney Nnamdi Okoronkwo here, I’d love to hear if he has any updates to share:
Okoronkwo: I’m here, but we don’t do specialized lists of any individuals any longer. We had special prosecutions teams until about two years ago.
Obrestad: I work at the University Lutheran Church of Hope. We have one particular frequent flyer. It’s been getting worse. He’s showing up daily. He’s spending nights there. Where do we go from there?
Okoronkwo: I’m assuming he’s been trespassed.
Obrestad: He’s been trespassed for the second year. I chase him off when I see him and say, “Hey, we’ve called the police.” There are a couple of others.
Torborg: Keep calling. We’ll arrest them when we catch them and take them to jail. They’ll be held for a little while, at least.
Obrestad: Normally it’s not too big an issue, but last week he tried to come into the building. We have P.E.A.S.E. Academy there. [https://mtcs.org/pease/ ] It’s a recovery high school.
QQ: Shot spotter. I understand the City Council met today, Did they make a decision after postponing the meeting five times?
Torborg: I haven’t heard. All I can tell you is the command staff, — the chiefs, the inspectors, the commanders from the different units — have a meeting every Monday morning. And most are at the city council, too. We’re asking to renew the contract and add more sensors the south side.
From my perspective, it’s 21st century technology. It’s worked great in Minneapolis. I can’t understand why anybody wouldn’t want a system that alerts the police when there’s shots fired.
We’ve had it for a while and now the system is refined so you get a good location where the shots were fired. It can identify automatic weapon fire, count the rounds. Some cops have an app on their phones and will get a notice of a shot alert. They can literally play the shots to hear the cadence. The technology is amazing.
QQ: What the big issue?
Torborg: There was an allegation that it leads to over-policing of some neighborhoods. That’s the term they use. But guess what? The residents of those neighborhoods mind shots fired more than anybody else.
QQ: I don’t know a lot about shot spotter. Does it also triangulate?
Torborg: You pretty much get the exact location. Just walking around on the street, you’d often hear shots, but with echoes off buildings and how many windows you have open in your squad, it can be really tricky to nail down where the shots are coming from.
The shot spotter will overlay the location on a map and you’ll hear dispatch say, “We had six shots fired in the backyard of such and such an address. Cops can start looking for spent shell casings, on the west side of the street, from this block to that block.
At one of the meetings we heard that where there’s shot spotter, the cops can do their work in a less time. It takes us 44 minutes in the 2nd Pct (no spotters), but 20 minutes where they do have spotters. It’s cost effective.
Plus, it’s almost like a smoke detector for fire. We start responding when we get the shot spotter notification. We don’t wait for somebody to call the police.
In some parts of Minneapolis, people are used to the sound [of shots]. If somebody was hit, unless somebody sees them on the ground, [the incident] might not get called in for a long time. [The shot spotter would send officers looking for the person on the ground.]
QQ: Isn’t there a database record of these shots.
Torborg: Yes. It’s one of the things we talk about in our meetings. How many shots were fired and where? How many of those were automatic weapons? How many were different guns? A lot of good data can be gleaned from those records.
It’s shocking at times, how many shots are fired in the city, but it is what it is.
The ZOOM hybrid meeting was called to order at 6:36. Ten people attended at Monroe Village and nine attended remotely.
Our invited speakers are Elliott Payne, Member and Chair of the Mpls City Council, and MPD Sgt. Conan Hickey, President of the Minneapolis Police Federation
Elliot Payne, Ward 1 CM and CC President, began by stating he was relating only his own perspective. He emphasized: he does not speak for the entire Council.
Work on the contract started with a meeting of CC members, bringing what they wanted in this contract.
CM Payne’s primary goal was to reduce the staffing shortage. That could be done by:
Compensating officers for the work they do.
Bring MPD pay up to what Officers can get from other cities. A one-time bonus doesn’t change the pay rate. A long term pay change would make up that difference.
Adjusting the ratio of officers to investigators.
MPD currently has a 70/30 ratio of officers to investigators, which limits the number of officers on the force. If you need more of one, you have to hire more of the other. That rule is based on numbers, not need.
Shift-bidding needed a different approach. “Shift-bidding” is a process where officers get to “bid” for their preferred shift and precinct. Officers with more seniority get priority in this process. The issue: if an officer’s work is raising concern of their supervisor, they could bid their way out of that supervisor’s control.
Some council members advocated having “civilian investigators” to be there when citizens want callbacks or need to file a complaint or follow up on an investigation. It’s important work, but if all officers are needed in squads, that work can’t be done. When the MPD was fully staffed, civilian investigators weren’t needed. Most investigations were done by sworn officers — sgts. and up.
With the low level of staffing now, the backlog of cases needing investigation has been growing. Permitting civilian investigators with relevant experience or training, will reduce the backlog. That person would not have to be a higher-ranking licensed police officer to review the complaint.
The contract needed to be signed so the CC could address other challenges.
When Minneapolis faced George Floyd’s murder, and the subsequent uprising, and spike in crime, we lost sight that there are serious management challenges that we need to fix in the MPD. There are also serious community challenges we need to manage. “How do we get to those better outcomes?” is the conversation that I wanted to have.
We have 10 laterals (officers in other agencies) who want to come to MPD. This is new. People now are saying they want to work for Minneapolis. They say it’s not so much about the money, it’s more about the reputation of the MPD. Having a better reputation helps recruiting. Right now, we have 25 people in the hiring pipeline, including those 10 laterals, and 15 people in the Police Academy.
CSOs – Community Service Officers – are younger folks who are not ready to go to the Police Academy. They get their education paid for by the MPD while they’re working for the MPD. They do support work for the MPD, learn what it’s about, but until they finish their education, they are not working in the field. Then, they can start police training.
We budgeted 50 CSOs. Over 100 people applied. But we’re at 25. Why?
Minneapolis has barriers in our hiring process: Candidates are held up by background checks. Our our staffing can’t do that many checks, so we needed to contract them out. Then the system stopped the process to write a contract to do those checks!
Police Reform is partly about policing and how officers conduct themselves in the field, and partly about policies and procedures and training. But Police Reform is also management, bureaucracy, and red tape.
People have been saying that Mpls. Police are bad at being police. They say there’s no accountability.
What they don’t see is those management challenges, those accountability and oversight challenges, that exist in all the departments across the city. All departments are hampered by old, outdated processes that are blocking people from doing good work. Every department in the city has them. We need to start thinking about that.
Think about it: The City Council passes the budget — that’s a core responsibility. We can pass a budget for 50 CSOs. But if we don’t have management practices in place that can staff those positions, we’re dead in the water.
Creating a contract has three steps: the substance of the contract, the process of approving the contract, bringing the community along.
The third part is as important to me as the first. I insisted on making opportunities for the public to weigh in, whether in support, in opposition, or what they would have preferred to see in the contract. This was an open and transparent process as much as it can be. [EQ: to find scheduled public hearing meetings,
At a closed session with all Council Members, we asked questions of our labor relations team. Any of the organizations that had been doing official advocacy one way or the other, also had an opportunity to present in front of the Council and have those comments documented for public record. The process of how we got to their approval was as important to me as the substance within the contract.
Again, the City Council can’t negotiate technical provisions in the contract. All we can do is vote the whole thing up or down. If we had voted it down, we would have gone back to the negotiation table and we might have gotten some different provisions there, but if you vote it down, you are likely to get an impasse. Then the next step is arbitration where none of us has any say in it. It’s completely up to the arbitrator. They may get rid of all of the reforms that we won in negotiation. They may revise the numbers so salaries are lower, but it would have likely been the same technical language. I felt we’d written some reforms significant enough that it was not worth the risk of losing those reforms.
When we had the tentative agreement (i.e. the union and the city agreed to the terms), the next step was for membership to vote on that contract.
[EQ: Payne related an incident from several years ago when he was working at staff level and not on the CC] When the Council was creating new responses to people in crisis, he observed some pushback and felt that initiative wasn’t supported by leadership of some divisions. Some media reported, “It’s City Council versus the mayor.” Payne said, “I don’t know that the mayor was involved at all.”
In the media, this work for people in crisis was called “abolishing the police”. It was actually about the creation of a department of public safety that included the MPD. The intention was to bring in mental health responders, to make investments in mental health, to make investments in people struggling with substance abuse, to support homeless people. Yes, there are going to be police in that mix as well.
We all agree that we don’t want crime and violence but how do we bring down that crime and respond to it when it happens? Looking at Juvenile crime: Do we have programs for kids after school? What are the parents like? What social, emotional skills do the parents have?
There are also conversations about emergency response: what kind of 911 calls should police be responding to v. what kind of 911 calls should be handled by other professionals or civilian investigators. If there’s a [minor] car accident, do you need to send a police car or can we send a civilian investigator, to make sure there’s an ambulance if needed, to take pictures of the scene, to put together a report for your insurance company? That’s what we were working on.
The media framed it as “anti-police”. That’s how we ended up in this place. And this is not a Minneapolis-specific problem. This is a society-wide American problem — polarizing.
I feel like a lot of it is just driven by our media ecosystem. We have newspapers that are failing; newspapers are losing advertisers so they don’t have enough reporters to do thorough reporting. Reporting becomes kind of a simple headline-capturing news. The real story is not as interesting.
QQ: The MPD had no contract for 18 MONTHS and 2 weeks! When I asked why they didn’t go on strike, Inspector Torborg answered that the MPD is not allowed to strike.
Officer Hickey amplified the response: By Minnesota law, “Essential Services” are not allowed to strike. That includes MPD, MFD, EMTs and other groups that are considered essential services. EQ: School teachers CAN strike, but the Facility Teams that keep school buildings running CAN’T. See https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/179A.18
This meeting continued with Officer Hickey’s report.
MPD Sgt. Conan Hickey, President of the MPD Police Officers’ Federation
I’ve been a cop for 22 years. I’ve been in Minneapolis for 10 years. I worked briefly in the city of New Hope. I was a Deputy Sheriff in California. That Sheriff’s Office is bigger than MPD. New Hope was very small. That’s three departments of varying size.
People in Minneapolis saw problems, and started saying it’s the worst department ever. Absolutely not true. You see the same problems at other agencies. I’m not saying they can’t be addressed or they shouldn’t be addressed, but Minneapolis is not the worst.
Minneapolis has some of the finest cops I’ve ever worked with — phenomenal cops. You have cops that are showing up wanting to do this hard work. That gets lost in the miasma of noise, media, politicians. Your ground cops, cops that are pushing patrol cars, are some of the best I’ve ever worked with. I’ll stand by that. They absolutely deserve this contract. The biggest hurdle we had to get over was the recall for reform from all over.
The reforms that people are asking for, have to come from the Minn. Dept. of Human Rights, and have to be approved by the MN-DOJ. [EQ: https://mn.gov/mdhr/about/overview/ and https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/divisions#civil ] Then the reforms can be implemented by Mpls and MPD administration. That includes contracts, labor, wages, scheduling, all that. Like others, I didn’t understand this at first.
I learned by analogy. So bear with me. A contract is like a car; every year, they change it, just a little. CM Payne mentioned all the MOUs, memos of understanding, and LOAs, letters of agreement.
Let’s say we want to make a temporary change — we’re going to hire civilian investigators. But if we’re still in the middle of our contract, instead of doing a whole new contract, we write up an MOU or LOA, that says we can hire civilian investigators and attach it to the contract.
Now we’ve got a new set of rims on the wheels.Over the years, those LOAs build up; they don’t go away but people don’t find them or remember them. After a while, we’ve got this car, our contract, and we have all this extra baggage on it. That “baggage” is temporary, like the rest of the contract.
The team writing this contract did a great job of stripping out those little additions and tweaks.
Now everything’s clean. We’ll see how it plays out.
CM Payne Comments on Policing:
The police system asks you to sacrifice a lot of yourselves. Your long hours, your really traumatic experiences hit your family. A lot of people leave the force with PTSD.
One of our lawyers is a former Marine. He was comparing what PTS is like for a combat Marine versus a police officer. He thought the traumas for police are not really comparable with the trauma that you experience in combat.
[Combat trauma] is like a spike and then it’s over. [Police trauma] is very different. You don’t know what’s going to show up and if you’re going to hold it.
What we ask of our officers doesn’t seem fair to how they have to do their work. Police don’t have the resources necessary to respond to some of the calls. There are some common calls — the frequent flyers — people who just don’t have a strong social safety net. If people nearby can’t handle them, the last resort is “Call the police.”
[Police] are dealing with a lot of things that would be better dealt with with a safety net, which we don’t have. For example, there are a lot of people who [are on an] intersection of homelessness and substance abuse disorder, and they are living on the street. If they’re doing something that is really disruptive to the community, the police get called.
Oftentimes the issue isn’t something that calls for arrest. We might charge them for trespassing. Then we take them in, process them, and they’ll be out, right back to where they were. It’s a constant loop, because trespassing is not a crime that gets them locked up.
We don’t have to have a facility to take that person so they could get help. It doesn’t exist. None of those facilities exist.
Homeless shelters. I’m talking about people who have very severe mental health disorders and the homelessness is a secondary outcome of (maybe) a severe mental health disorder. But we don’t have an institution that they can live in.
We have jails. Jails have a very little mental health space, and it’s for very, very short term.
If there’s somebody who just has a severe enough mental health that they need to be in some sort of long-term institution, those institutions don’t exist.
Instead of building those spaces, we ask the police to respond to whatever behaviors are disruptive to our community. But Officers are just not equipped to help somebody like that.
On Central Avenue, you have folks who are not homeless, but are struggling with substance use disorder, or other issues. They get into certain behaviors that are livability challenges for the rest of us, and the police just don’t have the tools to help them.
1900 Chicago Ave. is a drop-in center where officers can bring people. They have a very limited bed capacity..
Steele: When I’m critiquing policing, I’m critiquing our system that puts police officers — individual human beings who have good character and spirit — into an impossible situation. We need to change the structure of how we’re approaching safety so that all of the people who are helping keep our community safe, have clear things that they can respond to the community with that’s actually going to help. That’s going to take a long time.
Officer Hickey: Yeah, I guess I would just like, again, to say thank you [to Elliott] I appreciate your help. I appreciate your support for us through the contract.
There’s a long road ahead. This is not a quick fix.
I was the front line of all the riots in 2020. I watched Third Precinct burn. I remember telling [a person] who’s no longer here; he had severe PTSD. But I remember distinctly telling him, we’ve got 10 to 20 years. We’re built for this. People are going to be villainized, and it’s going to fall on our shoulders.
Payne(?) It’s a long road. I’m glad you’re okay.
Hickey: Thank you. I’m okay. I’m glad we made it through that night. It was wild. It was very scary.
Hickey: I do want to address one thing with you. Okay? When you came to the second precinct after you first got elected, you told those officers that you were scared to be there because you thought they were going to hate you. Okay? And that angered those cops. And I hear about that still.
Payne: That’s how I felt. Hickey: That’s a sad truth. But that’s what we’re having to fight for. We’re still having to fight for.
But it’s going to take a lot of work. It’s not just the cops.That’s my summary statement. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you for sticking with us. We are trying. Don’t think we aren’t.
Comment: And it’s not going to get fixed in one contract.
Hickey: No, it’s not. It’s going to be a very long road.
Continuing the questions.
Sgt. Hickey: The contract runs to the end of ’25.
EQ: people asked if there is a place where others can learn about the contract. This report should be a start.
QQ: When do you guys get your pay raise? Do you have ads for new officers?
Sgt. Hickey: The raise will start in the next couple of weeks, and we’ve got ads out. [EQ Check: tiny url: https://tinyurl.com/27umdeav]
Our new “Recruiting SUV” has been at a couple events. It does draw attention! We revamped our recruiting unit. Lt. Anderson has been getting laterals and increasing applicants. Getting 10 laterals over is huge.
QQ: There was talk about encouraging officers to live within city limits. I know we didn’t mandate it, but, is there any talk of that anymore?
Inspector Torborg: That was a law, many years ago. It’s not being talked about now. I will say this, though. I’m not a big fan of that. This is just my personal opinion. I lived in Northeast for 10 years while working at the campus. I can tell you that there’s never a break.
Officer Hickey: I’d like to speak to that too. There’s never a break. I had neighbors who didn’t see me as a person. People think [if you lived here] you’d have more empathy. But I’m going to be working in a different neighborhood, so it doesn’t matter where [I live].
Insp. Torborg: The other part of it is this: it’s changed over the years. We no longer incarcerate people for most violent crimes for any significant amount of time.
I had a nice little house in Northeast Minneapolis, but it was only a matter of time before somebody I arrested made threats to come over and shoot my house up. I was about to get married. Now I had to worry about the safety of my wife.
It’s a personal choice if officers want to live in the city or not, but you never know what kind of a situation an officer could get in, whether it’s his own fault or not. Unless you lived it, you wouldn’t know.
MN statute prohibits us from mandating a residency requirement. We are allowed to pay incentives, but I think that would likely have to be negotiated.
Zakhia: As someone who is more on the outside of this, a lot of people, like people of color, are marginalized. They do not feel safe when they see police officers, because of their own personal experience. [EQ Ref: the killing of Tamir Rice in 2014] A 12 year old kid who had a toy gun was killed by an officer. My brother was the same age at the time.
I do understand why as a police officer, you would not enjoy that experience of being seen that way. I think that is where a lot of people also come from.
I think it’s pretty different for white people or people who don’t experience marginalization, seeing someone who is a cop. A lot of people don’t know if you ever do experience that, or if you’re also watching them in that way. For some people, being policed is not an uncomfortable experience.
For a lot of other people, that experience is genuinely horrifying. And I think that 2020 did intensify that. I also think that 2020 gave people more confidence to express that disdain that they have built up that maybe they were not able to express before.
CM Payne: When I was working for the city, I helped design the behavioral crisis response for the city. COPE was a very big part of the conversation. Are we duplicating the work?
The big distinction was you could phone COPE, but you couldn’t request COPE services through 911. There might be a dispatcher who could pass you through, but it wasn’t trained in as a formal response. Also you wouldn’t know when they could come to you. They might come within 72 hours, as an example.
Additionally, in 2020, when everything was locked down, we had a co-responder model pilot with COPE, and two would go out at the same time. [See report: https://courtwatch2pac.com/?s=co-responder ] One of the most important things we saw was is that you should be able to just call 911 and let them figure out what services to send. That’s a core principle of behavioral crisis response.
Then: liability insurance and outside contractors.
Canopy Roots is the company that we have a single contract with. They staff the entire program. They have the vans. They have the insurance. They also have to go through the background checks, which you need to have access to our dispatching system.
This is a 10 or 20-year conversation.
STATE OF THE PRECINCT
Crime statistics for the 2nd Precinct for 28 days, ending on August 12
NIBRS Crime Metrics-28 days
2024
2023
Prev.3 yrs
Assault offenses
58
98
91
Incl. Domestic.Ag.Asslt.
7
9
8
Burglary, B&E
32
25
27
Vandalism
72
60
68
Homicide, non-neg.
0
0
0
Homicide, negligent
0
0
Larceny theft
158
102
77
MV Theft
72
51
71
Robbery
12
11
17
Incl. car-jacking
1
0
3
Sex Offenses
8
6
5
Stolen Prop. Offences
0
5
5
Weapons law violations
2
1
8
Shots fired calls
18
17
23
Gun wound victims
1
1
3
Inspector Torborg: I want to touch on a few things.
Overall, our robberies are down. We didn’t have any robberies last week, until Saturday. Then we had a couple on Saturday, unfortunately.
Our auto thefts have also been down slightly. We’ve been averaging around 25 auto thefts a week, but we had 18 last week. The suspects seem to be targeting single people on their phone or not paying attention.
Other than that, nothing major to report on.
The Basilica Block Party was held at Boom Island Park last weekend. And despite about 10,000 people attending each day, we had no major incidents. That’s a victory. National Night Out was nice, too. It’s been a good couple of weeks.
Comment: It’s fall and parents are wondering about safety near the U
Torborg: We have a late-night safety plan in Dinkytown every weekend. We have extra officers working almost every weekend night. The UMPD is also providing a presence down there.
QQ: I live at 2nd and Broadway. We would like someone to meet with our building assn. and talk about crime in the area, and what we can do to make our building safer. We have an accessible door that’s often open. We’ve had people camping in our basement.
Can someone look over our property and talk to us about safety.
Some of the people in my building think there’s crime everywhere.
CPS Ali: I’m the MPD Crime Prevention Specialist at the 2nd Pct. We can do a security assessment and a safety presentation. We can do them separately. In those safety presentations and in those security assessments, we include crime trends, crime data. It’s a complete package.
And then while I have the mic, I want to say greetings to Conan, who I know I used to work with back in the day when he was the vice president of the Audubon Neighborhood Association. It’s good to see you, my friend.
Hickey: President, President.
CPS Ali: President, my apologies.
Quast: This has been an unusual evening for 2-PAC. We’ve had a productive open discussion about common concerns. I appreciate everything everybody has contributed here. Thank you.
2nd Precinct Advisory Council 