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.]
**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Hudson_(Minnesota_politician)
Emilie Quast, Member
MPD Second Precinct Advisory Council
2nd Precinct Advisory Council 