Can downward gun violence trends in north Minneapolis curb a perception that it’s unsafe?

Press Clip Source: MinnPost
Link to Source: Here

Shooting incidents in north Minneapolis are the lowest they’ve been in more than a decade. Community members living and working in the city’s most disinvested region aren’t surprised by this. 

Shooting incidents in north Minneapolis in 2024 were the lowest they’ve been in more than a decade, and community members hope these numbers will curb a negative perception among outsiders of North and its crime rates. 

According to recently released crime data from the city of Minneapolis, there were 132 gunshot wound victims in north Minneapolis in 2024, a decrease of 20% compared to the year prior. Not only is this a decrease year over year, it marks the lowest number of shooting incidents in the area in over a decade when there were 135 shooting victims reported in 2014. 

Additionally, ShotSpotter activations were down 16% year over year from 2023 to 2024, with nearly 500 fewer activations in 2024. And the overall “Gun Crime Index,” which tracks gun-related calls – including shooting calls, ShotSpotter activations, and other calls about gun violence – dropped 14% in the same period. 

These numbers fly in the face of a pervasive narrative by some – particularly suburbanites – who call north Minneapolis an inherently dangerous area, Mayor Jacob Frey said of the data.

“There are times when the perception matches reality, and certainly that was the case in 2021 and 2022, maybe even a portion of 2023,” Frey said. “Then there are times when it is drastically different. And the North Side – we should not be looking at the North Side from a deficit standpoint. The North Side is filled with extraordinary people doing amazing things, and the North Side has been on a trajectory towards true safety – not just comparative or relative safety, but safety.”

This does not mean the work is done, the mayor noted.

“But when you have a massive shift in the number of people that are getting shot and whose lives are negatively impacted by gun violence, when that shift is substantially in the positive, it’s worth taking note,” he said. 

This downward trend wasn’t seen in the city as a whole last year. There were 76 homicides in Minneapolis last year, four more than there were in 2023. While some other crime metrics improved slightly, others worsened slightly, according to the Star Tribune.

Calling a spade a spade and the spade is racism 

Outsiders’ perception of north Minneapolis is often driven by racism, said Kristel Porter, lifelong north Minneapolis resident and executive director of the West Broadway Business and Area Coalition. 

“We need to call a spade a spade,” Porter said. “I grew up in north Minneapolis, and this has always been the historic Black neighborhood in the state of Minnesota. And let’s just be real: We’re in the United States of America, a country that looks down on Black people.”

There’s a long history of disinvestment in north Minneapolis, a collection of neighborhoods with the state’s largest Black population. In the early 1900s, restrictive covenants written into real estate deeds limited where Black residents could live in the city. In the 1930s, the Federal Housing Administration created redlining, which used restrictive covenants to prevent people of color from purchasing homes in predominantly white neighborhoods. This is why the area became a haven for many marginalized communities in the 1900s. 

At a time in the area, many local businesses opened and thrived. Then public infrastructure fractured the city. In the late 1960s, the Olson Memorial Highway expanded, cutting into Near North. Interstate 94 was built in the 1970s, further cutting off North from downtown, leading to the departure of both businesses and residents in the 1980s. 

It “breaks my heart” hearing the outside perception of her own community, Porter said. 

“I’ve gone my whole life where I’ve had friends that lived in other places that wouldn’t come visit me because they were afraid, and it’s because they heard something on the news, or someone told somebody that heard something, and it’s not real,” she said. “It’s not a depiction of what our community actually is. It’s really frustrating,” she said. 

Perceptions of safety are notoriously influenced by bigotry, Porter said.  

“When you get a lot of Black people in one space, people assume bad,” she said. “If they see Black men walking on the street, they assume they’re up to no good. If they see a group of Black teenagers walking around, they ask, ‘What could they be up to?’ They’re either looked at negatively or not seen at all. That’s the reality of our neighborhood.” 

What is the reality of the neighborhood? Porter outlined the area she said she feels safest: “Anywhere south of Broadway and north of Olson and west of the river and east of the parkway is literally, a safe haven. We don’t really have any issues anymore,” she said, outlining the entire north Minneapolis region.  

“I’m a Black and Indigenous woman, and I live in north Minneapolis, and if you ask me when I walk down the street at night by myself, my answer would be overwhelmingly yes. Why wouldn’t I? It’s my neighborhood,” Porter. 

For those who have had a negative perception of north Minneapolis but now would like to see what the community is like for themselves, Porter said she suggests people pick a show to attend at the Capri Theater and check out local businesses before showtime. She also suggested people attend Open Streets on West Broadway in September. 

“America wants to celebrate Black when it comes to art and music and sports, but they don’t want to celebrate us when it comes to just living and existing,” she said. 

Porter, a resident of the Willard-Hay Near North neighborhood, said she’s never moved out of North and never will. She wants people to see the community she knows and loves and see how neighbors work with each other. 

For example, her neighborhood association is the North Side Resident Redevelopment Council, which received funding to operate its own violence interruption program with funding through the city’s Community Planning and Economic Development (CPED) program. Violence interrupters working  with the program go through 30 hours of training and can track each other on an app, Porter said. 

“If I have any issues I can contact them and they show up before the police do,” Porter said. “So I don’t necessarily need to call 911, but I can if I have to.” 

More boots on the ground

Director of Nonviolent Peaceforce Will Wallace was not surprised to hear violent crime numbers are down over the last decade. He attributes the shift: 50% to community effort, 30% to police and 20% to the mayor and city council. 

With 30-plus years of violence prevention work under his belt, Wallace, a lifelong Northsider, said he knows community work is working because he’s seen it. 

“Out of 300-plus kids that I work with, we only had two funerals, right here in north Minneapolis,” said Wallace, known to neighborhood kids as Mr. Willard. “Here’s how I know it works – when kids come up to me two or three, four or five years later saying, ‘Mr. Willard you saved my life’ or ‘Mr. Willard I didn’t go back to jail.’”

A cohort model works best, meaning bringing a group of people together with a common goal to make the area safer, Wallace said. The Peaceforce directly works with and trains youth in the community, ages 14 to 20, to execute a cohort model of violence interruption.  

“We’re taking kids who are literally out on the streets and saying, ‘OK, instead of you doing the violence out on the streets, why don’t you protect those facing it?’” Wallace said.

When talking about the recent crime numbers in contrast with an often-skewed perception of safety within north Minneapolis, Wallace said he likes to say: “You’ve got to go there to know there.”

Looking from the outside in, people can’t see the spirit of the community, and violence prevention has been happening in one way or another in north Minneapolis for decades. Community care is baked into the spirit of north Minneapolis, Wallace said. 

“I was one of those kids that come from the street gang bang, right?” he added. Growing up in North in the late 1980s, he remembers people in the community keeping an eye on him and his peers to make sure they weren’t skipping to school. 

Since the 1980s, the number of organizations out on the streets have grown, “which is a plus because we need it,” Wallace said. However, the challenge lies in limited funding for these programs

Community efforts became more important than ever after the murder of George Floyd. A cohort of youth in the community Wallace trained, for example, went to the Derek Chauvin trial to serve as a protective presence. They also spent time at polling places this November to ensure voters felt safe and comfortable voting. 

During these high-profile moments in local history, that presence shows what safety looks like in Minneapolis when people within the community invest in it, Wallace said. Safety often looks like neighbors talking to neighbors and friends holding each other accountable. 

“I tell them safety look like when we don’t have families, grandmas or kids at the park afraid to walk down the block,” Wallace said. “Safety look like when they at the park, they don’t have to be ducking from bullets… Safety look like when young people are able to provide safety for their community and then hold their friends accountable. Safety can look like when kids are not homeless. You know, safety can look like when there’s food on the table. All these things have to be met.”