As crime rises, north Mpls. cops want more officers on the streets

Police inspectors in Minneapolis' five precincts have begun lobbying for more officers to keep up with rising crime rates and looming retirements.

The request for manpower is something of an annual ritual in Minneapolis, where Police Department staffing still trails the levels seen before the recession in 2009.

But the request has taken a heated turn in the Fourth Precinct, which covers most of the city's North Side and which was the site of weeks of protest in the wake of the police shooting of Jamar Clark.

The precinct's inspector, Mike Friestleben, has made repeated pleas to headquarters for more officers, citing a 6 percent jump last year in violent crime — defined as homicides, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults. At the same time, response times to calls are slowing by nearly a third.

While it's not clear whether his request will be granted, concerns have reached some City Council members. Council President Barbara Johnson, a North Sider, said Friestleben has shown frustration with staffing shortages in his precinct, which has been thinned with several officers being temporarily detailed on other assignments or put on medical leave, and with at least one cop in the process of being fired.

"I don't think he's been secretive about his staffing concerns in the Fourth Precinct," Johnson said, adding that she has met with Police Chief Janeé Harteau to discuss the issue. "I'm concerned. Our officers in Precinct Four answer more calls, recover more guns, respond to more shots-fired calls" than any other precinct.

Friestleben did not respond to a telephone message seeking comment.

In 2015, Fourth Precinct officers took an average of 12 minutes and 15 seconds — a 27 percent increase over the previous year — to respond to top-priority calls where there was an imminent threat to personal safety, the loss of property or damage to property. The city average last year was just over 10 minutes, the slowest in more than a decade. The Fourth Precinct's average response time on the lowest-priority calls was 51 minutes and 33 seconds, the slowest in the city by more than five minutes.

Observers say those numbers can be explained by the precinct's size — it's the largest by area — and its high volume of calls for service. Others caution that response times alone are a poor measure of police performance. Council Member Blong Yang, another North Sider and chairman of the council's Public Safety Committee, has asked for regular updates on staffing levels and response times in the five precincts.

"The response times aren't as great," Yang said at a recent meeting of the Public Safety Committee where precinct staffing shortages were discussed. "That's disturbing to me, and I'm wondering how we can fix that."

Yang said similar issues would have caused an uproar in other precincts. "We should be having conversations about whether we should add more officers in the MPD," he said. "Precincts with the most needs should have more officers."

Officials said the issue has taken on more urgency lately, as the police pursue different ways to handle the rise in crime that comes with warmer weather.

In 2009, when the Fourth Precinct recorded 192 violent crimes per 10,000 residents, 34 officers were assigned to evening and overnight watch — the times when many violent crimes occur. Last year, the violent crime rate rose to 220 per 10,000 people, but the precinct could muster only 23 officers on each shift. The two shifts overlap between 8:30 p.m. and 2:30 a.m., "so there's a difference of basically another whole shift of people out there," said Lt. Bob Kroll, head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis.

The addition of more officers to the 126 already stationed in north Minneapolis — the most of any precinct — would improve police response times, Kroll said. It also would give cops more time to get out of their patrol cars and walk their beats, he added.

With police departments increasingly having to justify their budgets, determining the number of officers needed to adequately patrol any city remains an inexact science.

"I can tell you that when I was a precinct commander, it was always at the top of my list," said Minneapolis Assistant Chief Kris Arneson. She said it isn't uncommon for inspectors to make their case to police headquarters for more officers to make up for staff shortages caused by retirements, reassignments, military call-ups and other attrition.

The lobbying already has begun, she said, for two new classes of rookie officers expected to hit the streets in mid-April — a class of 24 — and mid-June, a class of 32. Most of the new cops will be assigned to the First and Fourth precincts, Arneson said, bringing the department total to the 862 officers allowed in the city budget. That total is still lower than prerecession numbers, when there were 916 officers in 2008 and 908 the following year.

Arneson, who reviews all requests for more officers in a particular precinct, says the department relies on a complicated formula that factors in the formation of new beats, violent crime rates and the simplest of questions.

"Do we have enough cops out there to answer calls for service in a timely manner?" she said.

Libor Jany • 612-673-4064