Mary Moriarty: Don’t accept simplistic narratives on carjacking prosecution

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David Zimmer’s commentary on our office’s use of the carjacking statute (“Hennepin County fails to use the state’s new carjacking statute,” July 31) is an attempt to mislead the public into thinking people who carjack in Hennepin County aren’t held accountable and, as a result, the entire state of Minnesota is less safe. This inaccurate fear-mongering is also designed to make the public believe that more laws and longer sentences make us safe.

Zimmer, retired from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, believes there are no “unwarranted” racial disparities in Minnesota’s criminal legal system. I know this because he sent me his “data”-based report on the subject, so I wasn’t surprised when his piece on carjacking also reflected a deeply flawed understanding of data.

Here’s some actual data, showing January-to-April reported carjacking numbers in Hennepin County for each year going back to their most recent peak in 2022.

If you’d like to double-check the numbers, please feel free. They’re publicly available through the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s Crime Data Explorer.

Zimmer attempted to preempt this data by saying any reduction in carjacking is because of law enforcement crackdown. If the downward trend suddenly reversed itself, do you think he would blame law enforcement?

I’ll be crystal clear: Data does not help victims. If you have been the victim of a carjacking, a positive trend in data will not heal your trauma. Data rarely helps people who fear becoming a victim, which is why false narratives appealing to our fundamental need for safety are so easily weaponized to shape policy and practice when it comes to public safety. But data is the best tool we have for building good policy that makes our community safer.

This office does not prosecute under a given statute to say we prosecute a lot under a given statute. We prosecute for public safety and, evidently, we’re doing it well.

Between Aug. 1, 2023, and July 31, 2024, Hennepin County law enforcement reported 349 carjacking incidents to the state. Based on the most recent data available for carjacking, law enforcement submits a case for charging around 30% of the time. These are tough cases to solve.

From that same period, we received 105 case submissions that included some element of carjacking. We determined 63 of the cases were strong enough to charge, but in a significant number of those cases, carjacking was not the most appropriate charge.

As we review the facts of the case, something that initially appears to be a carjacking may turn out to be a motor vehicle theft. Sometimes a carjacking occurred but there was also an attempted murder, so we charge attempted murder to give us a wider range of options to protect the community.

Overall, 13 of the 63 were charged using the carjacking statute, while 50 others were charged with another crime, like aggravated robbery.

We charge the appropriate crime to hold the defendant accountable and make our community safer. The data shows it’s working, but it’s never easy. It’s not numbers on a spreadsheet. It takes all agencies working together, improving over time, and using data properly to make lasting change.

If it sounds like nuance and many strategies are involved, it’s because they are, and I want you to know that it’s complicated.

If Zimmer’s argument sounds overly simplistic, it’s because it is, and he hopes you don’t notice.