By Matt McKinney

A police measure of citywide gunplay showed a slight rise in the number of incidents last year, the first time that's happened in at least five years, according to new analysis from the Minneapolis Police Department.

The finding, released Tuesday in a city report, said police responded to 1,335 incidents involving guns last year. The police took that count by searching their records for all incidents in which a person was shot or shot at, reported a gunshot wound, reported the discharge of a weapon, or otherwise reported that a gun was used.

The rise amounts to a 3.4 percent increase over the previous year, when 1,290 such incidents were reported. That number stood at 1,978 in 2007 and had been steadily dropping until last year.

News of the rise comes one week after President Obama stopped in Minneapolis to praise local efforts to reduce gun violence.

More broadly, serious crime rose in Minneapolis last year for the third consecutive year. The number of people shot remained nearly unchanged from a year ago, with 220 reported in 2012 compared to 221 in 2011.

Those numbers do not equal the number of homicides reported in the city since many of those victims survived. The city saw 391 people shot in 2006, with the number of victims mostly falling since then.

Faced with a rise in serious crime in the past three years, city officials have emphasized that overall crime levels remain at historic lows, with overall violent crime (a subset of serious crime) at its second-lowest level since 1983.