Crime takes center stage in Minneapolis mayor’s race

Mass shootings have stunned Minneapolis in recent weeks, focusing attention on crime and homelessness just as early voting begins Friday in the city’s election.

The sudden burst of violence — punctuated by two shootings Monday along Lake Street — marks a shift from the relative peace the city saw this year as crime receded from its pandemic-era spike. It also has put a renewed focus on how the candidates vying to lead the city would address public safety.

There are 15 candidates challenging Mayor Jacob Frey, who is seeking a third term.

In overwhelmingly Democratic Minneapolis, the mayor is seen as more moderate on public safety than his three most prominent challengers — creating a dynamic where none of his opponents are calling him soft on crime amid the recent gunfire.

That hasn’t stopped them from saying they could do better.

Frey’s top challenger, state Sen. Omar Fateh, supported defunding and dismantling the Minneapolis Police Department during his 2020 Senate campaign. He has since moderated that position, emphasizing alternatives to policing and promising “bold and transformative approaches to public safety will end the cycle of the Minneapolis Police Department’s violence and brutality that has held our city captive for so many years.”

After the recent shootings, Fateh released a statement saying Minneapolis needs a mayor who invests in “real violence prevention, focuses on victims, and works to house people.” Asked specifically about the shootings, he said, in part: “We have to be proactive in finding and holding accountable those that engage in this kind of violence. Finally, I will advocate for increased gun regulation and a ban on assault rifles at the state level.”

Fateh is a democratic socialist who won the endorsement of Minneapolis Democrats before it was revoked by the state Democratic-Farmer-Labor party.

The candidate who finished third for the DFL’s endorsement behind Fateh and Frey this summer was the Rev. DeWayne Davis. He said the city needs to take a “comprehensive approach” to violent crime, akin to that in Baltimore, where homicides are at a 50-year low.

As in Minneapolis after Floyd’s killing, crime spiked in Baltimore after the high-profile 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody. Baltimore’s mayor attributes the city’s precipitous drop in crime to community violence intervention programs — which Minneapolis also has — and police getting guns off the street. He also credits the prosecution of violent groups and investments in recreation, parks and schools.

Davis said Minneapolis needs to get the city, county, state, violence prevention groups and prosecutors working together on a plan to reduce violence.

“Right now it feels like we are just at our wit’s end every time we turn around, and it seems like we have no sense of control over it,” Davis said. “This is where leadership comes in.”

Hampton said the city needs more police officers but rely on them less to handle nonemergency calls. Though the city already employs Behavioral Crisis Response Teams, Hampton said they should respond to a broader range of police calls.

Hampton said he has never supported defunding police, and regularly works with police officers after creating an app that helps people navigate traffic stops. He said the city should pass a “trigger ordinance” banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines so it can be ready if the Legislature changes a state law that prevents cities from passing their own gun control legislation, as Frey has lobbied for.

The Police Department also needs to address its case backlog, the school system needs to improve graduation rates, and the city should expand summer recreational opportunities while devoting more resources to addressing homelessness, Hampton said.

“It’s one of our biggest issues,” Hampton said, noting “the mayor ran on eradicating it.”

In response to the violence Monday, Frey held a news conference defending encampment closures by the city, pointing to the shooting at a camp on private property as evidence that “encampments are unsafe.”

“My primary challenger has made very clear and has said that he wants to defund the police, and he will not clear encampments,” Frey said in an interview Tuesday. “The path that I support now and have always supported is to hire more police officers, which we need. We have fewer officers per capita than virtually any major city in the country.”

He touted the diversity of the police force under his watch, increases in staffing for the department, and the drop in unsheltered homelessness because the city has prevented them from forming.

Just six months ago, Frey and his police chief, Brian O’Hara, sat side-by-side in Frey’s office, hailing a decade low number of shootings in north Minneapolis, which has long recorded the city’s highest rates of gunfire.

North Minneapolis is still enjoying the fewest shootings in decades, while south Minneapolis has seen eruptions of gunfire, including a shooting near a Catholic high school last month, followed a day later by the devastating attack at Annunciation Catholic Church.

As in most big U.S. cities, violent crime has been dropping in Minneapolis in recent years. Monday morning, O’Hara was telling a City Council committee overall crime was down this year compared to last when his assistant chief got a phone call alert of another mass shooting.

Those statistics are cold comfort, however, to a city shaken to its core in recent weeks.