Violent crime is declining but federal prosecutor still focused on carjackings and guns
![A man looks away from the camera](https://img.apmcdn.org/0a9da7bb7481c995c76aa2e6a9169778eb662953/uncropped/a48a9d-20230109-a-man-looks-away-from-the-camera-600.jpg)
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
Violent crime dropped measurably in Minneapolis in 2022. While the numbers are still high compared to the years before the pandemic, the city reported far fewer homicides and carjackings than in 2021. Reporter Matt Sepic talked with Minnesota’s top federal prosecutor Andy Luger about his initiative on violent crime. He talks with host Cathy Wurzer about what he learned.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation. Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
Audio transcript
Andy Luger, Minnesota's top federal prosecutor, says he's continuing to push forward with an initiative he announced back in May to target carjackings and gun crime in particular. Our reporter Matt Sepic sat down with the US attorney late last week to talk about these efforts. And Matt Sepic joins us right now from Minneapolis.
Hey, welcome back.
MATT SEPIC: Hi there, Cathy.
CATHY WURZER: This is Andy Luger's second time as serving as the US attorney for Minnesota. He was in the job, many people will remember, under President Obama. And he said in those years he didn't prosecute a lot of violent crime, but this time around things are different. So remind us what was going on when he came into office in this second time, this most recent time in 2022.
MATT SEPIC: Well, here is some context. During the COVID-19 shutdown, the Twin Cities, and Minneapolis in particular, saw a really big increase in carjackings and other gun crimes, including homicides. In fact, the city didn't even start tracking carjacking as a distinct crime in its official statistics until late 2020.
When President Biden reappointed Luger to be Minnesota attorney, Luger promised to focus on violent crime. In that first stint in the job during the Obama years, his staff was prosecuting young men who tried to join ISIS. They also made headlines for putting Jacob Wetterling's killer in federal prison. Luger told me that in this second term, his priorities are a lot different.
ANDY LUGER: In the past, you'd see a gun case or two. You'd see a-- you never saw a carjacking case because we didn't do them. I'd never heard of a federal carjacking case until I got here. And so this time, instead of seeing a gun case or two, seeing some other robbery case, it's almost all of that. I mean, I could review 10 indictments on a Friday morning and seven of them will be gun cases.
CATHY WURZER: So is this effort of his working? I mean, how much of these violent crime prosecutions increased on the federal level?
MATT SEPIC: Well, Luger says more than half the cases his office handles, as you heard, now involve violent crime. And he told me these prosecutions are up around 300% since he took office. And he's hired another half dozen attorneys in the criminal division to handle this increased load.
I keep a fairly close eye on new case filings over at the federal courthouse. And besides carjacking, Cathy, I've noticed there are a lot more machine gun-related cases, thankfully not people shooting them but oftentimes FBI intercepting purchases of them. A recent one just from last month involves a 20-year-old man from Savage who allegedly praised mass shooters and bought parts from an FBI informant to convert an AR-15 rifle into an automatic weapon, a machine gun. I asked Luger why these devices have become so common in recent years.
ANDY LUGER: In part, the simplicity of the technology, that it's easy to get, it's easy to make, and it's easy to buy. So we're seizing a great deal of them. The ATF has been all over this, as have other agencies. So the problem is you don't have to be a very good shot if you've got a fully automatic machine gun in your hands that used to be a pistol.
CATHY WURZER: OK, so how does what Luger's office doing, how does it add to what the state's already doing? There's the difference between prosecuting these kinds of crimes on the federal level versus the state level.
MATT SEPIC: Well, one thing the feds are focusing on are the adult cases. They don't handle juvenile crime, and that's where a lot of these carjackings are. So it's still up to county attorneys on the county level, Hennepin and Ramsey County attorneys generally, to prosecute the juvenile cases. But really, the big difference between the state and federal systems, in the federal system, Cathy, there's typically more prison time.
There's no parole if you go to federal prison. And on the state level, Minnesota's Constitution requires judges to set bail for every defendant, even if it's in the millions of dollars. That's not true in the federal system. People charged with violent crimes typically stay in pretrial detention. And Luger says that makes a difference.
ANDY LUGER: If they know that the federal presence is larger and looming, it deters people. One of the things, the mistakes that we think people make all the time is to assume that violent criminals don't have any rational basis for what they do, and the data proves otherwise.
CATHY WURZER: So besides violent crime, I know you asked Andy Luger about the Justice Department's investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department because he may have a potential conflict there. And for those who don't know, tell us about that conflict of interest.
MATT SEPIC: Well, this is a little bit to unpack here, so I'll back up to April of 2021. That was nearly a year after George Floyd's murder. US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a broad, what's called a pattern and practices investigation into the MPD, its policies, training, and supervision, and its use of force.
Now at that time, Luger was between his stints as US attorney. He was working for the big law firm Jones Day. And while he was there, he took the city of Minneapolis on as a pro bono client. Even before he returned to work at the Justice Department in his second stint as US attorney, critics said this would be a conflict. And I asked him about this.
He says his office is heavily involved in the DOJ investigation, but he recused himself from it because of his relationship with the city through Jones Day and is not involved. And as I was packing up to leave his office when we spoke last Thursday, I restarted my recorder after Luger said he wanted to set the record straight and clarify the question and what I had asked about his role at Jones Day and the firm's work for the city of Minneapolis. And here's what he had to say about that.
ANDY LUGER: What I did after the murder of George Floyd is bring a law firm expertise, a lot of former prosecutors and a lot of litigators, for free to the city to assist the city attorney's office, assist the police department in dealing with complaints in arbitrating cases of police officers. That's the agreement that was signed between Jones Day that I was part of that we brought to the city. That was long before there was a DOJ investigation.
Then the DOJ announced their investigation. Jones Day decided that they wanted to represent the city in that as well, but I was walled off from that. I was kept aside from that. I had nothing to do with it. It doesn't matter as far as recusal is concerned because the city was a client of mine, even though a pro bono one, but it's not because I worked on the investigation itself because that I didn't do.
CATHY WURZER: OK, you're right, there's a lot to unpack there. It's a little complicated. So he's walled off from the DOJ investigation. What's the status of that investigation?
MATT SEPIC: Well, Cathy, it still appears to be underway, but Luger says because of that wall, he has no idea when it will be done, although people in his office, his staff, are working on it, but he's not part of it.
CATHY WURZER: Say, before you go, you mentioned this at the top of our conversation, Andy Luger was heavily criticized for his work investigating Somali Muslims in the state when he was the attorney general, attorney for Minnesota in his first term. In your reporting, have you heard any similar criticism of this initiative on violent crime, especially from the BIPOC community?
MATT SEPIC: Well, that criticism, back a few years ago, largely surrounded an effort called countering violent extremism that his office started. It directed social services to head off radicalization and terrorist recruitment. Many Somali-Americans here in the Twin Cities said this unfairly stigmatized their community. Now, this violent crime effort that the US Attorney's Office started last year is purely prosecutorial, and I have not heard anywhere near that kind of criticism that we saw several years ago.
CATHY WURZER: OK. Matt Sepic, thank you so much. Good report.
MATT SEPIC: You're welcome.
CATHY WURZER: That's MPR's Matt Sepic.
Download transcript (PDF)
Transcription services provided by 3Play Media.