Hennepin County Attorney’s office expands youth violence prevention program

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NINA MOINI: It's Minnesota Now. I'm Nina Moini in for Cathy Wurzer. A youth violence prevention initiative is being piloted in Hennepin County. We'll talk to Mary Moriarty about how she hopes to keep young people out of trouble amid several high-profile cases involving teens.

Women's Advocates in Saint Paul was believed to be the first women's domestic violence shelter in the US. And this year, it's celebrating 50 years. Plus, we'll hear the story of a Russian transgender man who fled to Minnesota due to the state's trans refuge status. And our Thank You Stranger series talks to a man who saved the life of a driver inside a burning car in Saint Paul. And the Vikings will have a new quarterback by the end of the night, all that and more right after the news.

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Hennepin County is expanding a program that offers support to young people who are at risk of committing violent acts. The Youth Gun Violence Initiative will focus on young people who have been in trouble but aren't on probation. Law enforcement agencies in Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park will refer potential candidates to outreach workers who provide supports, like job assistance or even relocation help. Sasha Cotton is the executive director of the National Network for safe communities at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, which will offer technical assistance with the program.

SASHA COTTON: We know that most violence is driven by a very small number of individuals, and this strategy is designed to work with those very small number of people who are driving violence in our community and provide them with the resources, supports, and accountability to move away from the violence and put their lives on a different trajectory.

EMILY REESE: Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty says the voluntary program aims to keep young people on nonviolent paths and out of the criminal justice system. This is NPR News.

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NINA MOINI: Well, you just heard from Emily Reese. We're going to hear from Mary Moriarty. On this, our top story, a program to prevent youth violence could reach more young people in Hennepin County. County Attorney Mary Moriarty did announce in a press conference yesterday that her office and the County are spending $250,000 to expand the efforts.

The pilot program that was already in place connected youth on supervised probation with outreach workers. Under this expansion, Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center Police Departments will make those connections for youth who are at risk of being involved in violence. The outreach groups offer support with mental health, employment, housing, and other challenges. For more on the program, County Attorney Mary Moriarty joins me now. Thanks so much for being here with us.

MARY MORIARTY: Thank you for inviting me to be with you today.

NINA MOINI: Absolutely. This is an important topic. One of the tough realities that you and many others in the criminal justice system have mentioned, that some of the same kids that are most likely to become victims of crimes are the ones who are also at times most likely to commit the crimes. So what's unique about this approach that you are trying now to try to help stop both of those outcomes?

MARY MORIARTY: Well, I think it's important for people to understand that gun violence is actually a preventable public health tragedy. And gun violence is now the leading cause of death among children and teens ages 1 to 19. So as people heard from Sasha Cotton, who's the director at John Jay of the Network for Safe Communities, talked about it being a very small group of young people-- and by very small, we mean, generally, it's about a half percent of a city's population.

But those same young people can be involved in as much as 70% of its homicide and gun violence. So this program is unique because it allows us to work with our law enforcement partners. And they can refer young people to the program.

And if the young people are accepted into the program, we have trusted community groups who will be working with them. So the difference here is, as you mentioned, there has already been a program in place for young people who are on probation. So in other words, law enforcement has been able to give us a prosecutable case.

We charge it. The young person is on probation. And they can be referred. This is for those young people that law enforcement knows are out there at risk of gun violence but they don't necessarily have a prosecutable case to bring to us. So we have expanded the program to include that group in the hopes of preventing that tragedy that will impact our community and their lives as well.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about what it looks like providing that outreach. What are some of the partners that Hennepin County has here? What's some of the range of services?

MARY MORIARTY: So I think the most important thing is this-- youth are accountable to relationships and not rules. And I think that's probably true of most of us but especially true for youth. And there are many young people in our community that just don't have those positive mentors. They don't believe they have people who care about them or that they have much of a future.

So the community groups with whom we have contracted are people who have been exactly where those young people have been. They look like them. They experience the same kinds of issues. I've heard from some of them that, when they thought about what they would do when they grow up, they really didn't think there was anything out there.

At the time, they were trying to help their family make rent by selling drugs or something like that. So this is about having people who have been in exactly those situations reaching out and developing relationships with those young people to say, hey, I was exactly where you are. And there's hope.

And so it's also about providing them with resources. And sometimes it's they need to relocate because people are targeting them for violence. Sometimes it's about getting a job, and it can be very hard to get a job. So that's connecting them for that job. Sometimes it's just about having somebody to pick up the phone and call, that is going to answer and listen to what's happening in your life and care about you.

NINA MOINI: You mentioned Sasha Cotton. A lot of the people that were standing beside you at the news conference have been maybe involved at the city of Minneapolis and other violence prevention efforts for many, many years. And I understand that this approach that you're going to be trying has had some success in other cities. How did you get buy-in from some of these organizations and stakeholders who have been trying to make these efforts a reality for a long time that this effort will be worthwhile?

MARY MORIARTY: So in terms of law enforcement, we've been working with Brooklyn park, Brooklyn Center. We'd like to see referrals from Minneapolis. But police officers, law enforcement know who those young people that are going to be the next people to be involved in gun violence by either being shot or shooting somebody themselves. So police know that.

So it wasn't hard to get buy-in from the police Chiefs and officials in those cities because they understand the trauma of waiting until after this gun violence happens and having to deal with the fallout of that. So they've been very innovative in partnering with us to work on other solutions to prevent gun violence from happening.

You mentioned Sasha Cotton. She's the director of the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay. She is an expert in group violence intervention. She was an expert here in Minneapolis before she left for John Jay.

So we are incredibly fortunate to have contracted with her and that organization for technical assistance. This is an initiative, or group violence intervention, or YGVI, youth group violence intervention is a model that's based on data. And it works.

In fact, in 2018, 2019, when Sasha was here in Minneapolis, they did work with the Minneapolis Police Department. And they were able to reduce gun violence substantially, and that was with adults. And so this is proven to work, and it makes sense that it would work because you've got people who are dedicated to working with young people in the community to say, hey, there is something different for you. And I can help you get there.

NINA MOINI: And so what would it take to expand a pilot program like this to Minneapolis and, maybe if you'd like, the entire county, I would imagine? How long does it take to gather data and then determine, OK, we should move forward? This is working.

MARY MORIARTY: So that's a great question. We are actually working with Hennepin County Safe Communities. We have put forth money for the contract with Sasha Cotton's group, the National Network. We have put in 250,000 to the community groups, and Safe Communities has put in money to that as well.

We have been working on this initiative for over a year. We have reached out to Minneapolis. We want to partner with them. One of the reasons that we expanded this outside of Minneapolis is that we know violence isn't a geographical.

Young people just don't stay in Minneapolis or Brooklyn Park. They move across those artificial city lines. And so we wanted to be able to work collaboratively with all of our partners. And so we would welcome Minneapolis to make referrals to us. We had our first kickoff meeting yesterday. And Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center referred a number of young people to the program.

NINA MOINI: And so I heard you just mentioned Minneapolis a couple of times. Have they been cooperating with this program? Are they in this program? When you say you're hoping for referrals from them, I'm just curious about that.

MARY MORIARTY: We invited them, and we have attempted to meet with them about this program. Somebody from MPD did accept our invitation to the kickoff meeting yesterday. And for whatever reason, they weren't there.

So we will continue to reach out to them and try to work with them. Gun violence is a problem in some of our communities, and people really care about it. And as system partners, we are accountable for not just prosecuting cases when they happen after the fact. But we are accountable to the public to try to do everything that we can to prevent gun violence from happening in the first place.

So we will continue to work with all law enforcement partners in the hopes that they will participate in this because we all are trying to move towards a place where young people have hope, and they can put down the guns, and know that there's a better future for them, and that we are actually helping to provide that.

NINA MOINI: And we'll reach out as well to Minneapolis Police and try to get comment on where they kind of stand with the effort. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, thank you for coming on this afternoon, and good luck.

MARY MORIARTY: Yeah, thank you so much.

BANDMEMBER: 1, 2, 3.

[CHMIELEWSKIS, "ST. PAUL WALTZ"]

NINA MOINI: You're listening to the "St. Paul Waltz" by the beloved local polka musician Florian Chmielewski for our Minnesota Music Minute. He passed away at the age of 97. Chmielewski had a weekly television show for more than 35 years and was inducted into the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame. He was also a State Senator.