Police chief lays out ramped-up policing plan after two deadly weekends in downtown Minneapolis

Minneapolis Police are ramping up their presence in downtown this weekend after two deadly incidents. The first was a hit and run that left a 16-year-old dead and five others injured two weeks ago. Then last Saturday, an early morning shooting killed two young men and injured three others. Both events happened at the corner of Fifth Street North and Hennepin Avenue. 

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara joined All Things Considered to discuss how the department is preparing for the weekend ahead.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length. To hear the full interview, click on the audio player above. 

Tell us about your plans for this weekend?

We’ve enlisted a lot of help from both our community-based partners as well as law enforcement partners. “21 Days of Peace” is one of the community-based violence-prevention partners that will be out here with us tonight.

They’re going to help us, in particular, to engage with juveniles. Throughout the evening, these street workers are going to engage with them and try to get them to clear the area before late at night. And if we do have issues much later at night, we’ll have police officers assigned to help them in terms of curfew violators. 

One thing that overlapped over the last two weekends is a number of juveniles coming and a lot of them coming from out of town, too. They’re hanging out downtown, and really, they’re down there at a time — midnight, 2:00 in the morning — when there’s just nothing for them to get into but trouble.

What we've seen is a lot of fights happening. That’s what happened last weekend. In the confusion while officers were trying to break up a lot of different teenagers engaged in fighting right at bar close, that’s when that shooting happened. We’re going to try and clear them out by engaging with them beforehand, so that decreases the probability. 

On the law enforcement side, people are going to see a lot more of a police presence. We have had a very successful late-night safety plan for the last two years, which had addressed the traditional problem of violence downtown that we have seen over the last few years, and that is typically people getting drunk and then going to their car and getting a gun and solving some minor conflict that way.

The traditional late-night safety plan will still be going, but will be boosted by some additional police presence. There’ll be officers’ deputies from the sheriff’s office that’ll be out there with us.

We’re actually going to have troopers from the Minnesota State Patrol come in for our roll call later this evening. They’re not going to be downtown, but they’re going to be briefed on what we’re doing, and they’re going to be close to downtown in case something happens. They’ll be able to come in and help. 

In addition, we’ll have mounted officers. We’ll be bringing them back late at night downtown, and they’re just helpful because a cop sitting 10 feet in the air can see above a lot of the confusion and can kind of tell who might be instigating things better than an officer on the ground. 

So we’ve got a lot going on, but I don’t want to minimize the amount of community-based groups that are going to be out there with us. A lot of people were downtown last weekend, last Sunday — all kinds of different T-shirts from community-based organizations that were out there with us. We’ll be doing that again this weekend. 

You mentioned a curfew. To whom does that apply and what time and is that something normally in effect in Minneapolis?

It’s on the books, but it’s typically not enforced. It’s based on age, how old the person is. The purpose is, again, just to try and prevent crowds or juveniles from being there if the engagement piece doesn’t work.

If that doesn’t work, there will be police officers who will then take juveniles who are out past curfew down to the youth center downtown, where they’ll remain with a police officer until we can get a hold of their parents. We’re hoping it doesn’t come to that, but we are prepared to enforce the curfew that way as well. 

You said that you had not ruled out a connection between the two deadly incidents the past two weekends. What do you know now? Was there a connection? 

Well, we have a person of interest that we believe is the shooter that we will be looking for. That investigation continues. But separate from that, we’re trying to identify some of the other people that may have been down there that are also teenagers. And quite frankly, it’s just too much of a coincidence to have teenagers hanging out at the same corner seven days apart from each other. 

You’ve said a big part of your job is to restore trust between citizens and police in Minneapolis. How do you go about doing this in a way that restores trust and doesn’t make downtown seem like a police state on the weekends?

Well, you know, I think we have to do like Rev. Jerry McAfee from 21 Days of Peace, and use an all-community approach to try and take care of our kids It would be negligence on our part, not to try and disrupt this stuff that’s happening, particularly that’s involving teenagers. It is part of what we do as the police department.

We are under a settlement agreement. We are actively making reforms that are required by that agreement. We’re in that lengthy legal process with the independent monitor, but we’re also doing things beyond what’s required in order to reform the department and make sure the things we do communicate the values that the community here wants to see. 

And I think we’re in a good place. I mean, it’s only two years later. But I think in a lot of ways, there’s a sense of hope, and people in the community do, do see that sense of hope. Despite the challenges that we have, certainly a couple years ago, the odds were against us.

I think crime was completely out of control. The police department was very much demoralized. Last night we saw some physical signs of progress. We’ve graduated and honored the new officers that are joining the department, that are very diverse, that have incredible personal stories.

Very much wanting to police this community with love and physically be a part of the change that people want to see. So I am very, very optimistic, especially after last night, in that we can continue to, you know, try and reduce serious street crime. That’s happening while we're also building and rebuilding trust.