Minneapolis City Council mulls asking cops to halt certain kinds of traffic stops

The Star Tribune’s Libor Jany reports, “Minneapolis City Council members are considering whether to ask police to temporarily halt certain traffic stops in response to activists’ concerns that they overwhelmingly target minorities, with little to show for it. But police leaders, who say such enforcement is integral to removing drugs and guns from the streets, pushed back at the idea on Wednesday, arguing against a decision until more research was done.”

The Pioneer Press’ Ryan Faircloth writes: “Minnesota lawmakers heard a plea for more corrections officers during the first-ever hearing inside a state prison on Wednesday. Stemming a spike in assaults on corrections officers was the focus of the meeting, which was held inside the Stillwater prison. The House corrections subcommittee heard from the union that represents the officers, the director of educational programming and the new head of the Department of Corrections. All said that more officers are needed.”

In the Star Tribune, Jim Spencer reports: “Tariffs applied to imports by the Trump administration and retaliation to them will kill hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs, raise household expenses by hundreds to thousands of dollars a year and slow national economic growth if they continue. That’s the message of a newly released study commissioned by tariff opponents. The Tariffs Hurt the Heartland campaign released the study on Capitol Hill Wednesday.…The study predicted a net loss of more than 934,000 U.S. jobs — including 16,100 in Minnesota — over the next one to three years if current tariffs stay in place and certain threatened escalations occur.”

From the Star Tribune’s Andy Mannix: “Hennepin Healthcare CEO Dr. Jon Pryor’s abrupt resignation this week comes amid growing financial problems at the hospital system. The network, which operates HCMC in downtown Minneapolis, is expected to run a budget deficit of about $15 million for 2018 and projects that to grow to around $20 million in 2019, according to two of its board members. … Pryor, a urologist, started as hospital CEO in 2013, working previously as CEO of the physicians group at the Medical College of Wisconsin.”

In the Duluth News Tribune, Michael Johnson writes, “Wadena County Commissioners set a $6,000 cap to resolve a payroll error that overpaid its county coordinator more than $18,000 over a seven-month period. Commissioners were informed about the error Tuesday during the regular commission meeting. The error started happening shortly after Ryan Odden was hired to serve as both county highway engineer and county coordinator, which meant he was receiving two paychecks per period with funds coming from different budgets. Wadena County human resources calculated Odden was being paid an additional $1,200 per pay period.”

For MPR, Tim Nelson says, “You might want to keep an eye on your snow machine if you’re a Minnesota sledder. It turns out the North Star State is the nation’s capital for snowmobile theft, according to a new report by the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The report, released Tuesday, is the first time the NICB looked at the crime on a nationwide basis. Thieves stole more than 300 snowmobiles in Minnesota over three years from 2015 to 2017. That’s about two Polaris, Arctic Cat, Yamaha and Ski-Doo skedaddles a week, according to data compiled from police reports.”

And then there’s this from the AP: “Residents in eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota are bracing for a winter storm that could bring a foot of snow and wind chills as low as minus 40 (negative 40 Celsius). The National Weather Service on Wednesday issued a winter storm warning through 6 p.m. Thursday for portions of eastern North Dakota and northwestern and north central Minnesota. The weather service says the Fargo and Moorhead, Minnesota metropolitan area could be hit with a narrow band of snow of up to 12 inches.”