In recent years, some of the neighborhoods surrounding the University of Minnesota – along with the city as a whole – have seen upticks in criminal activity and calls from residents to do something about it.
This summer, for example, the Dinkytown area of the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood has seen chaotic spurts of teens lighting off fireworks, harassing passersby and assaulting pedestrians in some cases.
Last week, the Minneapolis Police Department and the University of Minnesota Police Department began a joint effort called Dinkytown Safe Streets — an extra enforcement campaign on weekend nights targeting the increased activity in the area.
University officials say they have significantly upped their efforts in recent years to focus more energy on the neighborhoods around campus. Those efforts include the more immediate enforcement and violence prevention like the Safe Streets program, as well as long standing lighting infrastructure issues, to help keep students and other communities around the institution safe.
Off-campus crime
Following the release of its Twin Cities Campus Plan at the end of 2021, the university shifted its strategy around crime prevention and response from one that focused on the campus proper – like university buildings and residence halls – to one that expands those efforts into the off-campus neighborhoods where many students live, said Myron Frans, the university’s senior vice president for finance and operations. Upticks in crime in recent years in areas close to campus like Dinkytown, the Marcy Holmes neighborhood’s eastern portion adjacent to the university campus, have prompted that shift, he said.
“We needed to think about being more strategic neighbors and partners with communities around the university, and we get that things have changed so we needed to look at our neighbors and our neighborhoods in more of a partner kind of way,” he said in an interview. “We want to help the city of Minneapolis respond to these changes in crime (off-campus).”
Since around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, neighborhoods citywide have experienced rolling surges in criminal activity. This prompted Minneapolis to launch Operation Endeavor, a campaign involving city, state and federal law enforcement agencies to reduce violent crime.
In the Marcy Holmes neighborhood, motor vehicle thefts are up nearly 30% compared to last year and vandalism is up nearly 18%, according to Minneapolis crime data, but most other crimes like assaults, burglaries and larceny are down.
In the last few months, however, Dinkytown has become a center for rowdiness — especially on weekends, with law enforcement scrambling to deal with calls related to assaults, harassment, vandalism and other disruption.
University response
To that end, the university has implemented a variety of measures to prevent crime and help police respond to criminal activity in those areas. Those efforts include the Dinkytown Safe Streets program to target the increased activity in the area.
“Safe Streets was designed to deal specifically with this most recent situation where we’ve had large groups coming over at one time and causing disruption using fireworks,” Frans said in an interview. “That is MPD’s primary jurisdiction and their primary responsibility, but we’re trying to help by supplying more overtime to our officers so they can help support MPD in those areas.”
The university has added eight new officers to the UMPD ranks with plans to add six more before the year ends to augment MPD response, hiring more security officers and doing safety walks with parents, students and other residents around the neighborhoods with the university’s Department of Public Safety to offer tips and bring attention to specific safety issues.
They’ve also created a Dinkytown Alerts program, which allows people in and around the university to opt-in to a system that sends out a notification when a crime occurs. The university is required under federal law to have a system like that in place for its campus, but this new alert program expands to the off-campus neighborhoods.
Other efforts involved town halls with police officials like MPD Chief Brian O’Hara, and a contract with Block by Block, a program that provides ambassadors on the streets that report crime, provide directions, walk people home and interact with people experiencing homelessness, among other duties.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Peyton Sitz[/image_credit][image_caption]The university has added eight new officers to the UMPD ranks with plans to add six more before the year ends.[/image_caption]
“Our initial reaction was what do we do to respond to the crime once it happens,” said Regent Janie Mayerson. “Now what it has evolved into, the significant role the university is playing in trying to prevent crime from actually happening on our campus as well … to try and stop it before it begins is absolutely critical.”
Street lighting
As part of its public safety efforts, the university also did a lighting audit to determine where the dark areas were around the neighborhoods, and presented those findings to city officials. That campaign so far has yielded 100 new street lights installed in the Southeast Como neighborhood and 75 lights in the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood.
Minneapolis Ward 2 Council member Robin Wonsley, whose ward includes much of the university campus and parts of the off-campus neighborhoods where students live, said lighting has been a chief priority of hers since coming into office in late 2021. She said students and other constituents would tell her repeatedly that an important way to increase public safety beyond policing would be to replace street lights in dark spots, which would drastically improve how safe residents feel walking around their neighborhoods.
After several meetings with city staff and university officials, she said she learned the issue wasn’t limited to her ward but there were many dark spots citywide, prompting Wonsley during budget negotiations last year to advocate for more street lighting. That resulted in just over $5.5 million allocated for installing and replacing lights citywide.
“When you do have that high level of visibility in your neighborhoods, that does deter certain types of crime because people are afraid they’re going to be seen or easily reported,” she said. “Something as simple as increasing the amount of lighting that reaches both our sidewalks and our streets allows for better and safer conditions.”
The city’s public works department now has a webpage dedicated to its street light improvement project, which Wonsley said will be used to provide a plan for addressing outages, the status of improvements and maps that identify areas that need work. She said the city is looking into further improvements that will help illuminate sidewalks and bike lanes.
“The sidewalk piece is going to be important,” she said. “We want to make sure there’s lights in the streets but if we want to encourage people to walk or use public transportation, we need to make sure our sidewalk passages and bike lanes are also visibly lit.”
And just think, the U of M student council wanted to abolish the police.
The first act in changing a situation is admitting there is a problem. I’m happy to see authorities have identified the problem and it is crime. Many here at Minnpost claim crime is down and Twin Cities is perfectly safe. There has been enough of the “head in the sand” approach to fixing the problem, by ignoring it is happening, the past 3 years. Doesn’t take much to have big results, arrest criminals and put them in jail…. Novel idea to some but common sense to most.
“Many here at Minnpost claim crime is down and Twin Cities is perfectly safe.”
Prop up the old strawman and knock him down.
There are vastly more commenters who declare the metro area a crime ridden hell hole where your life’s in danger every time you pass inside the 494/694 loop. As NOT evidenced by the 200,000 plus downtown during the week of the Taylor Swift concerts.
If only those on the right were as good at solving problems as identifying them we could really make some progress.
For many years, people have tended to look down their noses at the West Bank, but violent crime has been low there, compared to Dinkytown, Marcy Holmes and Como.
A less malignant but very annoying crime happened on both sides of campus late Thursday afternoon and evening: the worst traffic jam I’ve ever seen in the Twin Cities in my entire life (and I’m not a spring chicken). Foolish siting of the Beyonce appearance at Huntington Stadium was the problem. It seems that most attendees decided to drive there; no doubt the snarl kept many of them from arriving on time, let alone finding parking.
If we are going to use more streetlights as a way to try to reduce crime, those lights must be directed towards the ground. Light pollution messes with migrating birds and is increasingly denying urban dwellers from ever experiencing a dark night sky. The type of lights used must be our first consideration.
Another issue – who is committing these crimes? If, as in the case of the dangerous use of fireworks around the Fourth of July, many of the offenders are minors, why are their families not held accountable? People who are pre-adults are undergoing formation by their families, who must be part of any solution. I appreciate the Somali elders walking the streets, talking to the young folks. We need much more of that.
It is also imperative that neighbors get to know one another. You don’t have to be friends but it would sure help to be on friendly terms. After all, you have a very big thing in common: a great interest in keeping your neighborhood safe for each of you and your families. It is unrealistic for each of us to stay inside our own bubbles and call the police when we see criminal behavior.
Because state law does not allow the family to be charged and it is not considered a child protection issue.
Whatever the type of street lighting, will eliminating dark shadow areas be compatible with a street tree canopy?
Who are committing these crimes? Youth? Black or White or Asian?
Tony, the media no longer identify the race of the criminals, unless they’re white. I guess they think that if they mentioned a person’s race it would be considered ” profiling”. Our whole darned Country is upside down when it comes to crime and punishment.
Forget about street lights. Use the money for more prisons and reopen Totem Town.
I totally agree. Our judges give criminals a slap on the wrist and let them go. No consequences for their crimes. As a taxpayer, I am willing to have my taxes increased in order to build more prisons and juvenile detention centers to punish them for their crimes and to make the streets safe for hardworking, law abiding, citizens
Several thoughts come to mind.
1. Vote out the current Mayor and current city council.
2. Tear down the two huge government subsidized housing complexes nearby. Having witnessed one of their crime sprees I can tell you most of these delinquents live there.
3. Arrest them and put them in detention. The failed days of trying to appease these delinquents are over.
If the city were to take these three suggestions, I can guarantee that crime in this area would drastically decrease.
I guess technically those would be considered “thoughts.”
A headline indicated that crime is up in Dinkytown, yet our DFL legislators opted to embrace a popular mantra that marijuana is so popular that recreational use should be legalized (and because “people of color” were being arrested for its use more than Whites); and now Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis Mayor, has told MPD to ignore people in possession of hallucinogens.
While these drugs may have a good effect on some people who use them in a regulated way, I am concerned that more crime in Dinkytown and elsewhere will occur as a result of people haphazardly and recreationally using them. I don’t want those people to be on the road while driving high, and I don’t care for obnoxious people high on drugs to be in public places or ruining the air that I breathe with those substances.
Mayor Frey has made a number of mistakes over the past few years. I once worked with him and have been to his home helping him on a project. However, I will not vote for him again. I see him as being a populist, not a wise man.
Mr. Petersen,
I am glad that you have come to the realization that Mayor Frey is not a wise man. He has ruined Minneapolis! One has only to look at his handling ( or his lack there of) the looting and burning
of public and private buildings by mobs of hooligans. His leadership is nonexistent.
I really enjoyed Jacob ten years ago when we were both active in DFL Senate District 60’s Central Committee. He was a very friendly guy and had a little charisma. However, when a woman on the SD 60 Central Comittee accused me of sexual harassment for writing about how several women in my youth molested me in job interviews and raped me while I was asleep, which is sickening to wake up to, he, Kari Dzidzic and Mohanud Noor no longer spoke to me. I was banned by Party executives without a hearing (which the Bylaws mandate) and based on juvenile gossip. Dziedzic enoucraged me, in 2011 (for a 2012-2015 term in which I became an associate chair among physicians, nurses, consumers and their families, and social workers; among 23 participants) to take part as an advisor on the Hennepin County Mental Health Advisor Council, and Noor, a year before the accusation, and I appeared on KFAI Radio’s Somali Talk Radio to talk about mental health and autism. The station manager called me to say that in forty years, they hadn’t had a more popular response through social media, emails and calls.
The Council advised both the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners and Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton. Earlier in 2023, I served as a panelist of the World Institute on Disability speaking of the crimes which created depression and anxiety against me, and then the crimes by ableists who thought it was a joke to beat for two years a man known to have a disability. Yet, I kept my cool.
With the DFL and Frey pushing through legalized marijuana and telling the MPD to not bother people with hallucinogenic drugs, even if they’re not prescribed and regulated, I see no use for the current community of DFL activists and legislators. I was once a very strong cheerleader and active in many campaigns since 1979. Popularity, not wisdom, and several platoons of misandrist feminists (women and men) is what I now identify as being among the DFL, though there are still some people in the Party whom I respect, just not in Minneapolis or SD 60. DFLers want to be nice to everybody, regardless of how irresponsible and criminal they have been. I shun this element of the Party. I was advised and encouraged by Governor Wendell Andreson and U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale, as well as by moderate Republican Dave Durenberger.
He’s not even a good populist. He wants to be popular but he has no spine.
I’m with the writer above who says flush the mayor and the city council. At least most of them.
“Teen” crime in Dinkytown/Marcy Holmes comes from kids coming in from outside the neighborhood. Very few teenagers actually live there. We’re talking like 20 kids in total. Most likely coming from the northern suburbs, where there happens to be a lot of teenagers.
Teenagers are one of the smallest demographics in the city of Minneapolis. There are more teenagers in Brooklyn Park + Brooklyn Center than there are in Minneapolis. Perhaps the suburbs could hire some community elders and street ambassadors to teach their kids how to behave, instead of sending them to Minneapolis to cause havoc.
And not a word from the County Attorney!
Don’t count on her to do anything productive.
The majority if comments here reveal the vacuous and pointless nature of grievance Republican mentalities and politics. Not a single actionable or substantive observation or suggestion beyond reflexive hostility towards MPLS… just for being MPLS. Fortunately this kind of mindless reflexive hostility is FINALLY losing it’s purchase among a vast majority of voters who recognize this fear/grievance mongering for the toxic dead-end it really is.
At the end of the day the problem with the Republican/Fascist civil/culture war agenda is that it places it’s combatants in a fundamentally inescapable space full of unsustainable fear and resentment. The moral and intellectual degenerates that lead this war simply lead their followers into a morass of misery without relief. While Inescapable grievance may empower some sociopaths for a relatively short period of time, has no future or influence for those who embrace it.