MINNEAPOLIS— Despite recent incidents, carjackings and car thefts have declined across Minneapolis.
According to the city’s crime dashboard, there have been 76 carjackings so far in 2024, down nearly 21% from last year (95) and 41% compared to the three-year average (135).
“I am confident that the strategies we have in place are working because we have seen statistically significant declines since we put them into practice,” Chief Brian O’Hara said Friday afternoon. However, O’Hara wasn’t ready to declare victory over crimes involving cars.
Earlier this year, raids caused crime data to skyrocket.
“Early this year, robberies, including carjackings, were up significantly in the city. They were up about 50% so far as we started to have a robbery problem,” O’Hara said. “Last week, three teenagers were shot in one week, one of them was murdered. Two of the three were shot while in a stolen car. So there is a very clear connection between car theft and joyriding and then these robberies and carjackings.”
The night before O’Hara spoke to WCCO, three teenagers were arrested for carjacking a woman.
“I think there’s a total of 20 different reports for two of them. You know, from carjacking to joyriding in a stolen car and carjacking,” O’Hara said. “It’s a problem we’ve seen in recent years.”
O’Hara credits several initiatives for the decline in numbers during those years.
“We have implemented a robbery response protocol where we saturate areas as quickly as possible once we spot these issues… and even when robberies do occur, fewer robberies and carjackings are reported,” O’Hara said . “We also now have youth detectives who are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week… because there are certain procedures and evidence gathering issues that are different for young people. We want to make sure that we do everything we can at the time of the incident – whether it’s three o’clock in the morning or three o’clock on a Monday afternoon – to make sure that we do everything possible to address these matters build as quickly as possible.
O’Hara says his investigators have also worked closely with prosecutors to build stronger cases to prevent repeat offenders, but that can be difficult.
“When we have these crimes, where multiple robberies take place in a short period of time, especially when victims are approached and the incident is over in less than a minute, sometimes by eight or nine young people, sometimes while wearing masks, it becomes very difficult for victims to give us accurate descriptions, give us license plates and identify information, all of which complicates building these cases,” he said. “So a lot of hard work has gone into it. There are a number of strategies, you know, and partnerships with other law enforcement agencies that we’re putting in place that the community will start to see very publicly in the coming weeks, both to get violent offenders off the streets and to try to get as many illegal catch perpetrators. weapons that we can get off the streets before summer arrives.”
O’Hara says tips from the community are one of the greatest sources of help in police work.
“If you see people who look like they are too young to drive, driving recklessly in an area, people driving around with masks, report it because that could be the clue to who we are seeing. And that was very helpful in making arrests,” he said.
Allen Henry
