House Republicans outline public safety plans amid metro area crime spike

Republicans in the Minnesota House released a new plan Tuesday in an effort to curb a rise in metro area violent crimes.

Public safety proposals have been a hot-button issue between Republicans and Democrats.

House Republicans are calling on the governor and city leaders to step in and do something about recent violent crime.

"Minnesota, this year, is looking at another summer of violent crime. Over the past month, we’ve seen children shot by random gunfire, people run over and killed in Minneapolis by criminals with stayed sentences who should have been in jail," House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt said.

The call to action Tuesday comes after three teenagers were killed over the weekend and with violence continuing to spike in the metro.

Daudt introduced several new measures aimed at reducing violence, including having the governor call in the Minnesota State Patrol to help patrol the highest-crime areas of Minneapolis, expanded use of "ShotSpotter" technology to pinpoint the most violent areas and expansion of programs in Minneapolis to keep young people out of gangs.

Republicans also call on Minneapolis to hire up to 200 more officers.

"Public polling shows that these communities don’t support defunding police and in fact they want investments made in more officers who can help prevent crime before it happens," Daudt said.

He said local and state leaders are doing too much talking and not taking enough action as he says Minnesota is seeing one of its most violent summers yet.

Lawmakers Tuesday proposed allocating $2.5 million of the 2020-21 budget to help pay for some of these proposals.

At a news conference about vaccines at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Gov. Tim Walz acknowledged the public safety problems but says there are no simple solutions.

He says if the Minnesota State Patrol also has to patrol city streets highway safety could suffer even more.

"Moving the State Patrol is a simplistic answer to a more complex problem," Walz told reporters. "It also creates other problems. Traffic deaths on our highways are up to a high again."

Walz says his administration will work with the Legislature, city leaders and federal partners to come up with a comprehensive public safety response.

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