Hassanen Mohamed has had boots on the ground in Dinkytown summer after summer, sparking up late night conversations with teenagers and young adults following what he and police have said are social media calls to crowd the couple block radius, armed with stockpiles of fireworks and roman candles.

As the Executive Director of the Minnesota Somali Community Center, Mohamed sat down to offer insight into the dangerous behavior pattern after yet another Fourth of July holiday erupted in rowdy crowds of young people, some aiming fireworks at property, people and police.

“It’s not a surprise. It’s a trend,” Mohamed reacted to the news of the activity and 30 subsequent arrests.

“It’s something that they get, you know, clicks from. They become famous on social media,” he continued, adding, “For them, it’s all a joke. So, we’re trying to change that mindset, that these things are now being taken seriously.”

Mohamed invited independent podcaster and businessman Yusuf Haji of Haji Daily to join him and document in a YouTube video last summer as he sparked conversations with teenagers who admitted on camera that they don’t plan on stopping.

They’re “doing it for the excitement,” one told Mohamed when he asked why “kids that look like us…come out here and do crazy stuff? What leads people to do this?”

Mohamed continued the conversation, pressing for an answer to his primary question at the time, “What can we do to change this?”

The eventual response was “activities” like a basketball or football tournament, “something to keep the kids distracted.”

A year later, Mohamed said he still believes providing alternative activities are a large part of a possible solution.

Not long after that June 2023 conversation on the street in Dinkytown, Mohamed submitted a proposal for an ‘Empowering Youth’ program to the nearby University of Minnesota to get access to gym space and financial support to bolster what he said has so far been strictly volunteer work.

Objectives in the preliminary proposal included providing activities and “space to educate parents,” “promote youth accountability” and foster positive community engagement.

“We want to have gym spaces. We want to have a place where we can have conversations with these kids and triage them, and see what are the underlying issues because trauma comes out in different ways,” Mohamed explained.

That proposal was denied, with university leadership citing a lack of available, related funding, Mohamed said.

The university has not confirmed or denied its response to Mohamed’s proposal as of this report.

While that effort stands still, Mohamed also pushed back on Sunday against blame — often in social media comments — placed on his entire community for the reckless behavior of a relative few.

He pointed to rowdy pop-up events happening in tandem across the metro, involving young people from varied backgrounds, including a gathering of hundreds in a Crystal, Minnesota park last Wednesday.

“The ones in Dinkytown might be 100 Somali kids, maybe. But the ones who showed up in Crystal, like 300. The ones who showed up in Brooklyn Park, 400,” Hassanen said.

“They’re not doing what Somali kids in Somalia do. They’re doing what American kids in America do. You know, they’re doing exactly what they see on social media for people doing the roman candles fights in Chicago, in New York…They do that, and they’re doing it here. It’s just that it happens that the majority of them happen to be from my community.”

As of Sunday, the firework throwing seemed to have slowed since the July Fourth holiday when Minneapolis Police arrested 30 people. Mohamed said that may be a temporary deterrent, adding that he doesn’t expect the arrests alone to keep the quiet unless they become a consistent consequence, consistently resulting in charges.

RELATED: Police arrest dozens in Minneapolis for dangerous fireworks activity