Minneapolis City Council ready to pump money into crime prevention programs

The Minneapolis City Council Public Health and Safety Committee will likely approve 15 crime prevention grants totaling $350,000 Thursday.

Some familiar groups such as Lutheran Social Services and the Hennepin Theatre Trust are in line for the grants, ranging from $10,000 to $43,000.

Pastor Curtis Farrar has ministered at the Worldwide Outreach for Christ Church near George Floyd Square at 38th and Chicago Avenue for nearly four decades. He told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS he’s “hopeful” the full City Council will approve his church’s grant proposal for $43,000.

“I want to use it to pay for a youth mentoring program because we need to give youngsters positivity in all this negativity in today’s world,” Farrar said. “You have to start reaching them as young as 5 years old because they can easily fall to the influences of the street and start on a path of crime.”

Farrar said prevention programs are a philosophy he wholeheartedly supports.

“You can turn lives around, and we have done that at the church for many years,” Farrar said. “But it takes a continual investment into education, trade skills and just positive mentoring and letting those kids know they’re loved and that we care.”

Minneapolis City Council member Cam Gordon told KSTP he is excited the crime prevention grants are starting to go out and the city will follow up down the road to see how things progress.

“It’s hard for us as a city to dig into the long-term impacts it might have in preventing long-term problems and violence,” Gordon said. “Because it’s always hard to know what you prevented because it didn’t necessarily happen, but nonetheless, we will try to see how successful it was and how well it worked.”