City data on Monday showed Minneapolis experienced more homicides, people hurt by gunfire and domestic aggravated assaults in the last 28 days than the city has tallied in the same time frame for at least the last four years.

If you compare the entire year thus far to 2022, there have still been fewer instances of all three violent crimes overall. However, there was a clear shift coinciding with the holiday weekend.

Minneapolis City Council’s Public Safety Committee Chair LaTrisha Vetaw said on Monday she’s noticed the trend “just kind of since Thanksgiving.”

“There was a time when the city was celebrating the numbers down, but clearly, there’s still a lot of work for us to do,” she continued.

The latest numbers on the city’s website reveal there were 12 homicides in the last 28 days, compared to five during the same time period in 2022, four in 2021 and six in both 2020 and 2019. The Minneapolis Police Department opened seven homicide investigations in the week span between Dec. 16 and Christmas Eve alone.

Other violent crimes compared, according to the city’s crime dashboard:

• Gunshot wound victims
  • Nov. 26 to Dec. 24, 2023: 43
  • Nov. 26 to Dec. 24, 2022: 17
  • Nov. 26 to Dec. 24, 2021: 42
  • Nov. 26 to Dec. 24, 2020: 25
  • Nov. 26 to Dec. 24, 2019: 17
• Domestic aggravated assault
  • Nov. 26 to Dec. 24, 2023: 73
  • Nov. 26 to Dec. 24, 2022: 72
  • Nov. 26 to Dec. 24, 2021: 63
  • Nov. 26 to Dec. 24, 2020: 63
  • Nov. 26 to Dec. 24, 2019: 70

Statewide, Violence Free Minnesota reported the most deaths due to intimate partner violence in a decade this year.

One of those losses was just last week in Minneapolis. Kesha Moore, 43, was shot to death inside her Linden Hills apartment.

“She was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met,” Council Member Vetaw remarked.

“It’s hard to process, and it’s even harder to imagine how families are feeling right now.”

After bullets hit a day care last weekend, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the uptick started in October and “it’s just too much.”

The surge continued into a violent Christmas weekend, including the shooting death of a 16-year-old.

“Too many of our kids in this city are living on blocks where the sound of gunfire is regular. It’s just background noise,” he said during a Dec. 19 press conference following the day care shooting.

“We need more officers. We need everyone to know that this department today is operating at the lowest staffing level that it has in decades. And we cannot continue down this path.”

Vetaw — an outspoken proponent of prioritizing the hiring and retention of officers in the city and increasing pay to make the job competitive with several suburban metro agencies — said she believes the lack of officers is part of the problem.

“I really do think if we have at least the minimum number of officers that were required, that we will see a lot of this crime going down, because we would have more officers on every single shift, we would have more officers at known hotspots,” she explained, before going a step further to say increasing manpower at MPD should be the City Council’s “number one priority” for public safety in the new year.

A spokesperson for Metro Transit Police on Sunday said its officers are helping increase MPD patrols at the weekend shooting hotspot on East Lake Street.

“We will work together until further notice in an effort to quell this surge of violence,” the spokesperson wrote, attributing the quote to Metro Transit Police Chief Ernest Morales III.