Outreach group plans to plant roots in Brooklyn Park to keep community safe
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The city of Brooklyn Park is safer because of a community organization that hopes to call it home for a long time.
Since last fall, Minnesota Acts Now (MAN) has had a presence near the intersection of 63rd & Zane Avenues. The area has a mix of homes and businesses and is known as a criminal hotspot.
Dressed in orange, the nonprofit’s street outreach team puts a focus on community member interactions and de-escalating potentially dangerous situations. The team feels it’s working and the Brooklyn Park Police Department backs that up.
RELATED: Community outreach continues to deter crime in Brooklyn Park
“Minnesota Acts Now has been one of the most meaningful and impactful changes that this community has ever seen,” Brooklyn Park Police Inspector Elliot Faust said.
In this file photo, Bishop Harding Smith, center, founder and director of Minnesota Acts Now, speaks with outreach team members in Brooklyn Park. (KSTP/file)
“That’s not to be taken lightly,” he added. “I don’t say that about any other intervention that we’ve ever done before.”
As seen in the graph below shared by the BPPD of the 63rd and Zane crime trend, Faust said MAN’s impact is clear as they arrived in the area in September 2021 when the trend dipped.
Things have gone so well that MAN plans to make the area their permanent home.
“Step one, we needed to stop the bleeding, stop the shootings, stop the robberies, stop the carjackings. All of that was going on here,” said Bishop Harding Smith, founder and director of MAN. “Now [that] we have the ears of the kids, we need to give them something to do, and this building is going to be it.”
Smith has plans to fully renovate the two-story building on the corner. Along with a fresh look from the outside, the inside will be filled with spaces for young boys and girls to learn, resource, play and be safe.
“It’s a long road ahead, but I can’t wait for the finished product,” Bishop Smith said.
The estimated cost for the renovations is more than $500,000. The organization has received a couple of generous donations but knows it’ll need help from the community.
“This building is going to reach many lives. It’s [going to] meet many kids,” Smith said. “[The] job we’re doing here is to save lives and we already started to do so.”