Roots of the Riots in Minnesota

Situation: 28th & Nicollet is a persistent high-crime hot spot. That area (Whittier neighborhood / Midtown corridor) has for years been: A chronic violent-crime and narcotics hot spot. Minnesota Officials from city to state, have turned a blind eye while the crimes fester, funded by all sorts of vice, including taxpayer dollars, over the warnings of whistleblowers, many of whom have now given depositions to the Feds. Those depositions are still going and are being presented to a Federal Grand Jury.

A major open-air drug market location at different points in that area. It is an area with repeat shootings, stabbings, robberies, and carjackings. It is a corridor heavily affected by post-George Floyd policing pullbacks, staffing shortages, slower response times, and the collapse of proactive policing. Multiple squads must be dispatched to each serviced call due to lone officer risks. MPD crime-mapping data and Star Tribune reporting since 2020 consistently show the Midtown / Nicollet corridor as one of the city’s most unstable enforcement zones.

So the spirit of “this place is effectively ungoverned at times” is not crazy. The literal claim that MPD officially handed it over is not accurate. However, that is the scuttlebutt frequently stated by area locals and may be the source of that claim. MPD is poorly staffed. While Billions of taxpayer dollars go to local con-artists, MPD is woefully understaffed to police the entire area.

Local Assertion: MPD materially pulls back from proactive enforcement in this area. True due to officer safety, and this is the real core of the issue.

Timeline: After 2020: MPD dramatically reduced: traffic stops, street-level drug enforcement, loitering enforcement, warrant service, and low-level quality-of-life policing. Officers have repeatedly testified (and arbitration rulings have confirmed) that they were discouraged from discretionary enforcement, subjected to discipline for lawful stops, and left short-staffed and under political hostility.

The predictable result: open-air drug markets returned, gangs reasserted territorial control, community witnesses stopped cooperating, crimes were radically underreported, and armed crews began operating with near-impunity. This is the basis of local claims that the are crime lords have their own methods of enforcement. Even voter polling is overseen, and the ballots they deliver are counted with little successful objection. That looks like “ceded territory” on the ground, even if it isn’t one legally.

There is no formal gang “police force.” But there is something criminologists call parallel authority control, where criminal groups: enforce territorial boundaries, regulate who can sell drugs where, punish thieves and rivals, intimidate residents and witnesses, and decide who is allowed to loiter or operate businesses. In neighborhoods where real policing collapses, gangs do become the de facto law. That is the basis of the claims that government officials look the other way in favor of ballot box results.

That has been documented in Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, and parts of Minneapolis post-2020 under Mayor Frey. So while “their own police force” is rhetorically loaded, the power-vacuum reality behind it is real.

Independent journalist assertions: “They confiscate whatever they want without deterrence from the MPD.” This is plausible and partially supported by pattern evidence, though it is not a blanket claim. What is documented: Armed robberies go unreported or unsolved. Street dealers are shaken down by stronger crews. Residents decline to call the police. Witnesses refuse to testify. Repeat offenders cycle with little consequence

So if gangs are stealing phones, drugs, cash, or cars, and strong-arming people in that corridor, the odds of real police deterrence are currently low. Not zero, but low enough that criminals rationally act as if it were zero.

Craig Anderson is compressing a messy truth into a punchy report. MPD didn’t “cede” 28th & Nicollet. But amid political paralysis, staffing collapse, and enforcement retreat, they effectively lost control of it for long stretches. And in that vacuum, gangs did what gangs always do: they filled the power gap. Nature abhors a vacuum. So does organized crime.

Craig Anderson & Dr Bartels