Minnesota officials, feds launch new collaboration to tackle youth violence

Leaders of more than 40 local, state and federal law enforcement agencies announced a wide-scale collaboration Monday to combat gun violence among groups of Somali youth that they say are affiliated with gangs. The effort comes after several shootings across the Twin Cities metro in the past month, including a shooting at Eden Prairie High School’s homecoming football game earlier this month that injured two people, and a Bloomington shooting where police found nearly 100 shell casings at the scene. No one was injured in the Bloomington case.

“When we see 100 rounds fired in Bloomington, that’s a problem, regardless of the number of people doing it,” said Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) Superintendent Drew Evans, who was flanked by more than 40 law enforcement officials during a news conference Monday. “We want to get people off of that path, but we also want people to see that there are 40-plus individuals here that are going to work together and arrest people if they wish to commit crimes in our communities.” While some law enforcement officials have dubbed the groups as “Somali American gangs,” Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt, Evans and Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges reiterated their plea to not judge the entire Somali community for the actions of a few. “This past summer, you heard us talking about the Highs and Lows,” Witt said.

“We weren’t calling them ‘the Black gangs.’ We were calling them the Highs and Lows, and they all just happened to be Black. Enough with the nonsense about directing anger, hate words, hateful acts toward an entire community.” The collaboration will involve the gun and nonfatal shooting units of the Minneapolis Police Department, the St. Paul Police Department’s nonfatal shooting unit and the BCA’s Violent Crime Reduction Unit.

It also includes the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); dozens of smaller police agencies across the Twin Cities metro area; and the Hennepin, Ramsey, Anoka and Dakota sheriff’s offices. They’ll be using the Crime Gun Intelligence Center, an interagency intelligence hub that allows different jurisdictions to share firearm evidence. The focus on gun violence among Somali youth began this past summer, when Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher attributed multiple shootings at graduation ceremonies to “Somali gangs.” He said about 300 youths spread …