Minneapolis police tout another successful Operation Safe Summer
Operation Safe Summer is wrapping up a weeklong crime sweep across Minnesota's largest city.
The effort includes confiscating weapons and arresting criminals. WCCO's Reg Chapman was along for the ride with law enforcement.
Roll call for Operation Safe Summer brought law enforcement from different agencies together to focus on one goal: making Minneapolis safer as summer gets underway.
"The strategy that we are utilizing right now is built around getting guns off the street," Mayor Jacob Frey said. "It's around keeping people protected and making sure that we are doing everything possible ahead of time to prevent some of these violent crimes from happening."
This is a targeted enforcement effort. WCCO rode with officers as they arrested a man they had been tracking for weeks for illegal guns and drug sales.
"This is not a broad dragnet going out being placed on the entire community, this is precision policing," Chief Brian O'Hara said. "This is we are trying to go out and get those who are responsible for the most harm in the community off the street."
The focus is on hotspots across the city where crime is a problem.
"It's data-driven information that leads us to where we need to be, and again, it's with that overall goal to keep our community safe," Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt said.
The detail concentrated its efforts near North 36th and Penn avenues, Franklin and Chicago avenues and Nicollet Avenue from 15th to 19th Street — areas where illegal gun possession and drug sales reign.
"One thing that is clear to me is these kinds of proactive partnerships, they work," Frey said. "You don't need to take my word for it. You can take a look at the numbers."
More than 72 grams of cocaine and 18 grams of fentanyl were taken off the street, along with 12 stolen cars recovered and $20,000 in cash seized.
"There is a number of long-term investigations that are a part of this so there are some search warrants that have been executed," O'Hara said.
From carjacking suspects to those wanted on warrants, officials say the detail won't stop with the end of Operation Safe Summer.
MPD says the numbers prove crime is down overall from a year ago. Homicides are down 32%, and the number of gunshot victims is down 26%.
There were 114 carjackings a year ago, compared to 74 this year — that's down 35%.
