The St. Paul Police Department nearly doubled the number of nonfatal shooting cases investigators solved in a year's time, drawing attention from other departments who are interested in finding the same closure in their city. 

But Chief Axel Henry, who marks three years in the role this month, says he won't be celebrating the improvement or the drop in homicides until there are none. 

"Those numbers are going down at really great rates, but I don't endzone dance on numbers like that until they're going to be at zero," Henry said.

From January through mid-November, homicides dropped 56% this year compared to the same time period last year. Carjackings have plummeted by 17%. 

But police outside the capital city are noting one significant change: the clearance rate for nonfatal shootings. In 2022, the department solved 28% of those crimes. Last year that number soared to 69%, thanks to a new unit focused on those shootings that is part of a three-year project ending next year. 

Henry said investigators treat those cases as they would homicides.

"That, of course, is something that's helping us drive down the homicide rate because we kept those shooters in nonfatals. Those are failed murders for all practical purposes," he said. "So by driving down those areas, they're impacting not only those numbers."

Overall, the city is on pace for a significant decline in how many people were shot in the city this year compared to the last. 

"That's 120 people that won't be shot this year in the city of St. Paul. That's the real gold medal," he said. "It's great to solve these and drive down the crime rate, but the 'never happens' are the ones we care most about."

At the state Capitol, some lawmakers want to ban assault-style weapons and high capacity magazines in wake of the Annunciation Church shooting in Minneapolis.

The St. Paul City Council recently approved its own ordinance doing the same, though it can't be enforced because of state preemption laws.

Henry believes there is more work to do on cracking down on gun crimes, but that there may be better strategies than such a ban. 

"I think our bigger problem is with folks that are using guns illegally, whether or not they're criminals and they're not supposed to have them, or people that are too young to have them and the access they have to firearms," he said. "I think there are some really, really good common sense things that can happen around the ghost gun issue, which just simply wasn't a problem that anybody could have imagined 10 years ago. And so I think there's a lot of things we could be doing that would have a much greater effect on the gun violence problem."

St. Paul police adopts new AI policy

St. Paul police recently adopted a policy on appropriate use of artificial intelligence, which more departments are relying on in the course of their work. 

Henry said the topic was unthinkable three years ago when he first stepped into the role as chief after 24 years on the force, which shows just how fast AI is evolving. 

The new guidance prohibits officers from using publicly available generative AI tools like ChatGPT to write police reports or do research, but department-approved transcription software from company Axon — which has other services other departments are using in different ways — is permissible to use for drafts of police narratives in reports. 

He said the policy stemmed from conversations with the private sector as well as federal partners and other local departments. He also acknowledged its provisions would likely change "20 times in the next 24 months" to keep pace with how the technology is developing. 

"If there's something that allows an officer to dictate or write a police report faster so we can get them out of the way from the desk and back out in the squad car in the community, I'm all for it. As long as it's something that conveys what they did accurately and that it doesn't create an issue where that information now becomes public when it was supposed to be private," he said. "Artificial intelligence is supposed to be a force multiplier for us, but what we don't want to turn it into is something where it becomes Orwellian, or comes into something that is loose and fast with people's data."