Some Minneapolis council members want county to take over troubled violence prevention programs

Some Minneapolis City Council members want Hennepin County to temporarily take over two once-lauded violence prevention programs that they say have been plagued by problems.

Several members of the council’s progressive wing want to send $1.13 million to Hennepin County to administer the Group Violence Intervention and Youth Group Violence Intervention programs. Council members have raised concerns about mismanagement of the city’s Neighborhood Safety Department, which oversees the programs.

In recent years, the city has increasingly relied on people with criminal records to help reduce crime and diffuse tension as an alternative to sworn officers.

But the program has been plagued by problems. Last year, some of the groups said the city stopped paying them and they stopped getting client referrals from law enforcement and probation agencies. The city was also sued for allegedly arbitrarily handing out millions of dollars in violence prevention contracts.

The former director of the Neighborhood Safety Department, which oversees violence interrupters and the Group Violence Intervention (GVI) program, last year blamed understaffing and a lack of resources. Luana Nelson-Brown recently resigned amid scrutiny by council members who questioned why violence interrupters weren’t being sent to crime hot spots and why the group violence program had scaled back some work since 2023.

The city employee who was in charge of managing GVI contracts also recently departed the city.

Nelson-Brown last year said just two employees were handling over 100 contracts; the department had over $18 million in contracts in 2023.

The City Council has funded programming and staff to beef up the department and brought national experts to support it, but has been frustrated by the lack of answers about outcomes and data.

Council Members Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley and Council President Elliott Payne said in a news release Thursday that they will propose moving the programs to the county because residents aren’t getting adequate service. The council Budget Committee will take up the proposal on Monday.

Community Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette, Nelson-Brown’s former superior, is serving as interim director of neighborhood safety. He released a statement calling the proposal “disappointing as much as it is mischaracterizing a problem that doesn’t exist.”

A recent study of the programs by the NYU Policing Project said Minneapolis needs to better manage the programs, saying there is “too much informality in the management of city programs and contracted services.”

The report said the city has no centralized contract management system, no process for sharing “basic activity or performance data” and no procedure to confirm that violence interrupters were deployed and assess the outcome.

“It was apparent that the city lacked essential information about the activities and performance of several of its contract providers,” the report said. “We were unable to review any outputs of the interventions or what approach they are currently following. Basic information, such as community contacts, interventions used, outcomes, and related data were not available for review – or, based on our inquiry, being shared with the City.”

Unlike other cities, Minneapolis has no policy for how city officials activate violence interrupters, but instead, the groups relied on an “informal network” to direct them to areas at risk of violence. Other cities activate the groups through schools, hospitals and police.

The report said the violence interruption programs don’t provide coverage during the times of day with the highest historical gun violence; there are no violence interruption groups working in neighborhoods west and southwest of downtown nor after midnight, when one-fourth of shootings happen; and north Minneapolis had no coverage on Sundays, the day with the second-highest level of gun violence in the city.

Barnette countered that the Neighborhood Safety Department has worked to improve transparency, accountability and efficiency.

“We are making great progress, working closely with U.S. Attorney’s Office, Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, and dozens of community partners, and even a temporary move will undoubtedly cause disruptions. We are all aware of the promise of this program and see it as a cornerstone of the [Neighborhood Safety Department] and the city’s community safety ecosystem.”

Hennepin County spokeswoman Carolyn Marinan said the county is “always open to collaboration and coordination with the city of Minneapolis.”

Chris Magan of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.