Losing the joy

As goes the Aquatennial, so goes Minneapolis

Minneapolis, known as the “City of Lakes,” will no longer host the Aquatennial, its signature summer event since 1940. It’s also pulling the plug on winter’s Holidazzle parade.

According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, the Minneapolis Downtown Council is “backing out” of organizing the two signature events. The Downtown Council has cited “budgeting challenges and competing priorities” for its decision. However, there is another, more likely reason: The ongoing crime problem has negatively impacted the public’s desire to choose entertainment options in Minneapolis.

Adam Duininck, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, is quoted as saying, “Where we do need to improve is safety and advocacy. Where we do need to improve is our long-range plan and making it happen to make Minneapolis the best city that it could possibly be.”

Officially, the Downtown Council and the city remain hopeful that another entity will step forward and agree to coordinate and promote the events, but that seems unlikely. Last year the Downtown Council had hoped the Holidazzle would attract over 100,000 people downtown, but attendance was well below that estimate, closer to 65,000. As a comparison, in 1992, the Holidazzle event drew an estimated 750,000 people to downtown Minneapolis.

The real problem

Most people have no patience for crime and disorder — and they shouldn’t. Whether it’s a relatively minor run-in with an inebriated homeless person in the stairwell of a parking garage, being harassed by aggressive teens at a bus shelter, having one’s car broken into or stolen, or something even more serious like being assaulted or robbed after a show on Hennepin Avenue, far too many Minnesotans have had negative experiences in downtown Minneapolis in recent years, and they’ve vowed not to return.

Often, the reaction to their concerns feels like salt in an already painful wound — as if their concerns are exaggerated or their expectations of safety are unrealistic.

People aren’t wrong to have this expectation, and they aren’t wrong to believe that Minneapolis has failed to maintain an acceptable level of public safety. City leaders have failed to heed the warning signs, and the city is paying the price — perhaps a catastrophic one.

The recent documentary by former television news anchor and journalist Rick Kupchella, “A Precarious State,” focused heavily on the impact this lack of public safety has had on the economic health of Minneapolis. The downtown business sector, which was once the economic engine for the state, is a shell of its former self. Vacancy rates in many office buildings have fallen to dangerous levels, and, as one real estate expert noted, some buildings are selling for less than it would have cost to recarpet them in more stable times.

The city’s plan for this business sector collapse seems to be centered on flipping downtown from a business-centered area to a neighborhood. Leaders envision converting office buildings into apartments and converting the Nicollet Mall into a pedestrian walkway and park. While optimistic, these plans all seem to be ignoring the obvious — you can’t achieve that without first reestablishing public safety.

Safety is the foundation

American psychologist Abraham Maslow coined Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in 1943. His theory described that just after the basic necessities of life (food, water, and air to breathe), humans need safety and security to thrive. The necessity of safety serves as the building block for other needs like community, creation, and achievement. While academic, Maslow’s hierarchy is also common sense, and it shouldn’t be lost on Minneapolis’s political leaders.

When it comes to providing safety, there isn’t any substitute for the police, and Minneapolis’s political leadership has been far too slow to acknowledge this or to acknowledge their role in undermining their own police department. The anti-police atmosphere the city’s political leadership helped create in 2020 has not served anyone well — not black or white, rich or poor, business owner or customer, resident or visitor; no one.

The lack of support for a properly staffed, proactive police department makes any effort, let alone one as massive as revitalizing Minneapolis’s struggling downtown, a losing effort.

Many continue to argue that crime is in retreat in Minneapolis, as if losing nearly 40 percent of its police force has somehow led to more innovative and successful public safety strategies. The truth is that the reported reduction in crime is only measured against recent record highs in 2022 and 2023. When current Minneapolis crime rates are compared to pre-2020 era data, the results are damning.

Is crime really down?

Using FBI Crime Data Explorer information, Minneapolis’s violent crime rate (murder, aggravated assault, robbery, and rape) in 2018 was 800 per 100,000. In 2024, despite reports suggesting Minneapolis’s crime rate was dramatically falling, the violent crime rate was 1,164 per 100,000 — 45 percent higher than in 2018. When I shared this data with the Minnesota House Public Safety Committee this past session, a DFL House Member representing Minneapolis dismissed the accuracy of the data because she had not heard others report on it. She’s right, others haven’t reported it — probably because it doesn’t fit the narrative of a “rebounding” Minneapolis.

Minneapolis’s First Police Precinct, which encompasses the downtown business district and the entertainment and arts districts, has also struggled compared to the “good old days” of the late 2010s.

Using the Minneapolis Crime Dashboard to compare crime data from 2019 to 2024, one can see why downtown is no longer a welcoming place for many. Since 2019, calls for reports of gunshots have increased by 582 percent, gunshot wound victims have increased by 22 percent, aggravated assaults have increased by 25 percent, intimidation has increased by 26 percent, destruction of property has increased by 50 percent, shoplifting has increased by 57 percent, arson has increased by 63 percent, and motor vehicle theft has increased by 106 percent. One crime that has decreased, thanks in large part to unhelpful policies that have decriminalized open-air drug use, is possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia — down 58 percent since 2019.

It all adds up to be a big “No thank you” for a growing number of Minnesotans.

A warning that was ignored

It is in our collective best interest that Minneapolis, our state’s largest city, not only survives but thrives. The only way to ensure it does is to reestablish a solid foundation of public safety, and the only way to do that is to prioritize rebuilding Minneapolis police staffing.

No one should forget that the city’s first black police chief presented a budget to the Minneapolis City Council in 2019, warning them that Minneapolis would need 1,300 officers by 2025. Instead of heeding the warning, many on the Council signed on to the “defund the police” movement and Minneapolis witnessed the defection of nearly 40 percent of its police force by 2022.

Since then, too many political leaders in the city have hitched their wagons to the theory that a “reimagined” public safety system will be successful by replacing police officers with other resources like mental health response teams and civilian violence interrupters. These resources have value, but they are needed in support of a fully staffed police department, not as a replacement.

Let’s hope that our “City of Lakes” hasn’t slipped past the point of no return. Maybe, just maybe, common sense will prevail.