Minneapolis Leaders Looking for a More Humanized Way to Control Crime

The city of Minneapolis has a violence problem, and its leaders are looking for a way to control crime in the most humanized way possible.

The latest incident took place Friday night into Saturday morning, when three people were shot downtown, KARE reported.

“It hurts. I wish that I could find ways to help everybody feel more comfortable and more safe,” Councilman Steve Fletcher said.

Fletcher’s district, Downtown West, is the part of the city where the shooting happened.

Statistics from the Minneapolis Police Department show that in the past year alone, violent crimes rose by 20 percent, leaving many residents wondering how the city can put an end to these acts of violence.

The violence also comes with calls to defund or abolish the city’s police department.

“We have to be getting at the causes of crime. We have to be investing in people’s well-being and things that create conditions where people are drawn to committing crimes in the first place,” said Fletcher.

Fletcher says armed officers are necessary to address violent crime, but if the city is serious about reducing crime they need to take a more humanized approach.

“That means we have to address poverty, it means we have to address some of the relationships between people that are broken, and we’re putting resources out that are specialized in doing that,” said Fletcher.

City leaders said that they want to reach out to community members over the course of the next year to develop a “best practices” approach to prevent crimes.