5 takeaways from 2024 crime trends in the Twin Cities

Preliminary data from across the country indicates violence and other crime is sliding back toward pre-pandemic levels. But in the Twin Cities, the full violent crime picture is more complicated.

Homicide and other serious crime in the U.S. rose sharply in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic and fallout from George Floyd’s murder by police disrupted daily life. But a new study from the Council on Criminal Justice looked at 2024 crime data from 40 cities, with a big takeaway: Nearly all crime categories fell last year, and homicide, on average, has returned to pre-pandemic rates.

Meanwhile, a Minnesota Star Tribune analysis of Twin Cities crime data shows St. Paul continued seeing drops in most major crime categories, but Minneapolis saw some violence metrics increase, ending a two-year streak of declines.

Criminologists and local officials have cautioned that the road to pre-pandemic crime rates may have more obstacles in Minneapolis, the ground zero for a global racial reckoning after Floyd’s murder and a city that has struggled with instability in its police ranks and violence interruption programs.

“I know we’ve made significant progress,” said Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara. “I believe we’ve made stronger progress than what some of the data would indicate on its face. We’ve got to remember this police department was typically 900 police officers, and we’ve lost over 500 police officers since 2020.”

Here are five takeaways from Twin Cities crime trends in 2024:

Murder slightly increased in Minneapolis and slightly fell in St. Paul, leaving police officials in both cities unsatisfied.

After a peak of 94 murders in 2021, Minneapolis saw two consecutive years of reductions. But in 2024, murders and non-negligent homicides rose from 72 to 76, according to city statistics. Those counts don’t include police-involved deaths, negligent manslaughters or justifiable self-defense killings.

O’Hara said the murder increase could partly be explained by a rise in fatal shootings around homeless encampments, which he said almost doubled last year to 15.

Across the river in St. Paul, homicides continued to fall from their pandemic-era peaks, down to around 30 last year. St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry said he was “very happy” with the overall trends in his city but remained frustrated at the pace at which homicide was declining.

“The murder number is way too high,” he said. “It’s not as much as I’d like to see it [drop].”

The study by the Council on Criminal Justice looked at homicide numbers in 29 cities, not including Minneapolis and St. Paul. All but six saw decreases in 2024.

The average among the sampled cities appears to have returned to a pre-pandemic state, but the drop is driven by large decreases in cities where homicides are historically high, the study said.

Shootings fell more significantly in both cities last year: down about 9% in Minneapolis and 11% in St. Paul, continuing a decline that’s close to halving recent peaks in both cities.

While Minneapolis still has a ways to go before returning to pre-pandemic levels, St. Paul’s statistics looked more like 2019.

Brooke Blakey, the director of St. Paul’s Office of Neighborhood Safety, said the city has made progress with the help of an array of programs meant to deter young people and others from gun violence, such as education campaigns, life skills training, employment opportunities and resources for substance abuse and mental health issues.

Still, officials in both cities have said the accessibility of firearms make it an uphill battle to reduce gun violence.

“That’s just the biggest, biggest [obstacle] that I see,” Blakey said. “From legally purchased to illegally purchased ... it’s easy to get a hold of them.”

Last year’s nationwide drop in crime is largely credited to the slow return to normalcy after 2020, although progress still varies from city to city, according to Ernesto Lopez, a research specialist with the Council on Criminal Justice.

The organization’s findings would suggest a continuation of 2023’s record 12% drop in national murder rates as reported by the FBI.

To an extent, it should not be surprising that Minneapolis breaks from national trends, said Chris Uggen, a criminologist at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Yet, he said people continue to underestimate the impact of the social forces at work locally in 2020.

Like everywhere else, the pandemic interrupted social service outreach, schools and employment for Minneapolitans. But the city was also the “epicenter of trauma” from Floyd’s murder.

Uggen suspects that combination widened inequalities in the city, which left some young people “largely abandoned.” To illustrate the effect Floyd’s murder had, Uggen referred to a study of his that showed an increase in psychiatric hospitalizations among the city’s Black population in 2020 and 2021.

“A social indicator like that often has a long tail, an effect that persists, and it takes a while to work through,” he said.

Nationally, robberies have declined since 2018 as people carry less cash and stolen cellphones lose value because of anti-theft measures, Lopez said.

Yet, robberies in Minneapolis increased in 2024, ending a two-year stretch of declines. In the first half of the year, O’Hara said, robberies in Minneapolis were driven by young people who police had frequent contact with and who were committing them using stolen cars, “almost for sport.”

That forced the department to handle reports of robbery sprees differently. After receiving reports of two or three robberies in a short period of time, police flood an area with officers — some from partner agencies — to make quick arrests.

Much of the nation saw motor vehicle thefts and carjackings balloon in recent years, but both crimes declined in 2024, including in the Twin Cities.

Minneapolis reported a 15% drop in motor vehicle thefts (a property crime) and a 9% drop in carjackings (a type of robbery). Carjackings were also down in St. Paul, while auto thefts fell nearly a third.

Carjackings, with less than 300 reported in Minneapolis last year, remain far rarer than car theft, which totaled almost 6,700 reports.

Lopez and the Twin Cities police chiefs attributed the drop to a combination of education campaigns about avoiding car theft, along with Kia and Hyundai updating security software in their vehicles.

Lopez argued much of the car theft in recent years was driven by security design flaws by the two automakers. He said Canada, by comparison, has not suffered the same problems because manufacturers are required to include certain design features in their vehicles.

“I think a large share of that trend is related to certain Kia and Hyundai vehicles,” he said.