Crime in the crosshairs as major Minnesota legislative, campaign focus in 2022

Minnesota legislators returning to the Capitol Monday will accelerate a debate on crime that is already stoking fierce partisan tensions against the backdrop of an election year.

A persistent rise in violence in the Twin Cities metro area and beyond has prompted proposals for new tough-on-crime legislation from Republicans and calls for more money for community policing and restorative justice from Democrats. Both parties identify crime as a top priority this session, but with statewide offices and control of the Capitol up for grabs this November, the topic is fast becoming a platform to lob attacks across the aisle.

"This moment requires new solutions, not old politics," said state Rep. Cedrick Frazier, a New Hope Democrat who is the chief sponsor of the House DFL's $100 million public safety budget proposal this year.

Surging carjackings and homicides have spurred Senate GOP proposals to impose tougher sentencing laws and to prosecute minors as adults in some cases. Republicans also want to open up grant funding to recruit new officers to the profession.

Sen. Paul Gazelka, an East Gull Lake Republican running for governor, used a recent press conference outlining his public safety proposals as an occasion to blame the state's crime woes on DFL Gov. Tim Walz. Gazelka drew a line from young people carrying out carjackings and robberies to what he described as inadequate support of law enforcement and "wrong-headed ideas of some in the judicial process."

"It is clear that Gov. Walz has been totally deaf to the cries of crime victims," said Gazelka, who at one point labeled young carjackers "these children of Tim Walz."

Walz offered his own public safety agenda for 2022 last week, including $300 million over three years for local governments and tribes for public safety needs. The governor's plan includes retention incentives for law enforcement, student loan financing and an advertising campaign to attract more would-be officers.

"It's not enough to wring your hands and say it's unacceptable to have crime," Walz said. "Of course it's unacceptable. The victims of crime across the board deserve better. But to simply say that and not use proven data and proven ways of doing it doesn't get us there."

Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington defended Walz's proposal as "the most comprehensive approach to crime reduction" he has seen in his nearly five decades in the field.

Both Walz and the DFL House want a holistic approach to addressing crime. Their plans include money for community policing initiatives, nonprofits working on violence prevention, new crime analysts and opioid epidemic response measures.

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, want to impose mandatory minimum sentences for violent offenders, repeal the five-year cap on probation and order county prosecutors to provide data on felony cases they decline to charge.

Warren Limmer, the Maple Grove Republican who chairs the Senate's public safety committee, is closely examining sentencing laws this session. That includes a bill requiring Senate confirmation of Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission members, and a "crime-spree interruption bill" that would mandate consecutive sentences for multiple convictions.

"We intend to remember the victims first before we make any policy," Limmer said.

Jeff Potts, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, said a top priority of his group's agenda this year is legislation to require more data from prosecutors who decline to charge certain felonies. He also wants to see grants for body cameras for police departments, noting that more than half of departments in the state still lack the technology.

"Law enforcement has to try to figure out how to keep communities safe," Potts said. "There's been a lot of attention on reform the last couple sessions. You can look for ways to do additional reform and make things better but at the same time support law enforcement. It doesn't have to be one or the other."

In the DFL-controlled House, Frazier emerged as a key negotiator on criminal justice in his freshman year in 2021. He quickly became vice chair on the House Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform committee. Its chair, Rep. Carlos Mariani, DFL-St. Paul, is retiring after this session.

This year's focus on crime marks a dramatic shift from the police reform talks that dominated much of the past two sessions. But to Frazier, police reform and policies responding to violent crime are intertwined.

"I believe that we need to start treating community confidence as the law enforcement intelligence resource that it is," Frazier said. "The effort to address the rise in crime cannot be untangled from the effort to ensure transparency and accountability. Which helps build trust, which leads to cooperation during investigative processes. Which leads to solving crimes."

Mendota Heights Police Chief Kelly McCarthy, who chairs the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, is among those concerned that politics could interfere with legislators agreeing on solutions to the root causes of the crime wave.

"It feels like when we do policy, we are constantly looking at what is effective and what is efficient and what does the data say," McCarthy said. "But when we talk about crime — because fear is such a universal motivator — we tend to throw that out the window."

Michelle Phelps, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota, also shares fears that this year's public safety policy debate could end in a stalemate.

"I think the place we could really go wrong is what we have seen since at least the 1970s — these moments where people are acutely worried about crime, our impulse at the legislative level is to think our answer to that is that we need to have more police, more prosecutors and more imprisonment," she said.

Crime is already a focal point of the race for attorney general, an office historically more known for tackling consumer protection cases. Republican candidates are already blaming DFL incumbent Keith Ellison for not doing enough to curb violent crime in the Twin Cities.

Ellison points out that he has been rebuffed by the state Senate when asking for more prosecutors for his office. And like his DFL colleagues in the House and governor's office, Ellison also suggests that work done on the state's opioid epidemic response and housing availability has been an important tool in preventing crime in the first place.

"We've got to have a comprehensive approach to public safety," Ellison said in an interview. "That means dealing with people who perpetrate crime. But that also means we've got to deal with responding to the anxieties that sometimes lead people to act criminally."