What my family learned after a St. Paul carjacking

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Patrick, they've got guns, taking my car, and want yours!

Those were the words I heard from my wife in our backyard as she was running to the backdoor while carrying our 2-year-old daughter.

Last year, around this time, a group of teenagers followed my wife and my daughter home on a weekday morning after she went to the local pharmacy. After my wife pulled into our garage, three teenagers rushed her with masks on, pointed a gun at her, and took her purse and keys.

The car doors were locked when they took the keys, leaving my daughter trapped in the back seat as the fear of what could happen next raced through my wife's head. She begged and begged a dozen times to have them unlock the door to get our daughter out of the car. The teenagers finally agreed, the back door opened, and my wife was able to remove our child and run toward our house.

Once she entered the house, I could see the teenagers in the garage and thought they would try to come inside the house looking for my keys. Feeling vulnerable, all I could do was yell that the cops were on the way and lock the doors to the house as they drove away with her car. Thankfully, my wife and daughter were not physically harmed. Hearing my wife scream and seeing her run for her life with our daughter was the worst thing I've ever heard or seen.

The St. Paul Police Department and Ramsey County Sheriff's Office reacted immediately, secured the surroundings and searched for the suspects. Thankfully, the Sheriff's Office had the Carjacking and Auto Theft (CAT) Team in operation. The CAT Team was able to catch one of the teenagers on foot and the other two after coordinating the satellite with the auto manufacturer.

In the past year, we've arrived at the position that these teenagers should never have been in our backyard in the first place. The "system" is failing. This represents a challenge greater than the justice system today can handle. As a result, what happened to my family is happening to too many others too many times.

All of the teenagers had lengthy records of violent crimes involving guns before arriving at our home. One judge had indicated on the record that the teenager was too dangerous to be out of confinement, yet the boy had been released. Another had been in the juvenile system for half his life and had been certified as an adult on two other violent crimes.

Our state's juvenile system is supposed to help kids who commit crimes like this find a way to get their lives back on track before more serious crimes happen. Yet, today there are too many situations where the system is failing these kids, because there is no real path to rehabilitation to become a productive member of society.

Over the last year, we've had many conversations with elected officials and agencies from all levels of government to find common ground to tackle this crisis in our community.

Our family is working with Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and Sheriff Bob Fletcher to find solutions to prevent carjackings and to secure dedicated resources to respond when they do happen. Our conversations with system and community partners over the past year have revealed inexcusable gaps in the system that need to be closed.

We need the legal system to have the capacity to investigate violent crimes when they happen so that young people are both held accountable and get the support and treatment they need to turn their lives around, becoming assets to our community and not detriments. This includes intensive therapeutic homes for those whose needs are so significant they cannot safely be treated in the community. Kids with high needs who engage in high-risk, dangerous behavior need similarly high levels of investment to achieve actual rehabilitation, which is not only the system's stated purpose but what we all — as community members and taxpayers who fund our public systems — should expect and demand.

Reflecting on the past year is challenging and frustrating, but I'm inspired by the courage and heroism displayed by my wife on that snowy weekday morning. We now look to the Legislature (in particular, to HF 600 and SF 393, which would provide money to create about half a dozen intensive secured treatment programs in Ramsey County) to muster up the courage to make the needs of young people in the justice system a real priority by investing meaningfully to fix this broken system — for these kids, who are literally our future, and for the safety and well-being of our community.

Patrick Connolly lives in St. Paul.