Law enforcement leaders across the Twin Cities are calling for a more comprehensive response to rising gun violence among Somali youth after a string of shootings in recent days they say is connected to gang activity.
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher and Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt held separate news conferences on Tuesday following three shootings in less than a week, all of which they say are connected to what law enforcement are now calling “Somali American gangs.”
Law enforcement officials reiterated the behavior by these youth doesn’t reflect on the entire community. But, they said, the issue needs to be properly labeled in order for it to be addressed.
“We all know the vast majority of people who come here, who live here, are American citizens, who are Somali Americans bust their butts every single day to make a better living for themselves and their family,” Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges said during the news conference with Witt on Tuesday. “These kids and young people that are doing this now are not a reflection of them.”
“I use the term Somali American gangs, just like Hmong American gangs or African American gangs because … these kids are Americans.”
The recent focus on Somali youth and gun violence was reignited by a Sept. 22 shooting outside of Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in Edina, and another on Friday at Eden Prairie High School’s homecoming football game against Minnetonka that injured two teenagers. The shootings prompted a community meeting Monday night in Edina attended by Witt, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans, FBI Minneapolis Special Agent in Charge Christopher Dotson and prosecutors with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.
Several residents asked the local, state and federal officials overseeing the meeting what their plan is to combat the recent spate of gun violence, while others reminded them what’s at stake for the Somali community as they tailor their response.
“When violence happens, we absolutely have to address it, but we also have to be careful that our response does not stigmatize an entire community, which I am also part of,” Minneapolis resident Farhia Budul said during the Monday night meeting.
The same night of the community meeting, however, there were two more shootings in nearby west metro suburbs that law enforcement have since connected to the same groups. Eden Prairie police officers responded to shots fired at a Speedway gas station at 8:45 p.m. on Monday and found no one had been injured but the shooters had fled.
In Bloomington, a doorbell camera caught a shootout at around 12:50 a.m. on the 10000 block of Harriet Avenue, where police say the shooters used illegal attachments to convert pistols into machine guns.
Fueled by bragging rights, social media attention
The issue first gained widespread attention this summer when Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher identified more than 100 shootings in the past two years as gang-related during a livestream in July, and specifically labeled the gangs as Somali. His comments prompted outrage among the Somali community, who said his singling out of Somali youth was fueling racist rhetoric the community was already facing from President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Later that month, Fletcher held a community meeting where some Somali parents expressed their concern with how Fletcher described the youth violence issue, while others asked where the youth were getting access to firearms and what they could do to help law enforcement combat the issue.
A few weeks later, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Ramsey County Attorney John Choi filed injunctions against 10 members across two gangs known as “Muddy” and “The Ville,” in an effort to prevent violence at the Minnesota State Fair after large-scale brawls and shootings in and around the Fairgrounds in recent years.
The injunctions led to what Ramsey County Deputy and gang investigator Ben Seidl on Tuesday called the safest State Fair in the past five years. But, he said, the issue is still ongoing, fueled by bragging rights and social media attention.
“Clearly, we still have a problem,” Seidl said.
Hodges echoed Seidl, remarking on the lack of the pursuit of drugs or money that motivate traditional gangs.
“They’re coming from two-parent homes, living in apartments with $3,500-a-month rent, driving [BMWs] and Mercedes and all of these luxury cars,” Hodges told reporters. “They’re not dealing with money, there’s no drugs in the house and they’re purchasing legal firearms so these are not the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s gangs. These kids are different.”
During the news conference Tuesday, Fletcher outlined three solutions: Somali parents need to take a more active role in monitoring their children’s whereabouts, cities and counties need to invest more funding in youth programming and law enforcement needs to make more arrests.
“We need to arrest a big chunk of these kids and send a message to the groups as a whole that we’re not going to tolerate this type of shooting and violence,” Fletcher told reporters, who said his deputies estimate the 12 gangs they’ve identified consist of about 300 members.
The sheriff also called on agencies across the metro to create a regional task force, citing Eden Prairie Mayor Ron Case’s comments during the community meeting Monday night. Fletcher said the youth causing these incidents are very mobile, and the limited jurisdictions of suburban police departments makes it difficult for police to be as mobile as the perpetrators.
The areas the youth claim as their territory ranges from Hopkins, Shakopee and Eden Prairie to St. Paul, Eagan and Burnsville. They will congregate at coffee shops in Little Canada, for example, then travel to suburbs on the other side of the metro to pick fights with other groups, making it difficult to track or contain.
Fletcher said his agency has 10 people assigned to monitoring social media for gang activity, and a task force would allow for more police departments doing similar work to share their findings across jurisdictions. But ultimately, building relationships with youth at the cafes and parks where they congregate has helped to neutralize incidents before they happen, and other departments need to do the same, he said.
“A part of that puzzle is sharing intelligence … but intelligence only goes so far because at some point you need boots on the ground,” Fletcher said.
