A crime wave swept South Minneapolis over the weekend of February 9, with the Hill and Lake area and Uptown being particularly hard-hit.
Crimes included armed robbery, carjacking, car thefts, and thefts from cars, with at least 17 different “robbery” crimes being reported in the Fifth Precinct alone between Friday and Sunday. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara described the spree as “absolutely outrageous.”
While the numbers alone may be shocking, there’s a story be- hind each of them. One of the first victims of the weekend crime wave was Sydney, an eighteen-year-old high school senior who moved with her family to the Kenwood neighborhood in 2022.
Obivously precocious, Sydney is already engaged with and giving back to the community, working with children as a staff member at the Kenwood Community Center, and serving as youth representative on the board of the Kenwood Neighborhood Organization. She hopes to attend the University of Minnesota in the fall.
Sydney’s shift at the Rec Center ended at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 9. Not suspecting anything out of the ordinary, she began her usual walk home, casually carrying her phone in her hand. When she reached 21st Street, between Penn and Queen, she noticed a red sedan slow behind her and gradually pull to a stop.
A young man in a hoodie exited the car and began walking behind her, initially at a distance. Sydney says she was alert at this point but not panicked, but in very short order the young man ran up behind her, brushed her shoulder and grabbed her phone, then jumped back into the red sedan, which had pulled ahead of them.
At this point, Sydney was more shocked than scared. As the red car approached Kenwood Parkway, she saw a white Kia® pull in front of it. Both cars turned north on the Parkway, and she heard them accelerate. As the reality of what had happened set in, Sydney picked up her pace, crossing the Parkway and hoping to make the two blocks home without further incident. No such luck. Within moments both cars returned and slowed alongside her.
At this point, it’s important to pause and acknowledge the truism that everyone has something in life to deal with. In Sydney’s case, that “something” is a mild case of cerebral palsy, primarily affecting the muscles on the right side of her body.
She says the condition has impacted her life significantly. It makes simple tasks hard, and she was teased quite a bit when younger, but she also believes that working to overcome this adversity has made her the person she is today. That being said, she walks with a perceptible limp, and she walks rather than drives because her right-side muscle issues aren’t terribly compatible with right-side automotive controls like accelerators and shifters.
This overlay made what happened next all the more galling.
As the cars pulled alongside Sydney, they slowed before stopping, and a young woman yelled out “walk faster!” Sydney isn’t entirely sure whether this was a crack at her limp or perhaps an effort to herd her towards a darker portion of the street, but regardless she was scared and outnumbered. She could see at least two people in the white Kia, and there were at least three in the red sedan.
In short order the cars stopped, and the young man in the hoodie hopped back out of the red sedan with Sydney’s phone, followed by a young woman in a black ski mask. Sydney could see her phone was lit up, and the young woman yelled, “What’s the passcode?” Sydney gave her the first four digits, but hesitated on the last two, mindful that the phone held most of her digital life.
Noting Sydney’s hesitation, the woman in the ski mask said, “Give us the passcode or we’ll put you in the car and shoot you!” Sydney gave up the last two digits, the young man in the hoodie confirmed that they worked, and Sydney’s assailants hopped back into their car, and both cars drove off.
Sydney called 911 as soon as she got home and says she’s grateful to the Park Police officer who responded promptly, saying he was concerned, compassionate and helped her feel safe. Through another device at home, she was able to remotely track her phone, first locating it at Bde Maka Ska, and last locating it as it was heading north before she remotely wiped it.
Sydney says it’s still hard to wrap her brain around what happened but feels lucky to have escaped physical violence. She says it’s made her “smarter,” in her words, more conscious of the steps she needs to take to avoid future incidents (i.e., don’t carry your phone in the open), but she also has moments when it’s jarring to think of the young woman in the ski mask, apparently about her own age, threatening to take her life over a cell phone.
As noted, Sydney’s attack was simply the leading edge of a weekend-long crime spree in the area. That same day there was a carjacking in the East Isles neighborhood, with a rash of robberies and car thefts following on Saturday and Sunday.
The perpetrators appeared to be primarily teens or young adults, and in all but three of the incidents, the attackers showed or implied a handgun. Several juvenile suspects have been arrested, while others remain at large. Most of the incidents took place in the Fifth Precinct, where robbery crimes are up 149% for the year.
The crime spree also prompted reaction from local officials. Police Chief Brian O’Hara announced the implementation of a new robbery protocol, in which all available officers will be pulled from non-emergency duties in the event of future outbreaks.
In a separate report from KARE-11, the chief also appeared to take aim at Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarity’s treatment of juvenile offenders, noting “[w]e are providing negative reinforcement when we are engaging in catch and release, catch and release. We’re almost encouraging them to do this.”
Reaction from Council Member Katie Cashman
Ward 7 Council Member Katie Cashman also appears to have received a significant number of citizen emails. On Feb. 13, she sent an email of her own to constituents, noting a number of common-sense steps that residents can take to discourage crime. In addition, she listed eight policy steps that the City Council should pursue.
Number one was an expansion of the downtown ambassador program into Uptown, which she said would provide union labor. Dead last, at number eight, was more money for actual cops, which she tied to “accountability measures” apparently above and beyond those in the department’s new consent decree.
