Minneapolis politics, slightly ground down

A Minneapolis politics podcast hosted by four-term Ward 2 city council veterans Cam Gordon and Robin Garwood, with longtime activist Jesse Mortenson

Safety Shifts pt 1: Violence Interrupters Face Big Budget Cut

October 12, 2026

Minneapolis safety programs are facing big shifts, putting key strategies at risk. In this part one, we tackle a severe budget cut proposed by the Mayor for the violence interrupters program. What is violence interruption? We talk about the theory and practice, including its role in a very successful violence prevention strategy in Baltimore. Recent Minneapolis history has been troubled. But we argue that the city cannot afford to let this violence prevention strategy wither.

Part 2, coming soon, will focus on Behavioral Crisis Response.

Recorded 10/7/26.

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Baltimore's Successful Violence Prevention Strategy

Johns Hopkins Violence Prevention Best Practices

Below quoted from John Hopkins

  • Community gun violence is concentrated in poor, segregated, and disinvested neighborhoods with few economic opportunities. These neighborhoods have suffered from a legacy of racist and discriminatory public policies which create the conditions for violence. Consequently, Black Americans are disproportionately impacted by community gun violence; they suffer from a gun homicide rate 14 times higher than their white peers.
  • A small number of people within these disinvested neighborhoods drive most of the violence. They are often caught in cycles of victimization, trauma, and retaliation, are disconnected from work and school, and lack the community supports to help them heal.
  • reduce gun violence in the most impacted neighborhoods through outreach by credible messengers who work with individuals involved in gun violence. These programs are most effective when cities and states invest in comprehensive intervention and prevention efforts that engage a wide range of stakeholders and community leaders.
  • Strategies:
    • Violence Interrupter Programs (such as Cure Violence): credible memberso f the community trained to interrupt
      • The Center for Gun Violence Solutions partnered with the city of Baltimore to evaluate Safe Streets, a violence interrupter program. Findings from 2007-2022 support the hypothesis that Safe Streets Baltimore reduced homicides and nonfatal shootings over the many years the program operated in some of Baltimore’s most under-resourced neighborhoods. The average reductions ranged from 16% to 23% with larger reductions in homicides during the first four years of the longer running sites.1
    • Focused Deterrence / Group Violence Intervention: identify chronic violent offenders, present them with combo carrot/stick
      • An analysis of 24 focused deterrence programs found that these strategies led to an overall statistically significant reduction in firearm violence. The most successful of these programs have reduced violent crime in cities by an average of 30% and improved relations between law enforcement officers and the neighborhoods they serve.2
    • Cognitive Behavioral Interventions with Wraparound Supports: dentify participants highly impacted by violence and provide cognitive behavioral interventions paired with wraparound social services, such as job placement, life coaching,
      • Evaluations of programs that use cognitive behavioral interventions with wraparound supports like READI Chicago and Advance Peace show large reductions in arrests for violence and violent victimization of study participants.3,4 These promising early results indicate that identifying individuals at high risk and supporting them with job training and cognitive behavioral therapy can improve their safety, the safety of others, and promote economic opportunity.
    • Violence Reduction Councils / Homicide Review Commissions: council examines individual homicides and shootings to identify system gaps and missed opportunities for intervention
      • The homicide review commission in Milwaukee was associated with a significant and sustained 52% reduction in homicides. A Department of Justice evaluation found shooting review boards to be an effective way to reduce gun violence by building trust between criminal justice stakeholders and the community
    • Changing Environmental Risk Factors for Violence: large numbers of vacant buildings and blighted lots, a high density of alcohol outlets, and inadequate street lighting, can reduce gun violence in a community.
      • Funding for programs that clean and rehabilitate blighted and abandoned property are associated with both decreases in gun violence of up to 39% over one year and improved community health.

Media coverage of Minneapolis Violence Interruption Program Issues

  • 10/5/26 Fox9: Minneapolis violence prevention funding in question after critical audit
    • "An internal city audit found Minneapolis failed to properly oversee millions of dollars in violence prevention contracts, increasing the risk of fraud and waste."
      • Previous FOX 9 data requests revealed that one violence prevention consultant billed over $270,000 for personnel, rent, and food, yet the city never produced a single receipt for the company. Despite those red flags, the city council kept funding the group for years.
    • FREY: "The findings are not entirely surprising really at all," Frey said. "We have known the shortcomings of the whole framework for quite some time."
      • "When you are wrong, you admit it, and you try to do better," Frey added. "And that's what we are trying to do here."
    • Mayor Jacob Frey is proposing to slash the Violence Interrupter budget in half due to compliance tracking issues, a move facing pushback from some city council members.
  • 9/27/26 Strib: City audit warns of fraud and favoritism in Minneapolis violence prevention programs
    • Five years into the initiative, the city still lacks consistent site visits, adequate invoice records and safeguards against political interference.
    • oversight of more than 100 contracts has been so lax that it’s increased the risk of fraud while enabling favoritism in contracting, a recent city audit found.
    • Since 2023, the city has spent more than $36 million on alternatives to police through five main programs in which community groups are hired to help reduce street violence
    • Neighborhood Safety Department Director Amanda Harrington said 140 site visits were done from the spring of 2025 to 2026, but they weren’t documented the way auditors wanted
    • Last year, Commissioner of Community Safety Todd Barnette publicly accused some progressive council members of playing politics with the programs and supporting “efforts that would benefit them or their favorite nonprofit.”
    • Harrington said that, since she took the helm of her department in May 2025, she’s seen a couple of instances where contractors reached out to the mayor or council members about contract terms being negotiated or invoices not being processed quickly enough. Even though contracts clearly say all communication should go through contract managers, “that doesn’t stop them.”
    • Thomson said his firm spent “well over six figures on this litigation pro bono” to make sure the program was being properly run, and two years later, little has been done. The remedy would be for someone to bring another lawsuit.
    • This year, $5.5 million is budgeted for the violence interrupter program, and Mayor Jacob Frey has proposed cutting the program by $2.6 million next year, calling it a** **“noble program filled with committed and talented community leaders, but clear tracking has not demonstrated the level of results taxpayers deserve.”
    • Council Member Jason Chavez and Council Vice President Jamal Osman recently vowed to restore their funding.
  • 9/5/26 KSTP: Questions remain on steps to close oversight gaps in Minneapolis violence prevention programs
    • Thomson: "My goodness, two years ago with the settlement, they knew there was a problem,” he said. “Yet two years later, they’re saying, ‘Well, we intend to fix these problems.’ That’s not an adequate response.”
  • 5/8/26 Fox9: $6.5 million nonprofit lawsuit: Former 'We Push For Peace' leaders sued by AG
    • Two former directors of the nonprofit "We Push for Peace" are accused of misusing more than $6.5 million in charitable assets, according to a lawsuit filed by the Minnesota Attorney General's Office.
    • The lawsuit says Pollard personally benefited from over $6 million, spending charitable money on luxury cars, trips to Las Vegas, child support payments, and even funding his private liquor store and car dealership.
    • The attorney general's office adds that Pollard and McGuigan tried to hide their actions from both state investigators and tax authorities. They allegedly lied to investigators, including claiming a child support payment was for nonprofit expenses and mislabeling a $35,000 payment to friends as "Chicago Payroll."
    • Timeline: The attorney general's office estimates the nonprofit had a total revenue of:
      • $267,089 for 2020
      • $3,214,582 for 2021
      • $6,830,390 for 2022
      • $6,419,701 for 2023
      • $6,970,128 for 2024
      • $1,944,332 for 2025
  • 3/28/25 KSTP: Minneapolis pulls violence interrupter contract [Salem/McAfee] request after nonprofit member’s shooting arrest
    • At issue was a proposed $643,000 contract for Salem Inc., a nonprofit associated with the Rev. Jerry McAfee’s church, New Salem Missionary Baptist Church. McAfee also runs the public safety outreach nonprofit 21 Days of Peace.
    • Last week, two 21 Days of Peace members returned fire after hearing gunshots near a community barbecue at the intersection of 36th and Penn avenues in north Minneapolis. Those violence interrupters, Kashmir Khaliffa McReynolds and Alvin Anthony Watkins Jr., are now charged with gun violations.
    • In an email to constituents, Council Member Robin Wonsley sharply criticized the prospect of McAfee’s nonprofit getting city funds for violence interrupter work.
      • “Reverend McAfee is not in a position to do violence prevention work in the city of Minneapolis,” she wrote. “When the city approves contracts related to public safety services, we are affirmatively telling the public that these organizations and individuals are safe to put their trust in.”
  • 3/2/25 Fox9: Minneapolis failed to track millions in violence prevention funding. It just approved even more.
    • But Barnette, who is also serving as the interim director of the Neighborhood Safety Department, applauded the work and said there will be better oversight of the funding and contracts because of a recent legal settlement. **"**I think what we have through the process, we have the right vendors," Barnette said.
    • [vendors] routinely submitted invoices for tens of thousands of dollars over the past few years without providing detailed timesheets or descriptions of the work.
    • "I would definitely call it a broken system," said Luana Nelson-Brown, the former head of the Neighborhood Safety Department. Nelson-Brown resigned in January after spending less than two years in that role. During that time, her department was accused of mismanagement, conflicts of interest and improperly withholding funding.
      • "It was a system that, in the way that it was developed, makes the environment ripe for corruption," said Nelson-Brown.
    • The city "admitted it did not have a regular practice of requiring violence prevention contractors to provide documentation" for the invoices they submitted, according to court records in that case.
      • "The city was paying over $70 million of invoices without getting any backup for the invoices -- no canceled checks, no receipts for expenses, just invoices saying, ‘pay me the money.’ And they did pay the money," said Minneapolis attorney Dean Thomson who filed the 35-page lawsuit."
      • Thomson found a violence prevention group called T.O.U.C.H. regularly submitted timecards for staff members paid $30 an hour without identifying a single individual.
  • 2/14/25: MinnPOst: The debate over violence interruption in Minneapolis — cutting through the noise
    • Ward 4 council member LaTrisha Vetaw, Ward 8 council member Andrea Jenkins, Ward 13 council member Linea Palmisano, Ward 3 council member Michael Rainville and Ward 7 council member Katie Cashman opposed the move. Additionally, Ward 6 council member Jamal Osman said it would be hard to vote on the item without knowing for certain what impact the move would have on current services.
    • During Thursday’s meeting, Council Vice-President Aisha Chughtai attempted to question Barnette about this statement [throwing shade at council] during her comment portion on the item to clarify which council members he was referring to and what evidence the claim was based on. She ultimately ran out of her allotted time, and Barnette never finished answering the question.
  • 2/7/25: Some Minneapolis council members want county help with violence prevention programs
    • The proposal, authored by council member Robin Wonsley, pitches an agreement with the county to administer the city’s Group Violence Intervention (GVI) and Youth Group Violence Intervention (YGVI) programs through the end of 2025.
    • “We look forward to the day when we can return GVI to the city with confidence that these crucial programs will be administered effectively,” Council President Elliot Payne said in a statement. “Until that day, residents deserve to know that those most at risk of being involved in a shooting are getting the preventative services they need.”
    • “This effort to reallocate funding for GVI/YGVI is disappointing as much as it is mischaracterizing a problem that doesn’t exist,” he wrote in a statement
    • The department — formerly known as the Office of Violence Prevention — has had a rocky go since it was renamed and moved from the Health Department and into the new Office of Community Safety in 2022, following the change in government structure.
    • During the 2024 budget process, Mayor Jacob Frey’s administration rejected an amendment from the council that would have given her more staff last year. They wrote to the council that their proposal would be “adding positions into NSD that are not being asked for, at this time, from the Community Safety Commissioner and Director of NSD” — adding it was important to listen to staff experts.
    • Nelson-Brown, director of NSD, patently rejected that claim. In internal emails, she responded: “I strongly disagree,” she wrote in one. In another, she wrote that adding staffing is critical, likening it to “asking someone to pay bills or buy food.”

Safety Program Org Structure in Minneapolis

The Office of Community Safety is the umbrella organization, containing:

  • 911
  • Emergency Management
  • Fire
    • Behavioral Crisis Response
  • Police
  • Neighborhood Safety Department (NSD)
    • [NSD was formerly the Office of Violence Prevention/OVP]
    • Group Violence Intervention (GVI)
    • Next Step
      • Hospital-based support for victims of violent injuries
    • Violence prevention services program
    • Youth Group Violence Intervention (YGVI) program (? couldn't find website)
    • MinneapolUS / Violence Interruption
      • trained by Cure Violence
    • Community Safety Ambassadors

Neighborhood Safety Department

Some media coverage of changes over in recent years:

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