Hennepin County Attorney says new youth crime prevention program working
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Updated: 11:35 a.m.
It’s been about nine months since Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty started a Youth Auto Theft Diversion program — and she says it’s working. But Minneapolis police say they want to see changes.
The program connects at-risk youth, who are identified by the attorney’s office and by law enforcement, to social workers and county services. It’s meant to keep teens and preteens from committing crimes and ending up in the legal system.
In a presentation to a Minneapolis City Council committee yesterday, Moriarty said 82 youth have been in the program, and 72 have not entered the criminal justice system.
“We have collaborated in a way that has intervened in the lives of young people who would have never been identified,” Moriarty said. “Hopefully those are 72 young people who are never going to get involved in the juvenile justice system.”
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Law enforcement can refer young people who they think might be at risk of committing crimes, specifically auto theft. The attorney’s office connects them with county resources and social workers.
Moriarty said police often give cases of juvenile car theft to her office to consider for charging, but prosecutors determine that there’s not enough evidence to charge them. In those cases, her office then routes those young people into the diversion program.
“We wanted to figure out, could we intervene and try to keep them from coming into the system?” Moriarty said.
The program is voluntary — since it’s not part of the criminal justice system, the attorney’s office can’t force youth to participate.
Her presentation came after a round of carjackings and robberies in February that Minneapolis police believed were committed by a group of juveniles. The department referred twelve youth for various offenses related to the crimes, including carjacking at gunpoint. The county attorney’s office charged nine of them.
Moriarty said some law enforcement agencies have said they’d like to see the program expanded beyond auto theft to other offenses. She’s looking for ways to strengthen the program — and she said that she needs better communication from the Minneapolis Police Department to do that.
“We need to communicate with each other, and that has been a problem right now. I would like to see that communication between MPD and our office improve,” Moriarty said.
In a statement after the meeting, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara refuted Moriarty’s claim that the department isn’t communicating, and that police aren’t doing enough to put together sufficient evidence in cases. He said he wants to see prosecutors charge more people.
O’Hara said some of the cases they’ve handled involved juveniles who have pointed firearms at their victims or stuck gun barrels in peoples’ mouths. Those young people, he said, are not candidates for diversion.
“I am all for diverting juveniles when appropriate, but that is not the problem that we’re dealing with right now,” O’Hara said. “We need to do everything that we can to get these violent juveniles arrested, charged, and off the street.”