Some Minneapolis council members want county help with violence prevention programs

Some Minneapolis City Council members say the city’s Neighborhood Safety Department (NSD) has been too riddled with mismanagement to continue overseeing violence intervention programs. On Thursday, three council members proposed that more than $1.1 million be allocated to Hennepin County to temporarily take over two intervention programs. 

For more than a year, council members have routinely flagged concerns over the department that administers violence interruption programs. Several violence interruption groups reported contracts that had lapsed or gone unpaid last year, which council members say shrunk safety services in parts of the city. A 2023 lawsuit also alleged the department arbitrarily awarded millions of dollars in contracts without adequate oversight. 

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. Those programs aim to get ahead of gunfire by identifying the groups that drive the most violence and embracing community-based deterrence over armed law enforcement. 

“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.”

Office of Community Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette — who is also serving as the interim NSD director after the previous director resigned late last month — said moving intervention programs to the county would be disruptive. 

“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.

In that transition, the department lost administrative infrastructure and staff support, and the process to rebuild has been slow. Late last month, NSD Director Luana Nelson-Brown resigned after about a year and a half on the job, in which she repeatedly stressed that the department did not have the staff to function.

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.”

After recently announcing her resignation, Nelson-Brown issued a statement with a rosier look ahead for the department.

“I am confident that the strong relationships we’ve established with our safety partners will continue to carry forward in this important work,” Nelson-Brown wrote.

But for many council members who had publicly called out the department to straighten out for months, faith in that change is absent. The press release announcing the proposal, which included statements from council members Robin Wonsley, Jason Chavez and Council President Elliot Payne, said the latest update “didn’t instill confidence in significant improvements.”

The council’s budget committee will take up the proposal on Monday.

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