Minneapolis police chief says carjacking crackdown is working as auto theft numbers drop

MINNEAPOLIS — Despite recent incidents, carjackings and auto thefts are actually down across Minneapolis. 

According to the city’s crime dashboard, so far in 2024 there have been 76 carjackings, down nearly 21% from last year (95) and 41% compared to the three year average (135).

“I feel very confident that the strategies that we have in place are working because we have seen statistically significant declines since we enacted them,” said Chief Brian O’Hara on Friday afternoon. O’Hara wasn’t ready to declare victory over crimes involving cars however.

Earlier this year, robbery sprees sent that crime data skyrocketing. 

“Early this year, the amount of robberies which also includes carjackings were up significantly in the city. They were up about 50% year to date when we started having a robbery spree problem,” O’Hara said. “Last week, we had three teenagers shot in one week, one of them was murdered. Two of the three were shot while they were inside of a stolen car. So it’s a very clear connection between, you know, auto theft and joyriding and then these robberies and carjackings.” 

The night before O’Hara spoke to WCCO, three teens were arrested for carjacking a woman.

“I think there’s 20 different reports in all for two of them. You know, everything from auto theft to joyriding in a stolen car and carjacking,” O’Hara said. “It’s a problem we’ve seen over the last couple of years.”

O’Hara credits multiple initaitves for the decline in numbers of those years. 

“We initiated a robbery response protocol where we saturate areas as soon as we can once we noticed these problems . . . and then even when we do have robbery sprees, there’s fewer robberies and carjackings reported,” O’Hara said. “We also now have juvenile investigators on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week . . . because there’s certain procedures and evidence collection issues that are different for juveniles. We want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can at the time of the incident — whether it’s three o’clock in the morning, or three o’clock on a Monday afternoon — to ensure that we’re doing everything possible to build these cases as quickly as quickly as we can.”

O’Hara says his investigators have also been working with closely with prosecutors to build stronger cases to prevent repeat offenders, but it can be difficult. 

“When we have these crimes, several robberies happening in a short period of time, particularly when victims are being approached and the incident is over in less than a minute, sometimes by eight or nine juveniles, sometimes while they’re wearing masks, it becomes very difficult for victims to give us accurate descriptions, to give us license plates, identifying information, that all complicates building these cases,” he said “So there’s been a whole lot of hard work that has gone into this. There’s a number of strategies, you know, and collaborations with other law enforcement that we’re putting together that the community will be seeing very publicly, very soon within the coming weeks, both to get violent offenders off the street and also to try and get as many illegal weapons that we can off the street before the summer hits.”

O’Hara says one of the biggest sources of help in police work continues to be tips from the community.

“If you do see people that look like they’re too young to be driving a car, circling an area driving recklessly, people driving around wearing masks, call that in, because that may be the clue for who we’re looking at a particular moment. And that has been very helpful to make arrests,” he said.