Mpls crime rate higher than last year but headed down

Violent crimes in Minneapolis such as rape, homicide, robbery and aggravated assault are up by 26 percent over this time last year. However, the rate has been coming down since a spike in January, when they were up by 60 percent.

Minneapolis police officials made the announcement Monday following the release of the FBI's Uniform Crime Report for 2005.

Interim Police Chief Tim Dolan says the department's targeting of juvenile crime is part of the reason for the downward trend. However, he says, the crackdown is filling the juvenile detention centers to capacity. And he says they will become even more crowded when 40 new police officers start working by the end of this year.

"Those officers are going to be younger officers, they're going to be eager and aggressive," says Dolan, "and if our jails are full, juvenile and adult, what are we going to do systemwide? We're having those conversations right now with the county, we're having them with our criminal justice partners, to make sure we're not running into a wall with the jail overcrowding."

The FBI data show that violent crime is also up in cities around the nation such as Boston, Seattle, Milwaukee and Indianapolis.