Officials, neighbors say they're ready to keep this year's Minnesota State Fair a safe one
State officials and police are offering renewed assurances that this year’s Minnesota State Fair will be safe and uneventful.
There's a new vehicle barrier at the Como Avenue entrance, plenty of law enforcement officers and even a new neighborhood watch group. They’ll be outside the front gate waiting for State Fair-goers to start walking in on Thursday for the annual 12-day extravaganza in Falcon Heights.
“The good news is it's a safe fair. It’s going to be a great fair,” Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner and former St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington said at the fairgrounds on Tuesday afternoon.
He was standing at the fair's transit entrance, where hundreds of thousands of fairgoers will walk in — passing through metal detectors for the second year.
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Harrington was joined by Gov. Tim Walz and the fair’s new police chief, Ron Knafla, to outline some of the steps they're taking to ensure safety at the fair after a reported 20 percent spike in crime last year in the state — and amid persistent reports about a shortage of public safety personnel, particularly in the Twin Cities.
Knafla said a full complement of 200 officers will be working on the 300-acre fairgrounds. They'll also be patrolling the the fair's perimeter — where most of the recent troubles have happened, including a shooting that wounded three people outside the main gate as the fair shut down for the year in 2019.
“We have officers from 55 to 60 different agencies working for us,” Knafla said. “We've got a great partnership with a lot of law enforcement agencies that has been historic, for years. We've enhanced some of those relationships, we've built some new ones, we're confident we have a good plan to keep this a safe and great state fair.”
He noted they've already made plain an important message — that guns don't belong at the fair. Fair officials turned back a legal challenge to their firearms ban in federal court earlier this summer, and Knafla said they recovered a gun in a planter outside the fair last year, apparently abandoned by someone as they approached the fair's metal detectors.
Knafla also said they've been recalibrating their preparations, including a crash-resistant vehicle barrier at one of the main service entrances on Underwood Street. Attacks like the shooting rampage at a Fourth of July parade near Chicago last month are on the minds of officials as they get ready for this year's fair.
“Unfortunately, that's the sign of the times, right?” Knafla said. “You’ve seen it across the country. And that's one of the things we prepare and plan for.”
Knafla said he can't offer too many details, for security reasons.
But it isn’t just the high-profile incidents that will be getting new scrutiny this year. Residents near the fair's main gate say that even though attendance was down significantly last year, the pandemic brought a surge of private vehicles to the area — and with it a spike in parking complaints, speeding incidents and disturbances as people came and went from the 2021 fair.
“There’s been more assaults, there's been more gunfire and more nuisance behaviors, too. And so we decided we needed to become organized,” said Kate McCreight, who lives east of the fairgrounds.
McCreight said her neighbors are coordinating with the local police commander. They're going to be out on the street watching more and later at night, and even trying to make the experience a little easier for the thousands of people who walk, drive — and sometimes stagger — by.
“The idea is to lead them on to their next destination. Which has been our mantra for this fair,” McCreight said.
They'll be out in distinctive green T-shirts that say “I'm a neighbor,” to serve as ambassadors, guides and eyes on the street, and maybe remind people that the fair doesn't just have pronto pups and grandstand shows, but people living a stone's throw away.
Jennifer Victor-Larsen lives just two blocks from the fair's front door, and says her family does love it there — the music and the fireworks and the activity of the fair. But she hopes fairgoers can step up their manners a little from recent years.
“People are working a lot more from home now, babies are trying to sleep and take their naps and go to bed at night — and kids have started school in a lot of cases,” she said. “So just remember there are people here and treat it like you would your own neighborhood. Take a breath before you go in.”