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MPR News has reported on the city of Minneapolis as it struggles to solve crimes. In 2024, the Minneapolis Police Department solved just 23 percent of nonfatal shootings.

But a remarkable shift is under way in St. Paul. The city is on track for a 70 percent drop in homicides by the end of 2025. And they’re solving more than 70 percent of crimes. 

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi credits a new non-fatal shooting initiative and recently spoke to the Minneapolis City Council about what’s working in St. Paul, in hopes the cities might be able to learn from each other.

Choi spoke to All Things Considered host Clay Masters about the city’s approach. Click on the audio player above to hear the conversation. The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity.

St. Paul was inspired by the ‘Denver model.’ What is the idea behind that? 

Well, it’s a relatively simple concept. We’re treating a non-fatal shooting incident like we would a homicide. So, an intensive effort right away after the incident, working on trying to develop the evidence. In a homicide, the victim is not present, because they’ve died. In a non-fatal shooting, they are but oftentimes what happens is that a victim or witness does not want to participate with the police investigation or the prosecution, and then, given the reality of just investigators being so busy, it provides a good reason to move on to the next case. 

But we’ve developed an understanding that we want to focus on solve rates so non-fatal shootings became a priority to try to improve that solve rate. Before we started the project in St. Paul, it was about 37 percent and it’s now 70 percent, and our initial goals were just to get it over 50 percent, so a lot of great work has happened there.

Can you kind of walk us through some of the changes that were implemented to arrive to where you are now?

It’s about actually collaborating, truly collaborating with one another. No one agency can make this change themselves, and so we had some really hard conversations at the beginning part of the pandemic, where we were blaming each other for some of the uptakes. 

Well, the courts, the prosecution, the police, county commissioners, city council, mayor, everybody was somehow getting some blame for something, and it was easy for us to deflect. The first thing was that we had to stop doing that and actually start listening to one another.

We created the Violence Reduction Leadership Group in March 2021, and we started talking about some of the things that we really needed to work on together. So it starts from that ecosphere, where we get beyond that and recognize that we have to show up with some sense of humility and grace and then start working better together. 

One of the things that we prioritized were solve rates — clearance rates — and this is one of them. We went out to Denver as a group, and some representatives from Hennepin County came and we learned about the Denver model, which was to have an intense effort around those investigations. 

Then I want to give credit where credit is due: with the mayor and the city council in St. Paul utilizing the money that they were given by the state to do this project. Ramsey County commissioners also allocated money to my office to work on an emergency victim witness fund and a whole bunch of things that cobbled together this project. 

It starts with the investigations. It would seem easy just to create a standalone unit within the St. Paul Police Department, but that’s really hard, especially in the context of not having enough police, but they were able to do it because they got the leadership from the mayor and the resources, and the chief implemented it and created a standalone unit with a really excellent commander who’s leading it, and she really, really wants to make a difference. Then, of course, we have to have a dedicated prosecutor, working with those investigators. That’s what we did, and working together, we are getting some really good outcomes and we’re trying to reduce shots fired down 30 percent, homicides at an all-time low. We have nine homicides. That’s going to be an all-time low — if we knock on wood because the year is not over.

In 2024, the Minneapolis Police Department solved 65 percent of homicides, but just 23 percent of non-fatal shootings. Why are so many fewer non-fatal shootings solved?

Well, I think there's a there's a complexity to that. And so first of all, there's a difference between St. Paul and Minneapolis in terms of having enough police officers. There's clearly an issue in Minneapolis that needs to be addressed, and if you don't have enough you're not going to have enough investigators, right? So I think that's the first thing that they've got to get right. 

Because I really believe that one of the most important things that we can do around public safety is actually apprehending people who are committing crime, especially the violent crime. And we got to solve those crimes. If we don't, we lose the trust in communities. So we start there to make sure that we have enough, and then we focus on making sure that we create a standalone unit, because other attempts across the country have failed when they try to put it into a homicide unit. They actually have to have a standalone unit to actually, I think, drive these outcomes.

So why are so many fewer non-fatal shootings solved then?

I don't know what the issue is in Minneapolis, but in St Paul, I know that we have some good collaboration happening. Historically, St. Paul has immense trust with its community, and we're doing lots of things to gain that trust, even more today. We’ve always had a homicide clearance rate of over 90 percent with a small dip in during the pandemic. When I go around talking about this around the country, nobody ever believes me, because it's so high. I think a big part of it is having that community trust. 

How can the community get involved and voice their concerns or help out?

The most important thing to reducing crime, addressing crime is making sure that we solve crimes. So of all the things that we care about, like sexual assaults, homicides, non-fatal shootings, maybe auto thefts, we need to have the conversation of what is our solve rate, right? And then if it's low, it's not that someone's doing something wrong. Let’s use it as an opportunity to make change.

Crime, Law and Justice

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All Things Considered

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Minnesota News

St. Paul News

Clay Masters

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Gretchen Brown

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A remarkable shift is under way in St. Paul. The city is on track for a 70 percent drop in homicides by the end of 2025. And they’re solving more than 70 percent of crimes.

A remarkable shift is underway in St. Paul. The city is on track for a 70 percent drop in homicides by the end of 2025. And they're solving more than 70 percent of crimes. 

St. Paul solved more crimes, had drastically fewer homicides in 2025

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