Star Tribune
Top Hennepin County prosecutor presents strategy to curb youth auto theft
With Minneapolis already reporting 4,125 car thefts ahead of the typical summer uptick in crime, Hennepin County’s top prosecutor announced new efforts to address the crisis of youth stealing cars.
In back-to-back news conferences Wednesday at the Hennepin County Government Center, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty unveiled a collaboration with law enforcement and social workers. Meanwhile, activist and attorney Nekima Levy-Armstrong hosted a separate event after to say kids are crying out for help and more funding for community-based programming is needed to give youth something to do besides joyride in stolen cars.
Moriarty is hoping to intervene with at-risk youth and prevent crime before it occurs.
“We cannot ignore the early warning signs that a youth is headed toward behaviors that might escalate,” she said.
As part of her office launching a new focused collaboration with law enforcement, there is a hotline that Hennepin County families can call for support. Moriarty said a social worker will arrive at their home within an hour to help with mental, behavioral or emotional issues with the aim of de-escalating the situation.
Services are free and available every day between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. by calling 612-979-9511. Staff will offer ongoing stabilization after the first 72 hours by providing optional eight-week culturally specific services.
Flanked by parents, educators and activists, Levy-Armstrong said kids as young as 12 who don’t know how to drive are being chased by police — including in a pursuit that ended with a crash on the north side last week.
“This has been going on for far too long,” Levy-Armstrong said. “We do not condone what has been happening with our young folks … We need all hands on deck to address what we feel is a crisis that is happening in our community.”
Levy-Armstrong applauded Moriarty’s new initiative, but she doesn’t want a call for help to turn into child protective services (CPS) potentially being called and causing further problems for a family by taking a child away.
The collaboration includes regular intervention meetings between the attorney’s office and law enforcement agencies — five have been held so far — to identify youth in need of services. CPS and truancy teams are also there to learn about high-risk youth they believe are engaging in auto theft-related behaviors.
Moriarty said other changes to address youth auto theft involve the courts adding to their judicial review detention decisions on whether to hold youth charged with fleeing police. This charge wasn’t previously part of judicial review.
There’s also a faster turnaround for charging decisions — within one day and a first court appearance within three days if a child was admitted to the juvenile detention center but ultimately released. If the youth is not booked at the detention center, a charging decision will be made within five business days when historically, she said this took weeks or even months.
Moriarty said it’s difficult to charge youth for auto theft for a number of reasons. Sometimes officers don’t see who is actually driving, or the driver will say they didn’t know the vehicle was stolen. And if they rely on DNA evidence to determine that, it is time-consuming to get such evidence. She also said kids wear face masks, making it harder to identify the driver.
Even if youth are charged, she said, they are frequently found incompetent by psychologists to go through court proceedings.
Minneapolis clocked 2,100 car thefts at this time last year. The city has doubled that.
But at the same time, the attorney’s office has charged a fraction of those thefts, with 465 related cases. Nearly 70% of those are within the juvenile prosecution division.
Moriarty said despite this widespread problem, youth committing these crimes account for less than 3% of the population. And it’s often the same youth engaging in repeat behaviors.
Youth auto theft has been a nationwide problem ever since a TikTok video went viral in 2021 showing kids how to hotwire Kias and Hyundais in as little as 90 seconds.
Levy-Armstrong said Black and brown youth not only experienced the COVID-19 pandemic upending school and their social lives, but they were also at the epicenter of global unrest from George Floyd’s murder.
All this has impacted mental health, finances and emotional health “for too many families that were already struggling.”
“We need to get at the root of why these things are happening,” she said. “We want to see a change happen in the summer of 2023.”
As October surprises go, the most surprising thing about this one was that anyone saw it.
But someone, somehow, at some point, climbed on top of the unoccupied worksite that is the Minnesota governor’s residence with some paint. There, the timid tagger scribbled a political hot take that only birds, HVAC repair technicians and drone operators could see.
Minneapolis photojournalist Chad Davis spotted the partisan graffiti on the taxpayer-owned building on Wednesday and shared the images — possibly spoiling the vandal’s plans for an Election Day or post-election reveal of “Walz failed” scrawled across a rooftop that belongs to the people of Minnesota, who are now going to have to foot the bill to clean up the mess.
If you’re the tagger in question, remember: This entire rooftop could have been a tweet.
The Minnesota State Patrol has not yet provided an update on the investigation. The state patrol is responsible for the governor’s safety and the security of the governor’s residence — or residences, in this case. The Walz family moved out last year when the $6.3 million renovation project began and into a $330,000-per-year rental. The big brick governor’s mansion on St. Paul’s Summit Avenue has been a work site ever since, complete with scaffolding that might explain how someone could make their way onto the roof.
It wouldn’t be the first time scaffolding on a public building in Minnesota tempted someone into a petty misdemeanor. In 2013, when the Minnesota Legislature had just begun its massive renovation project, an unidentified climber scaled the Capitol dome and led security officers on a nerve-wracking low-speed chase, 223 feet above street level. Eventually, the hooded intruder clambered back down and fled into the night.
Star Tribune
One man shot dead, another wounded near Willmar soon after gunman opened fire from Lyndale Av. balcony
Bystanders observing the scene in Minneapolis recalled hearing the female police negotiator pleading with Matariyeh to surrender. When shots rang out over the phone, the negotiator dropped to her knees and cried. Colleagues could be seen comforting her.
O’Hara said the shots in Minneapolis were fired shortly after an altercation involving Matariyeh’s ex-girlfriend and her current boyfriend, who arrived to the apartment to retrieve some items. Matariyeh and the woman share a child, who was at day care at the time. Police went there to ensure the child’s safety shortly after the suspect fled. The ex-girlfriend and the boyfriend were also not harmed.
The chief said that when police initially responded, it was unclear whether the suspect was still inside the apartment. There is no indication of a domestic violence history between the pair.
At one point after Mayerchak was shot, an officer or dispatcher radioed that the suspect was the man from Minneapolis: “He did say he was willing to shoot cops. Proceed cautiously.”
A short time later, the suspect was leading police on a chase of speeds of more than 100 mph while on the phone with the Minneapolis negotiator, threatening “suicide by cop.”
At about 2:29 p.m., Matariyeh was arrested, and a gun was recovered in the ditch.
He said he would continue to support economic development projects, including one aimed at stabilizing the riverfront and preserving cultural sites that were significant to both the Dakota people and European settlers.
“We want to have good things,” Whiting said. “I’m pretty fiscally conservative for being called the liberal that I am. But, if it makes sense, we’re going to do it.”
Yttreness, who has lived in Shakopee since 1998, spent years with the Fire Department, serving first as a volunteer. He worked most recently as assistant fire chief, a role he left earlier this year.
Yttreness declined to speak in detail about his management of the department, saying, “I’m no longer with them, so that’s the past.”
He said he is running to “get involved in trying to manage the city’s expenses more” and “give some guidance and support to our city employees, public works, police.” He said he believes his knowledge of city operations could be helpful and he wants to “try to do zero tax increases, if possible.”
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