The MSTAT meeting was held at the Firefighters Museum on 22nd Avenue NE. (Mark Peterson)
On July 10, the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) held a Minneapolis Strategic Targeting and Analysis Team (MSTAT) meeting at the MN Firefighters Museum, 664 22nd ave. NE. The event featured the Police Chief and Assistant Chief, the Inspectors from the five police precincts and lots of Northeast residents interested in hearing about the current state of the department.
MSTAT meets weekly to analyze crime trends and statistics so they can manage the MPD’s strategies and resources. Every few weeks they hold public MSTAT meetings to update local communities.
Because the meeting took place in the 2nd Precinct, Inspector Nick Torborg acted as the master of ceremonies, introducing other speakers and giving his own precinct report. MPD Crime Analyst Molly Howe went over the five kinds of calls for service.
First, there’s “unknown wireless calls,” which essentially means that operators got a call but didn’t receive information from the call or encounter a known problem as a result of the call.
The second is an unwanted person, such as someone refusing to leave a location after being asked, resulting in police intervention.
The third is receive information: for example, when someone sees someone else speeding and they call to inform operators.
The fourth is disturbance, such as noise complaints.
The fifth is a welfare check: checking in on people who haven’t been heard from for a while.
Howe compared 2025 crime statistics in the city with the same period in 2024, with positive results: Homicides are down 18% and shooting victims (both homicides and non-lethal shootings) were down 25%. (Chief O’Hara interjected that that number is less than it was in 2019, which he called “a good sign.”)
Robbery of a person is down nearly 50%, and, overall, robbery is down 35% and car theft is down 32%. Howe listed “hot spots for gunshot wounds”: Lake Street and Pleasant Avenue, the Broadway East corridor, Phillips and Elliot Parks, and 36th Avenue and Penn Avenue N.
Inspector Torborg addressed the statistics for the 2nd Precinct, the 12.3-square-mile area with 81,000 residents in 19 neighborhoods. ”We’re way down on motor vehicle theft from last year,” he said. ”We had 575 at this point in time; this year we’ve had 383. That’s still a significant number, but it’s down substantially, and below that, we had 100 robberies last year while this year we only had 50. That’s 50 too many, but it’s still over a 50% decrease. So we’re very happy with that.”
He added that one of the few categories that had gone up is stolen firearms: 30 this year compared to 23 last year.
Two highlights of the meeting were the introduction to one of the largest classes of new Community Service officers, as well as the Officer of the Month award going to 2nd Precinct patrolman Noukue Cha.