Somebody got murdered: Increasing violence on the West Bank?

Anyone reading the papers recently will have stumbled across numerous reports of crime on the West Bank, or involving Somali youth. These incidents, in addition to being tragic wastes of life, have the potential for adding to the unreasonable Minnesotan backlash against the Somali community in Minnesota.

To start, I'm not pretending I know much more than anyone else about the neighborhood, crime, or the Somali community. Most of the information and analysis I use can be attributed to interviews, news reports, or other documents. It does seem though that violence is becoming more common. Although my analysis is admittedly imperfect and rough, all sorts of dialog needs to begin about why so much violence is occurring in the area and how further loss of life can avoided. Maybe this compilation of information can contribute to that.

The West Bank, also called Cedar Riverside, has been a gateway for immigrants in Minnesota for the last 150 years. It's a little island of land populated by radicals, Somali and other immigrants, and old hippies. For more history, check out this article I wrote in March.

Here's a run-up of some of the recent violent crimes involving the neighborhood that have gained attention:

In April, an 18-year-old high school student of Somali descent was shot to death while sitting in his car in the alley behind Freewheel Bike Shop. This week, the Star Tribune reported that a college student was stabbed to death outside the Triple Rock while riding his scooter. Whoever did it didn't even rob him (there are no witnesses and no has been arrested). Yesterday, a Somali man who was a youth mentor at the Brian Coyle Center on the West Bank was shot to death as he visited some Somali-American youth who were in a basketball tournament at a Brooklyn Center hotel, according to the Star Tribune. The report also mentions a fight between these youth and some unnamed group and the stabbing of three Somali youth earlier that morning, although it doesn't mention where these attacks occurred or whether they were residents of the West Bank. In the Star Tribune report, police say the mentor was shot while standing with a group of youth, but that none of these kids he mentored would admit they saw anything or anyone. Just today, the Minnesota Independent --formerly the Minnesota Monitor--- reports that a gay man was bashed on 6th street and Cedar Avenue after he answered yes to a question about whether he was gay. This, on Pride Weekend?

Obviously, some crazy stuff is happening in the neighborhood, and within the communities that live there, that can't be ignored.

When I was working on a story about the West Bank earlier this year, residents kept on mentioning the shift of the West Bank from a relatively safe neighborhood where everyone watched out for one another, to one where people randomly got robbed and attacked, even old timers. Although they all showed the utmost respect for the immigrant community that's moved into Riverside Plaza in the last 10 years, they blamed concentrated poverty, young people stuck between traditional and American culture, and official neglect for why crime has increased.

Reasons for increased violence were explored by the community after the April killing of Somali-American high school student, Abdullahi Awil Abdi, when police and community met in a community forum. Residents said specifically that police were not doing enough to curb violence among Somali youth, who are usually designated as the boogie-men according to the forum, Minneapolis police planning sessions, and news reports.

Just so you know it's not just picking on immigrant kids, I've observed some crazy shit around the neighborhood: youth running around in gangs beating each other with 2x4s, harassment and threatening behavior, or routine fights. A few weeks back I even had some dumb kid threaten to break my jaw.

Here's Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, talking to the Star Tribune in April:

"We're now actually in conversations with the police on how to address this ever-increasing gang activity," Jamal said. "We don't want to see any of our kids killed and we don't want to bury anyone else, so we need to get to the roots of this crisis.

At the April forum, youth countered that they were intimidated and threatened by police. The MPD argued that Cedar Riverside has pretty low crime rates for the 1st Precinct, which also covers downtown-- although CR regularly has pretty high stats for a residential neighborhood of its size, according to police statistics.

The Star Tribune had an interesting article today about the difficulty of getting people in the Somali community to talk to police because of immigrant status, tribal loyalties, and fear of corrupt police like in Somalia.

So residents blame kids gone wild, and a lack of concern by police-- which I think the cops demonstrated in that above statement-- meanwhile neighborhood kids, the large majority of whom are completely innocent, feel harassed.

So what is the MPD doing?

Well, they wrote an optimistic community policing plan for 2008.

The MPD's neighborhood policing plan for Cedar Riverside calls for "increased directed patrols," which you would think would mean there would be some sort of foot patrol on the West Bank; that would be news to most people who live there. It appears it's just words on paper.

Does the 1st precinct puts a lower priority on the Cedar Riverside neighborhood? Maybe they're overwhelmed with their duties in downtown, but the West Bank seems like it would be a perfect place for more community policing. The police will be there anyway, gunning down Cedar Avenue with sirens blaring, so why not put them on actual street patrols, or in community liaisons (and not only when someone dies) and get them to know the neighborhood. The population is relatively small, officially at less than 8,000 people at the 2000 census. Would it possible for them to get to know the small handful of troublemakers who seem to be terrorizing the elders? Maybe then, innocent kids wouldn't be treated by police as targets, and the ones who were actually causing trouble couldn't rely on anonymity or on having the run of the place.

Also, the neighborhood feels neglected. The city needs to make a better effort at reaching out to elders in the immigrant communities. It's the job of city government to reach out to communities. The police routinely complain that they're stonewalled by residents of Riverside Plaza or the kids on that basketball team, but the fact is many elders don't speak English. You could argue about the rightness or wrongness of that, but it's a fact. If they're not able to communicate when they feel abused or threatened, or to keep their kids in line, than they're cut off from any help they could receive, and silenced when something horrendous occurs like a murder.

In the end, it's about relationships: between Somalis and other locals, between the city and Somali community. That brings up an interesting quote a longtime neighborhood resident gave me about the city's responsibility to the community (although, I'll leave his name out because I'd hesitate to make it seem like he'd vouch for any of my admittedly rough analysis):

"There needs to be a shift in the larger political arena - a shift in attitudes," he said. "The idea that community counts has got to become more accepted. It's been losing ground for a long time."

I'm not an expert on the neighborhood, but I've spent a lot of time around there. My impression, and that of some longtime locals to whom I've spoken, is that violence is getting to be more common.

The Star and Tribune article on the college student who was killed, Joe Sodd, received hundreds of comments, some of which are now erased; some said that Riverside Plaza and the West Bank should just be burned down, others used ethnic stereotypes about Somali residents. That's dangerous Katherine Kersten-like territory. But in an especially powerful message for a family in mourning, Sodd's family bravely called for compassion and restraint from the public. No one knows who really committed his murder, but the increased crime in the neighborhood, and the violent nature of it, could add to the Minnesotan backlash against the Somali community that we've seen in high-profile incidents over the last couple years.

It also seems that by ignoring the problems in the community, Minneapolis is running the risk of criminalizing all these kids. And once they're acclimated into the culture of the criminal justice system, it will be difficult to get them out, and the cycle of violence could continue indefinitely.

(Written on 6/26/08 and published with revisions on 6/28/08)