Minneapolis mayor, police chief listening tour highlights Somali community

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) -Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges and Minneapolis Police Chief Janee Harteau continued their listening tour Thursday night with a visit to the nation’s largest Somali community in the city’s Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.

For more than 20 years, the Somali community has been making a home for itself in the neighborhood, and Thursday night was a real benchmark in how far they’ve come, and how far they still need to go.

Hodges wore the traditional hijab to the meeting as she’s done before when speaking to the Somali community. There have been plenty of tough headlines for the Minneapolis Police Department lately, and an ACLU study that showed blacks are arrested more often for low-level crimes like marijuana possession and disorderly conduct.

However, the most dramatic moment came from a woman, who was at first overcome with emotion, had to take a moment, then told a story of how she was treated by police during an incident of domestic violence. The mayor and police chief both said they were sorry for what happened, and then said they’ll have to look into the specifics of what happened.

“When I found the courage to report it to the police, I was re-traumatized by their response. They acted as adversaries, like I was a person who had done something wrong,” the victim said.

Another interesting moment was about young Somali men who have been murdered — six young men killed in the last year and a half, but police say cooperation is a problem.

myfoxtwincities.com