On Monday March 21st, Tamburino Law GroupPartner Joe Tamburino led a panel discussion on crime to discuss issues downtown business owners have been facing and to ask the city of Minneapolis for additional help and resources.
Attorney Tamburino serves as the Chair of the Downtown Minneapolis Neighborhood Association, the local community nonprofit organization which hosted Monday’s crime forum. Members of the Minneapolis Police Department, YouthLink, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, and numerous local business owners and downtown residents were also in attendance.
The downtown crime forum was held in response to new 2016 crime rates, which revealed a spike in crime in the downtown Minneapolis area compared to 2015. Data collected by the Minneapolis Police Department were also shared at the meeting, which showed that assault and robbery were top crimes in the Downtown West neighborhood in 2016, and that there were a total of 560 violent crimes compared to 545 in the previous year.
In his presentation, Attorney Tamburino expressed the views of downtown business owners who asked local officials for additional support, including increased police presence and visibility, more programs for youth outreach, and additional lighting and cameras to deter crime. The panel asked the city of Minneapolis to create a plan to deal with the increase in crime by the first of next month.