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  • 2 days ago
The Twin Cities has seen an increase in gun violence tied to Somali youth gang members. The arresting and prosecution of those gang members is complicated, because they don't act like other traditional gangs, say both Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher and Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges.
Transcript
00:00we can't keep allowing a lot of these people to get in and out of jail um and i'm not
00:06trying to
00:06take a shot but it's the truth um the hennepin county attorney uh has this new term that she's
00:13been using emerging adults which i don't know where where heck that came from but emerging adults
00:19and that's affecting charging decisions right so these people they're getting we're making good
00:24cases they're going to jail they're getting arrested for gun crimes or for what kind of
00:29stuff are they getting arrested for uh weapons possession yeah gun possession um you know but
00:36the deal another piece of this and i will end my gripes here i promise uh there's this notion of
00:43some people don't like petty misdemeanor traffic stops um you know like for an outtail light or
00:48whatnot so those people that are getting stopped in those instances with an outtail light or out
00:55license plate light if we're finding that they're illegally possessing weapons or whatnot
00:59we're getting those charges declined because there's a position that if you're stopping people
01:05for those reasons and they will call it non-public safety stops i don't know where you find that in
01:11statue but nonetheless they will call it non-public safety stops and they're using that to dismiss a
01:16lot of these cases and it's like i get you know i get some of this but it's like we
01:21really have to
01:23when we make good cases against these folks then there needs to be as eddie murphy said in the movie
01:29life uh some consequences and repercussions i know from talking to dozens of these gang members there
01:35are scared to death of the fbi charging them with rico the regional approach is the only ways to address
01:42mobile gangs like this small agencies small suburbs cannot do it on their own it's costly but there's
01:49already a lot of money in play to address drugs and other problems we need to retest some of that
01:55money

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