Are property crime rates in minneapolis somali-majority neighborhoods higher or lower than adjacent neighborhoods?

Checked on January 3, 2026
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Executive summary

Available reporting and municipal data portals indicate that some Minneapolis neighborhoods with large Somali populations—most notably Cedar-Riverside—have historically registered higher crime levels, including property crimes, than many adjacent neighborhoods, but city data sources are needed to quantify and confirm current, block‑level differences; the evidence base in the provided reporting is descriptive and incomplete for a definitive, up‑to‑the‑month statistical comparison [1] [2] [3].

1. What the sources actually show about Somali‑majority or Somali‑concentrated neighborhoods

Several background reports and community studies identify Cedar‑Riverside and Riverside Plaza as central settlement hubs for Somali immigrants in Minneapolis and describe those places as historically impoverished and having significant crime rates, with law enforcement and community observers noting elevated rates of certain crimes there [1] [2] [4]. At the same time, academic reporting included in the provided collection stresses that the vast majority of Somali‑Americans are law‑abiding and that criminal involvement represents a small fraction of the community, underlining nuance that population concentration is not the same as community criminality [2].

2. What municipal data tools exist — and what they do and do not tell us

The City of Minneapolis publishes a crime dashboard and crime location maps that allow exploration by precinct, ward and neighborhood and can be used to compare property‑crime rates across adjacent neighborhoods, which is the right place to get precise, current comparisons [3] [5] [6]. The Minnesota Department of Public Safety explains how state crime statistics are compiled, offering a standardized backbone for comparisons, but the provided snippets do not include neighborhood‑level tables or a direct numeric comparison between Somali‑majority and adjacent neighborhoods [7].

3. What secondary summaries and reporting say about patterns and drivers

Third‑party summaries and local commentary note that some of Minneapolis’s most diverse neighborhoods—where Somali, Latino and Native American residents cluster—tend to have property‑crime rates above metro averages, and that downtown and denser urban corridors also show different patterns than outlying areas, suggesting socioeconomics, density and vacancy are likely contributors to higher property crime rather than ethnicity per se [8] [9]. State technical notes and statewide reporting additionally emphasize that crime disproportionately affects communities of color in Minnesota, a finding that frames disparities but does not assign causation to any single factor [10].

4. Limits of the available reporting and what would be required for a definitive answer

The materials provided point to areas with large Somali populations having elevated reported crime historically (Cedar‑Riverside is cited repeatedly), but they do not supply a direct, current neighborhood‑by‑neighborhood statistical comparison between Somali‑majority neighborhoods and their immediate adjacent neighborhoods; producing that definitive answer requires extracting neighborhood‑level property‑crime rates from the City of Minneapolis crime dashboard or the BCA datasets and comparing rates per capita and by offense type while controlling for confounders like poverty, housing density and reporting practices [3] [7] [11]. Alternative viewpoints in the sources caution against conflating demographic concentration with criminality and emphasize community resilience and the large majority of law‑abiding Somali residents [2].

Bottom line

Reporting and municipal data tools indicate that some Somali‑concentrated neighborhoods—especially Cedar‑Riverside—have historically experienced higher property‑crime incidence than many other parts of the city, but the supplied documents do not provide a current, quantified neighborhood‑by‑neighborhood comparison versus immediately adjacent neighborhoods; to settle the question definitively one must query the City of Minneapolis crime dashboard or BCA neighborhood datasets and adjust for population and socioeconomic differences [1] [2] [3] [7].

Want to dive deeper?
What are current property‑crime rates per 1,000 residents for Cedar‑Riverside versus neighboring Minneapolis neighborhoods according to the city crime dashboard?
How do poverty, housing vacancy, and policing levels correlate with property‑crime rates across Minneapolis neighborhoods?
What community programs and local policing strategies have been used in Cedar‑Riverside to reduce property crime, and with what results?