How do violent and property crime rates in Minneapolis neighborhoods with large Somali populations compare to citywide averages over the past decade?
Executive summary
Available public data sources list city and state crime dashboards but do not publish neighborhood crime rates explicitly tied to demographic groups; Minneapolis crime maps and Minnesota crime statistics are available for location-based analysis [1] [2]. Reporting and research note that Cedar‑Riverside — a neighborhood with a large Somali population — has a history of higher crime and was described as “historically impoverished with significant crime rates” [3]; discrete, comparable decade‑long violent‑ and property‑crime rate tables for all Minneapolis neighborhoods with large Somali populations are not provided in the current sources.
1. What the official data sources can and cannot show
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension publishes statewide crime statistics and the City of Minneapolis offers a crime‑locations map that lets users query crime by location and date, enabling neighborhood-level counts if a researcher extracts and normalizes them to population; those official portals are the authoritative starting points for any neighborhood comparison [2] [1]. Available sources do not publish a ready‑made, decade‑long comparison of violent and property crime rates for “neighborhoods with large Somali populations” versus citywide averages; constructing that comparison requires combining location-level crime data with demographic population data [2] [1].
2. What reporters and analysts say about neighborhoods like Cedar‑Riverside
Independent and security‑focused reporting repeatedly identifies Cedar‑Riverside (“Little Mogadishu”) as a common settlement area for Somali immigrants and notes persistent socioeconomic challenges and higher crime in that neighborhood historically; a security brief said Cedar‑Riverside “has historically been impoverished with significant crime rates,” implying higher local crime counts relative to some other parts of the metro [3] [4]. Media coverage and some advocacy voices frame such reporting as context for law‑enforcement attention; critics warn against conflating neighborhood crime problems with the entire Somali community [5] [6].
3. Research, law‑enforcement and policy reports that are relevant
Academic and government‑commissioned studies in the provided set document specific criminal incidents and groups tied to some Somali‑origin individuals (for example, cases of attempted travel to ISIS and documented gang involvement in prior decades), but these sources treat those incidents as discrete phenomena and do not frame them as comprehensive neighborhood crime‑rate summaries [7] [3] [8]. The Office of Justice Programs materials cite 16 known cases of Somalis involved in violent‑extremist travel during 2013–2015, including Minneapolis arrests, which is a different class of criminal activity than routine violent and property crimes tracked in police statistics [9] [7].
4. Numbers and timeline caveats you must account for
When comparing neighborhood rates to city averages over a decade, researchers must: (a) use consistent crime definitions (violent vs. property) as in the state’s reporting system, (b) normalize counts to neighborhood population for per‑capita rates, and (c) account for population change and reporting practices that can shift apparent rates over time; the Minnesota DPS and Minneapolis maps provide the raw building blocks but not the pre‑packaged analysis [2] [1]. Available reporting that highlights year‑to‑year spikes — for example, local articles referencing a rise in violent incidents in Cedar‑Riverside between 2010 and 2018 — are selective snapshots and not city‑wide decade comparisons provided by official dashboards [10] [3].
5. Competing narratives and possible agendas
Some outlets and officials portray crime in Somali neighborhoods as evidence of concentrated gang or fraud problems, with high‑profile fraud and extremist cases cited in broader political debates [11] [7]. Other sources — including local leaders quoted in AP and Reuters coverage — push back against broad brush stigmatization and note the Somali community’s size (about 80,000 in Minnesota) and civic integration, arguing that criminal acts by individuals should not be used to demonize an entire community [12] [6]. These competing frames reflect different policy goals: enforcement‑oriented actors emphasize public‑safety justification for targeted operations, while community advocates warn of collective punishment and reputational harm [12] [6].
6. How to get the concrete comparison you asked for
To produce a defensible decade‑long comparison of violent and property crime rates for Minneapolis neighborhoods with large Somali populations versus citywide averages, you must: download location‑level incident data from the City of Minneapolis crime map, define the neighborhood boundaries (e.g., Cedar‑Riverside and other census tracts identified by Minnesota Compass or local demographic sources), obtain population denominators over the decade (e.g., American Community Survey or Minnesota Compass), and compute per‑capita violent‑ and property‑crime rates and compare them to citywide per‑capita rates. Official data portals cited here are the places to extract those inputs [1] [2] [13].
7. Bottom line for readers
Current authoritative sources provide the necessary raw data (state crime statistics and Minneapolis crime maps) and reporting highlights neighborhoods with concentrated Somali populations that have experienced elevated crime at times [2] [1] [3]. However, the precise decade‑long, per‑capita comparison you requested is not already assembled in the sources provided; producing it requires a targeted data analysis combining the city’s incident maps with demographic population data and careful attention to definitional and political context [2] [1].