Phillip Murphy, Minneapolis citizen journalist who documented the North Side, dies at 61

When tragedy struck on Minneapolis' North Side, Phillip Murphy was among the first to know.

A portable police scanner sent him racing to local crime scenes, via bicycle or behind the wheel of his distinctive orange Honda Element, often arriving before officers finished stringing up the yellow caution tape, a camera always in tow.

For years, Murphy snapped photos of critical incidents, documenting law enforcement actions and the raw outpouring of grief in the community where he and his family ran a flower shop for more than two decades. He founded the popular crime reporting Facebook page True North Minneapolis, where with a distinctive and acerbic tone he led the hub of community discourse up until his death this week at age 61.

Murphy was found dead Monday in his St. Louis Park home. He suffered from a number of health complications, but an official cause has not been determined.

Murphy's blunt dispatches informed — and, sometimes inflamed — a legion of social media followers cultivated through relentless street reporting, intended to raise awareness and force change in marginalized neighborhoods.

"I guess I consider this to be advocacy work for excess of information, since nobody else is giving it to us, we have to do it for ourselves," he told the Star Tribune in 2016. "Without the information, no one will know and the problems will just get worse."

Those who knew Murphy best described him as a fierce and unfiltered proponent of north Minneapolis, whose willingness to post intel that others shied away from inspired loyalty.

"[Phil] called it just like it was," said peace activist KG Wilson, who for years responded to crime scenes alongside Murphy. "Sometimes, people — especially criminals and their family members — didn't like it. It didn't matter to us. We just wanted the community to know where crime was going on and to be safe and cautious if you live in that area."

Businessman, neighbor, witness

Murphy grew up in Edina, where he struggled in traditional classrooms. But at home, his sister recalled, he was a "mechanical genius" by grade school who could build go-karts from old snowblower and lawn mower parts with working transmissions and gears. He also exhibited an early interest in photography.

"School for him was like trying to stuff a square peg in a round hole — just really difficult," said his younger sister, Shannon Murphy. "But he was so talented."

Murphy attended the University of Minnesota for one semester before enlisting in the U.S. Army, later serving in Germany. The post allowed him to ski throughout Europe.

After returning to Minnesota, Murphy started a landscaping and seasonal snowplow business before joining his parents at the family florist shop on the corner of Dowling and Humboldt avenues N.

The Crystal Lake Floral Design and Orchids nursery fulfilled a lifelong dream for his mother, Sandra. But as crime trends shifted in the neighborhood, a series of robberies shook their sense of safety. One year, a gunman pistol-whipped and beat Murphy's father on Easter Sunday while he was dressed as a rabbit to hand out candy to neighborhood children.

"I think that just broke Phil's heart," his sister said. The attack inspired Murphy to get a permit to carry and arm himself with a shotgun at the store. A police scanner, spewing out raw emergency dispatches, remained a constant presence at his side.

When he heard chatter about active incidents in an area, Murphy rushed out the door — sometimes with one of his beloved standard poodles. He was often the first to arrive and, as a result, witnessed both the heroic actions of first responders and the gruesome aftermath of homicide scenes.

In 2016, Murphy saw medics save the life of a 10-year-old boy who lost a leg while playing on a slow-moving train. He later described responders picking up the child's severed limb while police officers applied tourniquets to stop the bleeding.

He rarely kept such observations to himself.

Information gathered on the street was quickly disseminated on Facebook pages like True North and viewed by hundreds of concerned citizens, including emergency room nurses and cops. Since its inception 10 years ago, the page has garnered nearly 24,000 members.

Murphy developed a reputation as a truth teller of inconvenient facts, never mincing words about those seeking to perpetuate violence. But others accused him of being a voyeuristic ambulance chaser.

One summer, his car was even keyed.

"There's people who absolutely loathe me with every fiber of their being, because they think I'm worse than the people shooting up our neighborhoods," Murphy told the Star Tribune in 2016. "Most of our community, they're apathetic, they just hope that this problem will go away. They don't want to speak up."

That never deterred his mission.

Murphy regularly peppered police with questions at news conferences alongside mainstream media outlets, then hung around scenes to watch detectives work. He held law enforcement to a high standard and expected them to act with professionalism on behalf of victims' families. Officers caught smiling or laughing at a crime scene, however briefly, were likely to be photographed and shamed on social media.

"Phil had a unique ability to irritate basically anyone he came into contact with," said retired Assistant Chief Mike Kjos, who served two stints as inspector of the Fourth Precinct. "But once you got to know him, you realized that this guy had an absolute deep love for north Minneapolis. It was to the bone."

Haphazard crime scene remediation became a crusade over the years. If Murphy discovered that blood or debris remained on-site from a car crash or recent killing, Kjos was sure to get a call demanding that someone from the city return to clean it up. Murphy believed leaving it behind was unconscionable — and would never be allowed to happen in other parts of the city.

"He had a good heart," said Kjos, recalling how Murphy dropped off a large framed picture of Sgt. John LaLuzerne, taken at an overnight crime scene downtown, in 2018 after the department lost the veteran cop to suicide.

Three years later, following the unsolved shooting death of Wilson's granddaughter, 6-year-old Aniya Allen, Murphy placed 100 roses on the child's grave.

A motorcycle crash about 20 years ago left Murphy with a traumatic brain injury, chronic pain, epilepsy and short-term memory loss. He later learned that he scored on the Autism spectrum — a diagnosis that helped explain certain behaviors.

"He wasn't a people agitator; he just wasn't seeing any of the social cues," his sister said.

Outside of street advocacy work, Murphy loved walking his puppy, Furbee Furbs, around the Chain of Lakes and capturing quiet moments in the urban environment with his camera.

The last photo he posted on Facebook depicted downtown Minneapolis blanketed in fog.

"He had a way of capturing the story, whether it's the horror or the beauty," said Shannon Murphy, noting that they hope to preserve his photography in some sort of gallery. "He had an absolute gift for that."

In addition to his sister, he is survived by three nieces: Gabrielle, Jadeyn and Annabelle Robinson. A celebration of life has yet be scheduled.