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A couple of years ago, Minneapolis North Side resident Kristel Porter and her children routinely participated in a drill: Whenever the gunfire they regularly heard sounded a little too close to home, they'd all hit the floor. The family didn't want to take a dangerous chance. Bullets don't respect windows or walls.

Thankfully, Porter says, her family hasn't had to perform that heartbreaking safety exercise in recent months. As part of her job as executive director of the West Broadway Business and Area Coalition, Porter knows the neighborhood well. She is constantly on the move, walking or driving around her community conducting daily check-ins with 30-plus member businesses along "The Avenue."

Porter told me recently that many of her neighbors and business operators in the area also see and feel the difference that has come with less frequent gunplay and reduced criminal activity.

"We have good communication with police in the Fourth Precinct, meeting regularly," she said. "But it's not just law enforcement … . We've had an all-hands-on-deck effort here. Neighborhood ambassadors and community-based violence prevention groups have been active during peak times."

One example Porter shared: When a student reported to them that a fight was brewing at a neighborhood high school, the group dispatched a couple of ambassadors to the school to walk home with the students involved. That intervention stopped a conflict before it could explode.

It all boils down to a collaborative effort. The work of frustrated neighbors, working with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, former U.S. Attorney Andy Luger and their teams has led to the suppression of a few key hot spots that have been violence hotbeds.

Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O'Hara laud the development and are optimistic when highlighting the evolving safety trend with statistics.

"For years, even decades, I've heard people say that the North Side isn't safe," said Frey. "That longtime perception is no longer true."

Overall, reported gun violence in Minneapolis has fallen in the past few years. Gun violence was down by 9% last year and by nearly half since 2021. That decrease has been driven largely by a 57% drop in shootings across north Minneapolis neighborhoods, according to a Minnesota Star Tribune analysis.

As of press time Friday, of the eight homicides logged in Minneapolis this year, just three occurred in the city's Fourth Precinct. (Those figures include justified, or self-defense, killings.)

At the same time on the city's South Side, overall gun violence is down, and one stubborn crime indicator has also dropped dramatically. As city officials recently reported, there were between 200 and 300 people living in encampments during 2024. Now, the largest encampment reportedly consists of four people. Calls to 311 and 911 near the tent camps have dropped by 80%. A bit over 2,500 people exited homelessness and moved to permanent housing in 2024, helped by city and Hennepin County efforts to create additional deeply affordable housing.

That change occurred in part due to Chief O'Hara's January order restricting encampments and connecting the unhoused with services. Last week, city officials reported that six encampments had been cleared in March alone and that 17 more had been prevented from forming. That has greatly improved public safety in the areas where the camps tended to pop up.

"In 2024, encampment-related violence devastated lives — 15 people were fatally shot, and 387 overdoses occurred within one block of encampments, accounting for 13% of the city's total overdoses," said O'Hara.

"We implemented this special order to stop this crisis before it starts. The results are clear: fewer encampments, fewer shootings, and safer neighborhoods," he added.

Though the numbers of shots fired, shooting deaths and injuries have been significantly reduced, much public safety and neighborhood security work remains ahead. One recent incident involved over 70 shots fired — some by people reportedly affiliated with a city-funded violence interrupter group.

Still, the latest crime statistics are worth lauding; they demonstrate what can happen with coordinated, targeted efforts. Crime numbers are trending in the right direction; hopefully those trends will continue, and fewer children are conditioned to hit the floors of their homes when a car backfires — or gunfire is heard in the distance.