Bullets in the Living Room, Car bomb down the block. What gives?

When something dramatic and crime related happens in their neighborhood people expect to see the explanation on the news. When it doesn't, it feels creepy. I felt that way until I moved to North Minneapolis where lots of criminal and dangerous things happened and never made the news. When arson happened on my block, it wasn't covered because it was arson. It was covered because it was the fifteenth arson in Minneapolis that year.

Here's an email from a south side reader:

On Oct 31, there was a shooting on 33rd Ave S/Bossen Terrace. We found a bullet in our living room the next morning. The forensics guy said two people had been shot, and no one killed.

Since then, there has been a huge police presence in the neighborhood. Not just squad cars driving by, I've seen officers patrolling the back alleys on foot on three separate occasions. The three days ago I saw a canine officer and his partner.

Clearly something is going on.

Night before last, we had a first-floor apartment and a car in the parking lot torched. Sounded like a car bomb - heard a big boom, looked out the window and saw a huge fire. The attached photo was taken at 7:13 PM.

I've sent the photo [above] to both the Strib and 'CCO, and had no response from either. I've seen no news coverage of any of the events. Google News returns nothing.

Do you have any idea what is going on?

Short answer? No. Long answer: I put the address in google and found the precinct (3rd), the neighborhood (Wenonah) and found the 2007 community policing plan for Wenonah which included this tidbit:

An issue particular to Wenonah is the Bossen Area’s chronic problems associated with narcotics, assaults, weapons, domestic violence, gambling and loitering on the streets, litter, neglected properties, and the need for improved rental property management. One of the community’s significant assets is the Bossen Area Rental Coalition (BARC), a group of owners and property managers of rental properties in the Bossen Area who work regularly with 3rd Precinct to address crime and livability issues in their area. The precinct, city and county vigorously apply nuisance law processes to buildings which evidence a need for improve management techniques.

and this:

Also of concern has been some residents’ frustration with what they perceive as insufficient information about crime in the neighborhood, including crime alerts, maps and statistics. Improvement of this situation could be particularly useful to the neighborhood association, which posts crime alerts on its website as they become available, and to the tenants of rental properties who would especially benefit by increased education in personal safety and home security methods.

The 2008 plan also mentions the Bossen Terrace area as a problem area to be targeted, for basically the same reasons.

So you seem to have a chronic problem in that area which has been heating up (no pun intended) as organized crime (gang violence, gang war, gang beef etc.) does from time to time. It sounds like people in the community and the police are working on the problem but the issues you mention are the same ones in the report from about 2 years ago although they appear to be spreading or getting worse for some reason.

In the 4th Precinct, our Crime Prevention Specialists publish highlights of the week's crime reports. A car bomb or a double shooting would probably make it. The 3rd used to publish at least a Community Response Team Report (fetchingly called "Bullets") (CRT=The precinct unit that handles drug, prostitution and other chronic crime). I haven't seen one in a long time. I assume that there was a staffing/resource issue involved in not continuing it but it's too bad for the residents of that precinct.

I would strongly encourage the e-mailer and anyone else interested to call or email the 3rd precinct CPS to see if you can learn more about what is going on. Find out when the next 3PAC (3rd Precinct Advisory Committee meeting is) and attend. Perhaps the residents who show up to the 3PAC meeting know about some information resources in the neighborhood, like a neighborhood association blog or email list that collects and disseminates information about crimes in the neighborhood.