Native leaders seek Minneapolis police help with drug-related crime, but say long-term plan is missing

He was riding a bike around Little Earth when he fell. A needle went through his hand. He was running a fever, and the doctors offered his mother two options: anti-HIV medication which could cause temporary side effects, or a round of anti-virals in three months if he developed complications from the puncture. She didn’t know what to do. 

Jones, 64, has lived in Little Earth since she was 11. To her, this incident epitomizes the spillover effect of rampant drug use in the neighborhood around Franklin and Cedar avenues — and pushed her to support community efforts to work more closely with Minneapolis police. 

“That’s what I’m fighting for, is that 5-year-old being able to fall off his bicycle, and not [expletive] have a needle go through his hand,” Jones said.

In early July, local officials and Native leaders announced a coordinated effort to address what Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey referred to as “open-air drug markets” in the Native American cultural corridor, the area spanning 11th Avenue S. to Cedar Avenue, and Franklin Avenue to 26th Street E. 

Frey said the effort would combine care and compassion with an “all-hands-on-deck approach” to “cite and arrest individuals engaging in illegal activity.” He added that along with enforcement, social service providers would also be present to provide treatment and culturally sensitive care. 

Minneapolis police respond to a call at Little Earth on August 7, 2026. Credit: Aaron Nesheim | Sahan Journal

The mayor outlined a collaboration between the Sheriff’s Office, city, and parks, Metro Transit and Minneapolis police that would increase patrol officers and install more security cameras in the area. The city’s Homeless Response Team and Mobile Medical Unit would offer housing and treatment services.

It wasn’t the first time Native organizations have reached out to the city and Minneapolis police for an intervention to resolve the area’s drug-related crime.

In July 2025, the Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors (MUID) adopted a resolution establishing exclusionary zones around member organizations, including schools and clinics, that were heavily impacted by open-air drug activity. 

The exclusionary zones prohibited homeless encampments within 50 yards of these organizations and barred volunteers from supplying food, water and Narcan in those zones. They also asked Minneapolis police for increased patrols around member organization campuses, and weekly reporting on enforcement activity. 

While Third Precinct Inspector Jose Gomez already regularly shared data of arrests and 911 calls from the neighborhood with MUID leaders, this initiative called for an escalation in police presence and enforcement. 

But a year later, Native leaders say that clarity about this new initiative’s goals, genuine collaboration with MUID, direct investment and a long-term vision are still missing. 

The mayor’s office did not respond to request for comment on the community’s concerns as well as to questions about the initiative’s timeline, success metrics, and resource allocation.

A ‘painfully hard’ approach

While harm reduction and compassion has long been a route the Native community and social service providers have taken when it comes to helping those who are homeless and in active addiction, many community members say that this effort marks a shift in that approach. 

Vincent Dionne, outreach manager for the American Indian Community Development Corp. (AICDC), did not want to be at the July press conference. It was “painfully hard,” he said, to invite arrests of his friends, relatives, and people he has known for decades. But for him, too, it felt like the time to “try something new.” 

Others shared his concern and admitted that continued harm reduction efforts, which focus on meeting people where they are and offering services like sterile syringes, Narcan and drug contaminant testing, ignore the spillover effects of crime and homelessness on the community. 

“I’ve been involved in some version of this conversation since the 1980s and I’ll just say, I’m exhausted,” said Robert Lilligren, president and CEO of the Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI) and outgoing co-chair of the Metro Urban Indian Directors (MUID). “I can’t have the same conversation every single year.”

Late last year, many community members expressed frustration over the extensive fencing in the neighborhood that was meant to discourage homeless people from gathering or setting up tents on public right-of-way areas or under the bridges. 

Both the exclusionary zones and the fencing, Lilligren said, are “temporary fixes” for an issue that feels cyclical to many in the community. 

From 2020 to 2024, American Indians made up over 11% of opioid-related deaths in Hennepin County, according to the most recent data available. While the county reported a 31% decrease in overdose-related deaths across races in 2024, the American Indian population only saw a 7% decrease. 

Annual opioid-related hospital visits, too, have been historically high for the American Indian community, making up 8% of all such visits in the seven-county metro area in 2024.

Joseph Olson, the city’s lead homeless response coordinator, said that his team has had limited success engaging people in the Native American corridor. 

“It’s a very small percentage of people that say yes [to services],” he said, adding that that difficulty is common across neighborhoods and non-Native people they serve. 

But, “That population is difficult,” he said of the people who are homeless and/or in active addiction in the Native American corridor. He said people in the area prefer to work with the Native organizations that they know of and already have a relationship with. 

Interrupting a multigenerational cycle 

Dionne, 45, was born and brought up in Little Earth. He considers himself to be among the first wave of the urban Native population caught in the throes of opioid addiction. What started with prescription pain pills for an injured knee in his late 20s led to reliance and addiction before Dionne said he started selling drugs himself. 

He was eventually arrested in North Dakota in 2013 for selling drugs and served six years in federal prison. Even though he did not have access to recovery services, the arrest started his 13-year recovery journey. “I got a second chance at life,” he said.

His own experience — and hearing from others whose long-term recovery began with an arrest — led him to change his thinking about the role police intervention might play.

“There’s guys in [federal prison] right now that are doing life — that I believe [if] released today, they can come out here and actually change what’s going on,” Dionne said. “And I believe that’s what my mission is in life.”

While in prison, Dionne read about the opioid crisis worsening in his community; almost every Native family has a relative who is dealing with active addiction. “I was like, man, if I can get out there, I can help. And I started thinking of plans then.”

Since then, Dionne has worn many hats: he is one of the founders and a member of the Many Shields Society, a member of Little Earth Protectors, and a co-chair of the MUID public safety committee. 

As an outreach manager, Dionne used to have a harm reduction approach, but he said that the scales have tipped too far. He has seen Native young people solicited for sex, elders harassed and people dying of overdoses or shot during spillover violence during drug sales. 

The Little Earth Neighborhood Early Learning Center, pictured August 7, 2026, has been a particular area of concern for residents worried about drug use in the area. Credit: Aaron Nesheim | Sahan Journal

“It’s gotten to the point where this is the most unsafe our community has ever been in my lifetime,” he said. 

Like many families in the area, Dionne’s is impacted by drug addiction, too. He recently lost his best friend who battled addiction and one of his daughters is also struggling; she’s about the same age he was when his own addiction began. 

Concerns about overpolicing

The Native community in south Minneapolis has a rich history of protector movements — from the Indigenous Protector Movement, Little Earth Protectors, American Indian Movement patrols, and Native American Community Clinic patrols, to the Women’s Warrior Society and Many Shields Society — to offer security of a population that has had a historically fraught relationship with law enforcement. 

After the murder of George Floyd, mounting mistrust of the police — and an exodus from the Minneapolis police force that slowed citywide response times — led many to lean on protector groups even more for community safety.

But the crime, violence, and drug use and dealing in the area have started to feel beyond what community protectors can address, said Dionne and Jolene Jones, who is also a member of Little Earth protectors. 

In the last year, the MPD has reported over 2,100 narcotics-related calls from Ward 6, which includes the Cedar-Riverside, Ventura Village and Phillips West neighborhoods. Police received 1,449 narcotics-related calls in neighboring Ward 9, home to Midtown and East Phillips and Powderhorn Park, among other neighborhoods.  

“I went from ‘forget [the police], we don’t need them in our community, we can handle this’ … to ‘Damn, where are the police at?’ You know, we need a break out here,” Dionne said. 

And yet, for Jones, who has been threatened by drug dealers with guns during patrols, the call for police support feels like a “double-edged sword.” 

“It felt very hard because it’s like we need this immediate relief,” she said, but an increased city presence can quickly tip into overpolicing and mistreatment. “When we want to engage with the police, if they abuse somebody, they’d be like, “‘Hey, you guys said you wanted more enforcement.’”

AICDC head Travis Earth-Werner, who also spoke at the press conference, agreed that the mayor’s initiative needs to include increased police accountability to rebuild trust with the community. 

MPD did not respond to a request for more information about the additional enforcement steps they have taken in the Franklin and Cedar corridor.

Native groups call for resources, solutions 

On Aug. 4, at a MUID leaders’ meeting, Earth-Werner and co-chair Nicole Matthews discussed the letter they had sent to the mayor a week prior asking for collaboration with MUID rather than a select few organizations. They also sought clarity about the initiative and how success would be measured. 

The letter also called out the gap in a response to homelessness which is often tied with violence and drug use, proposing discussions about a temporary shelter for those awaiting housing and treatment. It also highlighted the need to address a key issue that has long impacted Native women, girls and two-spirit people: sex trafficking. 

Hennepin County data shows that Native women are even more at risk than Native men of dying of opioid-related causes. Ruth Buffalo, CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center (MIWRC), said that these two issues are often related. 

“There are pimps and johns still out there in plain sight, keeping people in active addiction by continuing to supply them with drugs,” Buffalo said, adding that the lack of sex crime enforcement has made this an ongoing threat to the community. “The predators know the areas where they’re not going to get arrested,” she said.

Community members said there is a pressing need for a long-term plan that moves beyond harm reduction to get people into addiction and mental health treatment and sober living spaces. 

As an outreach worker, Dionne’s impulse is also to learn towards harm reduction, but as a community leader, he has been forced to think differently. 

Vincent Dionne, outreach manager at the American Indian Community Development Corporation, along with a client, pictured August 7, 2026. Credit: Aaron Nesheim | Sahan Journal

“We’ve been uplifting our most vulnerable population within the community for so long, where is that line when compassion turns into enablement?” he said. 

Sheri Riemers, CEO of Ain Dah Yung Center in St. Paul said it’s especially important to divert Native youth from moving into a cycle of addiction. 

“Harm reduction does save lives, but it doesn’t solve the problem,” she said. “And for our young people, it enables the problem. We have young people that aren’t afraid to go out and party, and they stock up a Narcan because they believe that that’s the answer.” 

There are also concerns among MUID leaders about criminalizing addiction, leading to further overrepresentation of Native people in the criminal justice system. Those struggling with addiction not only need tools for recovery but also a path forward to housing and employment, both of which can be adversely impacted by a criminal record. 

“We can’t arrest our way out of this,” Dionne said. “The key to turning everything around is we have to get our people sober. We have to help our people find recovery.”

Jones wants to see more sober transitional housing where people can access recovery and mental health services surrounded by those on a similar journey. 

Only a handful of Twin Cities programs offer abstinence-based living and recovery services specifically for the Native community: Ain Dah Yung Center, Anishinabe Endaad, the Indian Neighborhood Club, the Indian Health Board, the Native American Community Clinic, NACDI and AICDC. 

Minneapolis Director of Regulatory Services Enrique Velazquez, who oversees the city’s homeless response, acknowledged that arrests are a short-term solution that can further criminalize those in addiction. 

When asked if the city has a long-term plan to address the addiction, homelessness and public safety concerns raised by the Native community, he said, “I don’t know that I have the answer.”

“We do need diversion, and we do need other pathways,” he added. He said the city is looking where to channel resources, following its conversations with MUID, including exploring the possibility of a tiny home village. 

“Collectively, as government bodies from various agencies, we’re all looking at where we can all invest more into these different types of diversion resources so that community members are able to support their community members and do it in a culturally responsive and respectful way,” Velazquez said. 

Local Native organizations said the city has not offered them any additional funding as part of the mayor’s pledge to address open-air drug use, beyond contracts currently in place. 

The exhaustion in the community is palpable. For too long, the burden of finding long-term solutions has fallen on the Native community alone, Lilligren said. 

“What’s lacking is coordination from all levels of community, and especially all levels of government, from federal to the most local, and the system points fingers at each other, jurisdiction to jurisdiction,” he said. 

And Native-serving organizations want that vision to come with something equally important — resources. 

“You need to pull all the levers you can to make it work if we’re going to be forward-thinking and not just be putting out fires,” Earth-Werner said.

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