Skip to content

Sunday, Sep. 12, 2021

Is the rate of unsolved crimes in Minneapolis higher than the national average?

Austin Tannenbaum, Gigafact
yes

In 2018, the latest data year available, the FBI reported that nationally, 54.5% of violent crimes and 82.4% of property crimes went unsolved.

In contrast, “the overall [Minneapolis] arrest rate at the start of August was about 12% this year, compared to 15- to 28% in the previous four years. That means roughly 88% of crimes are going unsolved,” according to CBS Minnesota.

A former director of a training program for Minnesota law enforcement told CBS understaffing was one reason for the rise:

”There‘s a lack of people working, a lack of people being able to do what they need to do.”

Following the George Floyd protests in 2020, many officers left the Minneapolis Police Department, prompting citizens to file a successful lawsuit requiring the department to hire more officers. Citizens also got the city council to restore $6.4 million of last year’s $8 million department budget cut after complaining of slowed response times and increased crime.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.