In general, adding more police officers to cities tend to lower crime rates, but more data must be found to see if adding police in Minneapolis would help the crime problem but more officers, among other things, could help.

Crime rates in Minneapolis have been at a high point as of late with crimes such as carjackings and aggravated assault higher so far this year than compared to last year. Many people believe that this wave of crime sweeping the city arose from the COVID-19 pandemic and rising tensions after the officer-involved murder of George Floyd. Currently, a person’s chances of being the victim of a violent crime in Minneapolis is 1 in 84 while for the whole state it is 1 in 364. The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, has addressed the problem and pointed out how many officers have quit in recent months because of low salaries and public opinion of the police. Frey hopes to hire more officers down the line, but will that solve the problem? Having more data on crime statistics and the opinions of experts are key to answering this question.

Many different reasons can point to what causes crime rates to rise and fall. So there is no concrete way of knowing whether adding members to the Minneapolis police department will help. For all anyone knows, adding officers could cause crime to rise due to tense public opinion from recent events such as the death of Amir Locke and the distrust that some community members may have. In a poll, 85% of criminal justice experts thought that increasing social service budgets would have an effect on lowering crime while only about 66% believed that adding to the police budget would help, showing how police may not be the best place to put city funds. Although, there are also strong points that could point that a greater police presence could help the community.

University of Pennsylvania criminologist, Aaron Chalfin, shows that homicide rates fell when more police officers were hired 54% of the time. He says that though there is still much to know about why crime rises and falls, in general, there is an effect. Morgan Williams is a colleague of Chalfin and they found that for every officer added to the police force, 0.1 to 0.6 homicides are prevented. They also found that as the number of officers increased, serious crimes and arrests for serious crimes fell. This piece of data shows that just having more officers reduced these serious crimes. All of this leads back to the driving question: could adding more officers reduce the crime rate of Minneapolis?

Well to put it frankly, it probably could.

Clearly, Minneapolis has a problem that requires action. This issue has so many nuances and factors to be looked at that it leads one to believe that more data is required for this kind of problem. Both sides make good points so a hybrid solution could be made. A trial run for something like this could be a possibility. Mayor Frey could add officers for a time and while that is happening crime data could be collected to see if the crime rates go down. With that said, the city can’t put all its eggs into one basket, additional funding should be added to social services to aid the community. This may provide more valuable data to reach a final conclusion on how to handle this situation going forward.