When Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey presented his proposed budget for 2027, he returned again and again to a familiar theme: tough times call for tough decisions about which programs work for the city and which don’t.
In line with that, Frey proposed “doubling down” on the city’s Community Safety Ambassador program, citing “early signs of success.”
Conversely, he said, funding would drop for violence interrupters, calling it a “noble program filled with committed and talented community leaders,” but one that “has not demonstrated the level of results taxpayers deserve.”
Frey’s compliments came as cold comfort to Muhammad Abdul-Ahad, executive director of T.O.U.C.H Outreach. The nonprofit is one of the three organizations funded by the city to train and employ violence interrupters – people with deep community connections who walk the streets seeking to build relationships, alleviate tensions and connect neighbors to resources.
“If you’re going to take one of the pivotal public safety programs or responses out of the city of Minneapolis … What does that say about you supporting the public’s safety when it comes to community violence, gun violence?”
But Frey, who made clear he thinks the program has had benefits for the city, said in an interview that issues with accountability and compliance, including a lawsuit alleging improper spending, had convinced him that cuts were appropriate.
“Commitment alone is not enough,” Frey said. “The results have got to matter. The outcome has got to matter, and the ability to track these outcomes matters.”
The challenge to measure results
Minneapolis’ violence interrupters, many of whom have lived experiences with violence and its lifelong effects, operate under the Cure Violence Global model, which treats violence as a public health problem. They aim to prevent violence by operating in areas where conflicts are likely to happen and by making themselves a safe and stable presence in the community.
Each of the three nonprofit contractors has a “catchment area.” T.O.U.C.H., for example, operates in a zone that encompasses parts of the Whittier, Phillips and Central neighborhoods. The city’s public dashboard shows the groups have logged 217 “mediations” in the last year.
In a July interview, Director of Neighborhood Safety Amanda Harrington praised violence interrupters, alongside police and the city’s other violence prevention models. Between 2021 and 2025, she said, the city saw a 53% decrease in the number of shootings.
“Every mediation that they do is a shooting that didn’t happen or a homicide that didn’t happen,” Harrington told KSTP. “So that is an incredible indicator of the success that they are having.”
Nationally, a study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions found that Baltimore’s Safe Streets program, modeled similarly to Minneapolis’, “is associated with a 42% reduction in homicides involving youth age 15 to 24 and a 21% reduction in youth nonfatal shootings at the neighborhood level.”
The authors made clear that some areas in the study saw increases in youth homicides, and that a small sample size meant the results were not statistically significant – a common challenge in identifying exactly how effective these programs are.
‘That’s the impact’
While interruption can be as simple as identifying an argument that’s about to boil over and working to separate both sides, it also entails longer-term work like outreach to high-risk individuals or organizing events to strengthen a sense of community.
Whether T.O.U.C.H. workers are walking along East Lake Street in their tell-tale yellow T-shirts, riding METRO Transit buses or popping into businesses along their route, it’s clear that the community appreciates their presence.
Abdul-Ahad is particularly gregarious, at times struggling to make it more than a block without someone rolling down their window or pulling their bike over to chat with him.
MinnPost visual journalist Bridget Bennett and I spent four hours alongside his group on Sept. 3. As on many nights, the walk was uneventful. That’s not always the case, though. Weapons can pose particular challenges – members shared that they’ve dealt with everything from guns to axes to swords to knives to cans of bear mace.
Nia Allen recalled an instance where teenagers threatened the owner of a grocery store in the Whittier neighborhood where she lives, escalating to an incident where one of the teenagers threatened to get a weapon.
“Thankfully we were there and we were able to intervene and explain to him that, you know, if you do this you’re going to be giving your life away,” Allen said. Not only did he stop, she said, he apologized to the store owner.
It’s a store she frequents, she said, and she’s glad she and other members were there. “Because had we not been there, there’s no telling what could have happened, right?”
Everyone’s got a different approach. Hassan McMiller, clad in a White Sox cap, said he sees the work as an opportunity to be a father figure or a big brother in the life of someone going through challenges he understands.
Terell Williamson, an outreach worker, is focused more on guiding someone through, say, how to do their taxes, or how to apply for a job.
Kenny Prada’s got a Fujifilm XT30 around his neck. “Everybody knows the ugly truth, you know. But the beauty is out here, and I want to show that.” He’s recently started printing off photos for kids – something physical they can keep.
Prada is frustrated, he said, that a program with so much value could be cut. “You see the police department, they’re getting like, overtime unlimited, right?” Prada said. “Yet we’re getting cut, and we’re building those relationships that they’re not.”
‘We just had to be honest with ourselves’
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Frey said, “Everybody wanted a safety response that did not involve an officer with a gun.”
The city stood up several. There was Behavioral Crisis Response,MinneapolUS violence interrupters and the Community Safety Ambassadors.
Now six years later, the city is facing a rough budget season. Frey’s proposed budget cuts 100 city positions as part of efforts to close what he called a roughly $60 million budget gap, and still has residents staring down an 11.3% increase in property taxes.
Among those cuts are $2.7 million to violence interrupters, which would leave the programs with a total of $800,000 to vie for. By comparison, T.O.U.C.H.’s most recent yearlong contract with the city totaled more than $708,000.
Community Safety Ambassadors, on the other hand, will see $2.3 million more in funding and will be brought fully under the city’s purview.
Frey is emphatic that the Community Safety Ambassadors will not replace violence interrupters or do the same work. Instead, he said, city staff would ideally be able to dispatch members of the 23-person team as needed to address safety issues, instead of a group of people walking the streets.
Safety response would be in addition to work ambassadors already do, like wellness checks, safety escorts and general community outreach.
They’ll also be city employees, Frey said. “So there’s more compliance there,” he said. “There’s a chain of command. They’re supervised on a daily basis, not just through a regular contract review.
The issue likely will be up for debate as the city’s budget approval process proceeds. Council member Jason Chavez (Ward 9) has already said he was “shocked to hear” about the cuts to violence interrupters.
But Frey maintains the drawdown is not a haphazard repudiation of the services.
“We’ve got so many other points where we are doing violence prevention work, you know, and that all continues,” Frey said. “This was one where, again, we just had to be honest with ourselves.”
But the violence interrupters have honest concerns, too.
“I think the money goes away,” Prada said, “and the relationships go away.”
—-
This story was originally published by MinnPost and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
