MINNEAPOLIS — As the Hennepin County Attorney unveiled a new collaboration to curb youth auto theft, and parents and community members voiced concerns about the rise in juvenile crime and police pursuits, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara says he welcomes people being upset.
“I'm thankful because I have been screaming about this problem,” O’Hara said. “This is really urgent and everyone in the community, every stakeholder needs to be engaged to help figure this thing out.”
In 2022, Minneapolis saw an 836% increase in stolen Kia and Hyundai automobiles. It's so bad that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison launched an investigation into the automakers for selling cars with such vulnerable anti-theft protections.
But while litigation looms, the problem only gets worse, because the people stealing the cars most often are kids.
“Last week, there was an 11-year-old arrested with an illegal handgun with a switch, so modified to fire automatically, while riding around in one of these cars. It’s incredibly, incredibly dangerous,” O’Hara said.
How dangerous? Case in point: the Kia stolen by pre-teens and teens 9 days ago that resulted in a chase and crash into a car and bus stop was stolen by kids who have a history that includes them being victims of crimes too.
“The juveniles were all known to law enforcement,” O’Hara said. “Several of them had been victims of gun violence themselves already, and we believe were involved in a pattern of armed robberies right before that pursuit happened.”
And that case is one of several that leaves Chief O'Hara in that chorus with a community that is outraged.
“I need everyone to be outraged with what is happening to these kids regardless of police chasing them,” O’Hara said. “I need everyone to be outraged that since I've been chief, we have had a 12-year-old that has been shot twice in stolen cars. We had a 14-year-old die crashing a stolen car on Lyndale, we had a 15-year-old girl that crashed in a stolen car a month ago and she is still in a coma today.”
He is joining in the chorus of outrage that it is happening, but when it comes to pursuing kids who have stolen these cars in high-speed chases, he and his department are facing singular criticism saying, why chase a kid?
“We do not know at the time the age of people we are chasing,” O’Hara said. “In fact, if we did know for sure who was in the car, that would be a reason not to pursue, go to a court and in that process seek charges that way."
And when it comes to even talking about charges or courts, the ages of many of these kids matters. O'Hara thinks that these ages-- 11, 12, 13 years old-- has a lot to do with this continuing, because kids that young either don't know or don't care about the consequences, because the consequences so far have been minimal to most of them.
“I think a lot of these kids, particularly since they are younger than what we have seen in the past, don't have the same sense of consequence for their action that they should,” O’Hara said. “And I think a lot of them just think they are living in a video game and we have to figure out how to take the fun out of this.”
And it's important to know that question, how to take the fun out of it, how to fix this, isn't just a question in Minneapolis.
In St. Paul, they have the same issue: stolen Kiaa and Hyundais there are up 611%; in New York City, a 500% increase; in Atlanta, a 755% increase; a 767% increase in Chicago; and a 2,400% increase in Rochester, New York.
Seventeen states are now suing the automakers.
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