Center of the American Experiment (CAE) joined the Minnesota Justice Research Center (MJRC) for a presentation to the Minneapolis City Council’s Public Health and Safety Committee on October 1st. The joint effort highlighted the success a handful of agencies across the nation have had in improving their solve rates for non-fatal shootings and advocated for the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) to adopt the strategy being implemented by those agencies.
The strategy sounds simple – treat all non-fatal shootings like homicides. However, given that most metropolitan areas see as many as five times the number non-fatal shootings as homicides, that level of commitment can seem overwhelming.
The strategy involves the creation of a stand-alone unit dedicated to solving non-fatal shootings, just the way a homicide unit is dedicated to solving murders. Law enforcement is learning that this strategy represents a far more successful model. Given the improvements in solve rates and the corresponding reduction in violence, they’re also learning that the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Those agencies that have committed to the strategy have seen their non-fatal shooting solve rates improve and their levels of retaliatory violence and murder drop dramatically. The Denver Police Department created its non-fatal shooting team (FAST) in 2019 and was able to improve its solve rate from just 25% to 67% in the first year. The St. Paul Police Department created its non-fatal shooting team and improved their solve rates from 37% in 2023 to an impressive 70% in 2024. More importantly, St. Paul has seen a corresponding 30% drop in shootings and a 70% drop in murders in 2025.
Most non-fatal shootings are the result of street conflict, and they are among the most difficult crimes to solve given that victims and witnesses are frequently uncooperative. This leads to overburdened homicide detectives giving them far less priority than their homicide cases. As a result, it’s not unusual for the solve rates for non-fatal shootings to be well below 25% in many metropolitan areas. This results in thousands of violent offenders across the country never being held accountable, and thousands of victims never receiving the justice they should.
As CAE Public Safety Policy Fellow David Zimmer noted in testimony, Minneapolis is on pace for 377 non-fatal shootings in 2025. The MPD solve rate for non-fatal shootings in 2024 was just 22.6%. If that solve rate remains static in 2025, 261 shooting victims will never see their cases solved, and maybe more importantly, hundreds of violent offenders will not be held accountable for their crimes. A change in strategy is warranted.
Part of this effort advocates that the MPD partner with the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO), the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), and federal law enforcement partners which could provide important force multipliers to the effort and reduce the complement of investigators the MPD would have to muster, given its continued staffing crisis. Leveraging civilian support is also important – as an enhancement to, not an alternative to police investigators.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi presented during the meeting as well and highlighted the value that the joint recommendation represented, given that it came from the MJRC, a center left policy organization, and CAE, a center right policy organization. Choi said:
“We all are pulling, but we’re not always pulling in the same direction. If you think about it, the Minnesota Justice Research Center and the Center of the American Experiment are here together telling us that this is something we should do – and we should listen to them. We need more of this…”
Time will tell if the MPD makes the commitment to prioritize non-fatal shooting investigations as recommended. If it does, the experiences of other departments suggest the MPD will benefit from improved solve rates and dramatically reduced levels of violence – not to mention more accountability for offenders, and an improvement in credibility with victims and the community.