Safety Walking Club’s 1-Year Anniversary
Photo by Larry Lamb
By Shanti Mittra, Community Safety Committee founder
My family recently spent a few weeks in a small French village, where my son lost his wallet and within the hour had his credit cards fraudulently charged. Crime happens everywhere. Despite it being a holiday, an off-duty inspector filed a police report, using his rusty high school English and my teen’s high school French. Within two days, a young French man was charged (they really do have cameras everywhere), and two months later, back in the U.S., I received a letter of apology, in basic English, and a request for instructions for the young man to make restitution. Punishment is not the same everywhere.
For the past year, I have walked twice a month, every month, except on two occasions (one record-breaking snowstorm and one dangerously hot day), on the East Isles Safety Club Walks. We meet at Triangle Park in anonymously-donated orange shirts and walk throughout East Isles, along Lake of the Isles, Hennepin Ave, Lake St, and smaller neighborhood streets. We stop in to say hello to managers at Kowalski’s Market, Namaste Café, Walgreens, Nico’s Tacos, Lunds & Byerlys, Hoban Korean BBQ, and all the other neighborhood businesses, while noting the increasing empty storefronts.
While we walk, we answer neighbors’ questions on the month’s crimes, provide safety tips from MPD, and pick up litter, usually on Hennepin before it falls into street drains and ultimately into Lake of the Isles. We walk around our neighborhood just as any resident might walk around their house, looking for what needs attention but also what draws our admiration—the beauty that exists here. In the past year, we’ve seen lovely gardens, smiling residents, ivy-covered apartments, and historic homes. We’ve also noted bedding left in a Metro Transit stop, the power outlet at the empty Bank of America being used by the unsheltered, an unconscious man along Hennepin Ave and a memorial marking the spot where a 15-year-old’s body was left after being shot in another neighborhood.
We call 311 and 911 as appropriate, and we bring issues to the East Isles Neighborhood Association to help. The East Isles Safety Club walks in partnership with neighbors, local businesses, and police in part to demonstrate that East Isles is cared for. Neighborhoods to the north of us (Lowry Hill) and south of us (East Bde Maka Ska) have followed suit and have their own Safety Walking Clubs. There are now nine Safety Walking Clubs in Minneapolis.
We all know MPD is down to a little over half of its 2019 force, as is Metro Transit Police and Park Police, and so last month, the Safety Clubs attended the ceremony for the latest graduates of MPD’s Police Academy. Hearing why these 11 officers are joining the force today in Minneapolis and why their families support them will remain one of my most memorable evenings.
Crime is everywhere. It will take all of us stepping up, for there to also be hope for change. I hope you will join us on Tuesday, Oct. 24, as we mark the one-year anniversary of the East Isles Safety Walking Club.
Safety Walking Club 1-Year Anniversary
Tuesday, Oct. 24, 5:30–7 PM
Meet at Joanne Levin Triangle Park: 26th St & Irving Ave S