Q&A: Why Does Saint Paul Have Dramatically Less Gun Violence Than Minneapolis?

Editor’s Note: While preparing the gun violence prevention stories in the November/December issue, we created a list of the shootings in Hennepin County during a two-month period. Minneapolis gun violence — while dropping significantly over the past few years — is substantially higher than it is in Saint Paul. We talked to Saint Paul commander Nikkole Peterson, who leads the non-fatal shooting unit at the Saint Paul Police Department, to learn what they are doing to have an impact on gun violence. The unit investigates cases in which an individual has been struck by a bullet. (For details about the Minneapolis-area shootings, see content at the end of the story.)

Saint Paul police commander Nikkole Peterson

Why does Saint Paul have a unit focused on non-fatal shootings?

This unit began in January 2024. The Saint Paul Police Department has one of the highest clearance rates in the country related to homicide investigations — meaning that the case was solved and someone was charged. But looking at the number for people that were shot but did not die, that clearance rate falls dramatically. Homicide clearance rates are usually between 80 and 90 percent each year. But when someone doesn’t die, the clearance rate was around 30 percent.

Prior to our unit starting, our homicide unit also investigated these cases. They have a huge caseload. They were investigating everything from misdemeanor assaults — meaning if someone gets slapped — all the way up to homicide investigations. They’re investigating robberies, carjackings, kidnappings. Their caseload is just too much, and something had to give. In non-fatal shooting cases, if you weren’t getting victim cooperation, [it would lose priority].

The mayor and the chief of police looked at other cities, like Denver, and how they took a fresh approach to non-fatal shooting cases, as if they’re failed homicides, rather than involving someone who just didn’t want to help out with an investigation. When you look at it through that lens, it really changes the perspective of how you want to investigate these cases. So the City of Saint Paul got some state money, and the mayor gave that money to the department and told us to start a unit. And so we did.

Why do people not cooperate with a shooting investigation?

Sometimes people have had bad experiences with the police, and they don’t want to trust that we are there to help bring justice to what happened to them. Other times, the victim might have been involved in criminal activity, which led to them being shot, so they don’t want the police looking at them for that. They’re also worried about retaliation. If they talk to the police, they’re fearful about what could happen — they’ve already been shot.

Are there detectable patterns to these shootings related to a bigger picture, or are these typically one-off shootings?

Saint Paul has a different gang violence [picture] than maybe what Minneapolis has. We have more small group violence. Saint Paul city departments have really tried to attack gun violence holistically — looking at prevention, intervention, and apprehension, if that’s what’s needed. There has been a lot of focus on the prevention side of things.

The Office of Neighborhood Safety within the police department here — what’s called our Aspire unit — focus on kids that we believe are going to be either the next victim or offender when it comes to gun violence. Targeting those kids and getting them involved in activities that keep them active: sports and helping them to create relationships within the police department, so they understand there are people here who want to help them. We also have different community organizations that can give them resources that they need. What we’ve been seeing, especially lately this year, is that there hasn’t been as much youth gun violence. The last few months, it’s been 20- to 30-year-olds.

It seems that every gun violence crime has different backgrounds and reasons. Some are drug-related arguments, a lot of them are general arguments. Someone has a gun and they choose to use that gun rather than fists, and retaliate against another group they’re not happy with. We’ve also had domestic [violence] cases. So, the reasons behind each one of the shootings seem to be very different.

How do you get people in Saint Paul feeling safer in their communities? What are the steps you take after violence has occurred?

Our aim, obviously, is to hold offenders accountable. It’s a very small portion of the community that engages in these crimes. So, if we can hold the offenders accountable, and they’re in custody, that will reduce the number of incidents. With our focus on enforcement, combined with neighborhood safety — our Aspire program — and having different community groups within Saint Paul focusing on the intervention piece, it really has brought our gun violence numbers down significantly.

Currently, Saint Paul is sitting at only eight homicides this year, which is incredible — and four of those were gun related.

I have been confused about how so many people, including young people with limited income, are getting access to guns. There are just so many guns.

A lot of it now is the ghost gun. People can just produce guns in their home; that adds to the availability. And there are a lot of stolen guns out there.

That compares with at least 50 in Minneapolis so far this year. How do you do that work so successfully?

Previously, if there was a shooting case, and someone didn’t die, the case would be assigned to an investigator who would get it the next day. Or if it happened on a Friday, the investigator would get it on a Monday, and then they would try to make contact with that victim. If you don’t have contact right away, I believe it leads to less cooperation. Now we have investigators on call 24 hours a day. If a shooting happens, those investigators will make contact with the victim or the victim’s family within hours of the incident happening, which I think increases trust. I think it lets these victims and their families know that we are there to help them bring about justice for what happened, trying to figure out what happened to them, and how it happened.

Saint Paul has really worked on trust with the community. I think overall we have a very good reputation within our community that absolutely helps us solve these crimes. While we are still working on apprehension, the accountability piece of this puzzle, I believe that we are working on the intervention and prevention side of things by forming trust within the community. It is a full circle that we’re doing here.

Within our unit, we have a community engagement specialist — someone who is not a sworn police officer, whose role is to [talk with] these victims and witnesses to provide them support. If we have a gunshot victim that’s not able to work, [the specialist] will try to find resources to help them get food or pay for housing in the short term. It shows that we’re there to really try to help these people not be permanently harmed by what happened to them.

Our patrol officers are working hard on the street to remove guns from people that should not have them. We also have our gang gun unit, focusing on the prevention and intervention. And once these shooting crimes happen, then our unit steps in to investigate and hold offenders accountable. If more than one suspect is involved, we work really hard to investigate every person that’s been involved. We don’t stop when we have one person charged.

 2025 Gun Violence in Minneapolis (as of end of October) 

In Minneapolis, there were five fatal shootings in a 24-hour period in late April, followed by a series of different shootings through June:

• On May 2, four more people were killed and two others survived being shot.
• On May 4, a 19-year-old girl was shot at a prom send-off.
• On May 5, a 14-year-old was killed in a fight outside the Federal Reserve Bank.
• On May 30, a teenager and father were shot at a graduation ceremony at the University of Minnesota.
• On June 1, one woman was killed and six others injured in a shooting at Boom Island Park in Minneapolis. This involved nine guns and at least 130 shots fired.
• On June 9, a father shot his two-year-old child before committing suicide.
• On June 14, Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated at their home in Brooklyn Park; Rep. John Hoffman was shot at his home in Champlin, but survived.
• On June 16, a woman in Richfield was killed by someone who was denied a romantic relationship with her.
• On June 23, an 11-year-old boy was killed at Folwell Park by a 16-year-old.
• On June 25, a woman was killed while driving on the freeway.

Shooting numbers have been down in Minneapolis in 2025, though still significantly higher than in Saint Paul. Here is a summary of shooting statistics in Minneapolis for 2025:

• January to March:  49 shootings, down from 70 during the same period in 2024 and 114 in 2022.
• As of August 26: 174 people had been wounded by gunfire in the city for the year to date, including a mass shooting that killed one person and injured five.
• August 27: The mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in South Minneapolis resulted in the deaths of two children and injuries to 21 others.
• As of early October: There were about 50 fewer shootings compared to the same time in 2024.
• Total gunshot victims (projected): Based on the pace thus far, the projected total for 2025 is about 261 gunshot victims in Minneapolis, lower than previous years.

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