‘Eyes on the street’ is only one part of the urban crime solution

I really enjoyed hosting a panel at this weekend’s MinnPost Festival, which was full of fascinating conversations from smart folks in and out of elected office. In my case, MinnPost Metro Editor Leah Fabel and I took questions from a room of about 30 folks. Luckily for me, I was able to expound about my favorite topics, like the skyway system and bike lanes.

That said, the first question out of the gate was a tough one. “What do we do about crime?” wondered a woman in the front row. The question offered me a chance to muddle through a response, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. 

Crime is one of those topics about which it’s difficult to resolve a disagreement because each person’s individual experience is a trump card. You can try citing data or trends, but if the other person replies, “Yes, but my sister was mugged last week,” that’s the end of the discussion. Personal feelings carry a lot of weight, and perception is often a self-fulfilling prophecy that shapes our behavior.

In my experience, a large portion of what people mean when they complain about crime in 2025 is the presence of visible poverty and drug addiction. Both are significant problems, but quite often are less alarming than carjackings or gunfire. 

Related: One bicyclist’s DIY project brings some light to the darkened urban landscape

For the most part, the ongoing rise of homelessness and addiction seems to take place at the literal margins of urban space, in back alleys or next to vacant buildings. For many observers, these people remain out of sight and mind, until an alarming moment, when they burst into view. But for folks living near these struggling populations — for example, the Star Tribune’s recent piece on Lake Street and Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis — concern about security is a near-daily problem.

I think about this during my regular rides on the Green Line through St. Paul. I’ve seen a lot over the years, learned some interesting vocabulary, and nearly every day I watch folks carry everything they own with them in slapdash carts or black garbage bags, or charging their phones at the edge of the U-Haul parking lot. Sometimes, encountering people addicted to drugs or suffering mental health trauma, I observe people in deep distress. I’ve walked my daughter past active drug users on our way to the library and negotiated our family past a woman screaming at her reflection in the train window. 

Most of the time, however, everything is fine. People leave each other alone. The vast majority of my encounters with people living in extreme poverty are depressing, not frightening. 

A lot of this boils down to the fact that the effects of the COVID pandemic still linger in our cities. During those years, public spaces were radically transformed. Parks, transit vehicles and otherwise vibrant urban spots were evacuated, and people with nothing to lose occupied them. Downtown St. Paul’s Mears Park, an otherwise bourgeois haven, had a permanent encampment of people living there on the amphitheater. For years, light-rail vehicles were de facto extensions of the homeless shelter.

It takes a long time to reset those social expectations. For over a year now, Metro Transit has been deploying blue-shirted staff on trains to ostensibly check tickets. I watch these workers negotiate difficult situations every week, waking up sleeping people or delicately asking someone to pay for their ticket the next time they ride. Even when they’re just going through the motions, in my view, their real purpose has been to clarify the social obligations of the transit system. They’re undoing years of damage to public space, and it’s hard, slow work that can’t be done in a month. This is the right approach, far better than fruitlessly incarcerating people for smoking. 

I also believe things are improving, at least on the light-rail system and in many of the city parks that I most frequent. St. Paul’s homicide rate, for example, is at its lowest point since “The Wire” was on TV. Most of what I know about policing comes from that show, but I’d suggest that credit is due to the St. Paul Police Department and Mayor Melvin Carter’s approach to public safety and community investment. Outcomes like this are worth celebrating. 

For cities, the best solution to most crime remains the common sense Jane Jacobs principle of “eyes on the street.” This thought recurred to me a few weeks ago, when I was in Minneapolis exploring Uptown’s vacant retail. Walking down Hennepin Avenue, I was startled to notice someone squatting in the entrance of a long-vacant building near 29th Street. The storefront had once been a fancy restaurant and event center, but after years of abandonment, had become a convenient place to set up camp.

Related: Concerns about Uptown’s changing face are familiar and overwrought

There’s a pattern. The more people use urban spaces, the safer and more “policed” they become, even though cops have nothing to do with the process. This is why reducing “crime” in everyday parts of Minneapolis, like downtown and Uptown, requires filling vacant buildings. Cities should remove barriers to small-business startups, or find temporary ways to bring life to vacant storefronts. We need more people using our streets.

That said, “eyes on the street” doesn’t really solve the problems at the core of people’s concerns. Even if some parts of the city are improving, immiseration and housing instability is trending in the opposite direction, thanks to larger forces in our country. People with nowhere to go will find somewhere else, on some other street, as well they should. 

Poverty, crime and drug addiction are problems that extend far beyond a light-rail platform or public park. The answers here are both difficult and obvious. Until we provide large-scale care for people with trauma, or homes for people on the margins, our cities will continue to suffer. Until then, our federal government continues to fail our most vulnerable people.  

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