Making Our Neighborhoods Safer
Matt’s been working to create safe communities for nearly two decades. He continued that work at the Capitol by authoring historic public safety aid and working with police on key bills. Let’s support police with the tools they need and fund data-driven strategies to prevent crime, especially for youth.
Matt’s Plan for Safe Neighborhoods
Fund strategies to reduce youth crime
Scale up intensive intervention programs for young people and their families that have been proven to reduce the chances of reoffending.
Centralize the way we collect and analyze data about youth in the justice system. This data will help with better decision making to get young people back on the right track.
Provide more afterschool and summer programs to keep youth out of trouble in the first place.
Create a bigger network of mental health treatment options across the state.
Increase funding to solve gun crimes
In Minneapolis, 78% of shootings from 2018 - 2020 went unsolved based on analysis by Minnesota Reformer. Meanwhile, St. Paul has funded an effort to focus on solving non-fatal gun crimes and produced promising results. Matt will propose grant funding so local police departments can track gun crimes data and hire more investigators.
Boost police recruitment and retention
Increase partnerships with high schools and colleges to introduce students to the work of law enforcement.
Prioritize officer wellness by providing tools to promote physical and mental health.
Continue to add other professionals, like mental health experts, to police departments to reduce the demands on police officers.
Improve the police pension plan to encourage people to become and remain police officers.
Matt co-presents his bill to help reduce the number of young people committing repeated offenses along with Minneapolis Police Department Lt. Kelly O’Rourke and Sen. Oumou Verbeten.