MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (KFGO/WCCO) – Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt links vaping and social media to a surge in juvenile crime.
Sheriff Witt expressed concern over youth posing with weapons on platforms like Snapchat and urged parents to monitor their children’s online activity. She told WCCO it ‘is not snitching, it’s saving lives.’
“You know, guns are still a thing, as I said before, with kids looking for guns in these cars,” the sheriff explains. “Well, Snapchat has been quite the frequent tool that’s been used where you have kids that are posing on Snapchat with guns.”
Witt is calling for reinstating juvenile centers amid what has been an uptick in youth crime across the Twin Cities. She argues that the closure of facilities like Totem Town has created a “revolving door” of crime, and that troubled youth need accountability and appropriate rehabilitative resources.
“I do think they need to bring those places back,” Witt explained. “I do think that they need to have appropriate program and rehabilitative services. Don’t look at it as punitive, but it looks like accountability and it looks like bringing the resources to the kids when they’re in a safe environment. Where they’re able to receive those resources.”
The issue of juvenile crime was also a concern for Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who recently told WCCO Radio that much of what they find in the city is coming in from the suburbs.
“They aren’t the poor kids from Minneapolis that are our residents, these are kids coming down in mommy’s Mercedes-Benz to Dinkytown, and they don’t know where they are,” O’Hara explained.
Last week, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty launched a new crime diversion screening model to curb crime among young offenders.
Starting December 1, the program will evaluate youth right away for diversion.
“And what we can do to help children and young people get out of the system, or not come in again and again, this is what we need to do,” Moriarty described.
Moriarty says data from a multi-year University of Minnesota study shows the diversion program had the lowest rate of kids re-offending. That study analyzed more than 21,000 cases submitted to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office between 2016 and 2023.
Charges like murder, aggravated robbery, domestic violence, carjacking, and firearm offenses won’t qualify for diversion, however.
Sheriff Witt also underscored the severity of vaping in schools, an issue students themselves ranked as a top concern, especially in school bathrooms. She is in favor of keeping School Resource Officers in every school as an added resource for kids throughout the county.
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