Uptown Safety Meeting Draws Crowd Near Lake and Hennepin

The gathering filled the soon-to-open Arizona Taco Company near the Lake-Hennepin intersection, drawing neighbors, business owners and officers from the Minneapolis Police Department's 5th Precinct, CBS Minnesota reported. Kevin Norman, the resident who founded Uptown United, told the crowd that people had been avoiding the area, describing open drug use and a place where homeless people gather. Restaurant owner Marcos Ayala said his business intended to support the neighborhood.

City data showed assaults, car thefts, robberies and gunshot-related calls in Ward 10, which covers Uptown, running higher than a year earlier. Theft from vehicles dominates the area's property-crime reports: of roughly 40 recent incidents logged in and around the lakes neighborhoods in the city's open crime data, most were vehicle break-ins, clustered on blocks of Girard, Irving and Humboldt avenues and along Lagoon Avenue (Minneapolis Open Data, MPD Police Incidents 2026). One of the night's proposals was a volunteer community-walk effort to put a visible presence on the commercial corridors.

City leaders have pointed to the Community Safety Ambassador program as one response. The unarmed ambassadors, who connect people to services, conduct wellness checks and serve as escorts rather than make arrests, began on East Lake Street and East Franklin Avenue as a 2025 pilot. The city expanded the program into Uptown with eight ambassadors and a dispatcher starting in November, an addition costing about $1 million. The ambassadors are designed for the busiest commercial blocks, leaving open the question raised at the meeting of whether they will reach the quieter side streets where many vehicle break-ins occur.