How the 5th Precinct's MSTAT Briefings Shape Patrols

MStat is the department's data dashboard and review process, descended from the CODEFOR system the city adopted in the late 1990s after New York's CompStat model. The city publishes an MStat crime-data dashboard online, and the department holds weekly crime-data reviews and issues monthly neighborhood summaries built from reported incidents. The counts run higher than the federal Uniform Crime Reports because, as the city explains, MStat counts every offense in an incident and dates each to when the victim says it began rather than when it was reported.

In the 5th Precinct, which covers southwest Minneapolis and the lakes neighborhoods, theft from vehicles dominates the maps. Of roughly 40 recent incidents logged in the city's open crime data for the area, most were vehicle break-ins, recurring on blocks of Girard, Irving and Humboldt avenues and along Lagoon Avenue, with a smaller number of burglaries, assaults and other thefts (Minneapolis Open Data, MPD Police Incidents 2026).

The maps are only as reliable as the reports behind them. A break-in that goes unreported never becomes a pin on the map, which is why the precinct asks residents to file even minor property-crime reports through 311 and to share doorbell or security footage. A cluster of reports on a few blocks is what the department can point to when it justifies sending a squad car down one street rather than another. The dashboard deals in locations and counts, not named people, and does not identify those only charged with a crime, a standard this publication shares.