City Plans Community Safety Ambassadors for the Uptown Corridor

Minneapolis plans to put as many as eight community safety ambassadors and a dedicated dispatcher on the streets of Uptown beginning Nov. 8, 2026, the city announced in April, expanding a pilot that launched last summer on East Lake Street and East Franklin Avenue.

The ambassadors are city employees, not police. They are unarmed, do not make arrests, and instead provide safety escorts, wellness checks, basic first aid including CPR and Narcan, help filing police reports, and connections to city services. A dispatcher will field calls from residents and businesses requesting them. Ambassadors start at $27 an hour, and the city has allocated about $1 million from its Neighborhood Safety Department to run the Uptown effort through December 2027.

City leaders pointed to the East Lake and Franklin pilot as the basis for the expansion. Mayor Jacob Frey, Police Chief Brian O'Hara, Community Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette and Ward 7 Council Member Elizabeth Shaffer presented the plan at an April update in the district. The city said a survey of the pilot corridors found 59% of respondents felt safer since the ambassadors began walking the routes. Frey, describing the district's progress, has spoken of "buds of success".

For Lowry Hill East, the open question is reach. Coverage will focus first on the busiest commercial stretches around Hennepin Avenue and Lake Street, where the ambassadors work by design, rather than the quieter side streets where many vehicle break-ins occur. Whether the program edges into residential blocks, and whether the 5th Precinct's property-crime tallies near the corridor bend, will take time to show in the data. Residents can track the rollout through the city's public-safety pages and raise questions at 5th Precinct community meetings.