Olson: Nonfatal shooting investigations, a middle ground on gun safety?
Gun violence in St. Paul and Ramsey County is way down, thanks to new efforts to aggressively investigate nonfatal shootings.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
MARCH 26, 2026 AT 5:00AM
“…Still, the hearing managed to surface something rare: a possible path to merge urgency with action. A bill sponsored by Sen. Doron Clark, DFL-Minneapolis, has potential to break thorough the partisan divide and actually do something about gun violence. It’s not the broader local control the mayors want or the ban on assault rifles that a majority of Minnesotans support, but it’s something that has already proven to save lives.
Clark’s proposal would broaden an initiative that’s proven quite successful in St. Paul and Ramsey County where they’ve focused since late 2023 on aggressively investigating nonfatal shootings. The results are tangible and promising.
Before the shooting initiative, St. Paul was solving and prosecuting about 90% of homicides, while the clearance rate for nonfatal shootings was closer to one in three.
Under the initiative, St. Paul more than doubled the solve rate for nonfatal shootings and has seen violent crime and homicides dip precipitously.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi, Sheriff Bob Fletcher and the St. Paul Police Department started the program in late 2023 with $1.7 million, almost half of which went into a fund to help intimidated victims and eyewitnesses. (Having the money and support to get out of town can create a cooling-off period, defuse a volatile situation and end the cycle of retaliation.)
Choi explained to the senators that the premise was simple: Investigate nonfatal shootings as vigorously as homicides.
“We don’t give up when the victim says, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this investigation,’” Choi said.
