Minneapolis launches dedicated unit to investigate non-fatal shootings

Before the Minneapolis Police Department created a dedicated non-fatal shooting investigative unit, a surviving victim’s case might land on the desk of a property crimes detective, a traffic investigator, or whoever happened to be on duty that night.

“The homicide unit was being assigned not just homicides but also non-fatal shootings, however, they would only respond to the scene when a homicide happened,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said. “So what that meant was we rotate duty investigators during non-business hours, at night and on weekends, so tonight it might be a property crimes investigator, on Saturday it might be a traffic investigator.”

That approach left non-fatal shootings among the most under-investigated categories of violent crime in the city. Now, Minneapolis is changing course.

The Minneapolis City Council allocated $1.7 million in the 2026 budget to fund the department’s new Firearm Assault Shoot Team, known as FAST. The unit represents the city’s most significant commitment yet to treating shootings where victims survive with the same urgency as homicides. It works in coordination with the Violent Criminal Apprehension Team (VCAT), which focuses on apprehending suspects once they are identified.

The FAST team currently includes a lieutenant and seven Minneapolis officers, four agents from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, intelligence support from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, a Ramsey County Sheriff’s deputy, and a Metro Transit Police officer. Detectives from the Bloomington Police Department are expected to join next month.

“What is different now is, just like when there is a homicide, an investigator assigned to the FAST team will respond immediately to the scene and start working the case, instead of having a detective who typically investigates some other crime start it and then wait for an investigator to be assigned Monday morning,” O’Hara said.

The urgency is rooted in data. Minneapolis’ clearance rate for non-fatal shootings had historically hovered near 30 percent. In 2025, it climbed to 47 percent, still well below the 80 percent clearance rate achieved for homicides that same year.

City leaders pointed to St. Paul as the model. Before launching its own dedicated unit, St. Paul solved just 38 percent of non-fatal shooting cases in 2023. By the end of 2024, that rate had jumped to 71 percent. Ward 2 Council Member Robin Wonsley noted that St. Paul recently achieved a 100 percent clearance rate for non-fatal shootings.

“When the data came along showing that St. Paul was having great outcomes in reducing gun violence for their communities of color, I knew that Minneapolis needed to step up and do the same,” Wonsley said.

Wonsley also raised a concern about the Minneapolis police contract, which she says restricts how many officers can be assigned to investigative roles, leaving the unit heavily reliant on partner agencies.

“If they walked away, this task force could collapse,” Wonsley said. “The police contract has limitations on who we can promote to do investigative work full time, so we have to find more creative solutions.”

The Minneapolis launch comes as a parallel effort moves through the Minnesota Legislature. State Senators Doron Clark and Cedrick Frazier are backing a bill that would distribute $1 million to police departments statewide to staff their own non-fatal shooting units.

Justin Terrell, executive director of the Minnesota Justice Research Center, said the stakes extend beyond arrests.

“This is also a racial justice issue,” Terrell said. “Crimes affecting Black and brown communities are getting solved at disproportionately lower rates, and yet police feel ever present in our neighborhoods.”

O’Hara was direct about what non-fatal shootings represent. “They are failed homicides,” he said, “and they need to be treated with the same level of intensity and urgency.”

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