MINNEAPOLIS – An electrician who’s just starting his own business showed up at a work site at 6:30 a.m. and discovered his work trailer and $20,00 pf tools had been stolen. Using a tracking device he had installed in the trailer, Jerry Yang spotted the vehicle a half mile away. It was at a massive Near North homeless camp. He called police. Then new frustration set in. Yang said he was told that the camp was too dangerous to go into. Police entering the camp have been attacked. “The criminals there know that they can walk away and do whatever they want and know the cops aren’t going to enforce the law,” Yang told a KARE reporter. A police spokesperson didn’t deny how Yang was reading the situation: “It’s not that we’re unwilling to help. We just have to find the right time and circumstances to do it.” Police need to “be creative and get the job done with the least amount of force,” the spokesperson said. “The risk right now may be too much.” Yang expects the trailer will be empty when police get to it. Probably already is, he said.
Heisted trailer. Owner knows where it is. So too the police. What to do? And how?
Homeless profile
The camp is in the Near North area of Minneapolis on city-owned land. It’s one of more than a dozen transient encampments in the city. The camp in is heavily Native American, some employed, many not. The camp has a native Ojibwe name: WiiDooKoDaaDiiWag. Translation: “They help each other.” The homeless population in shelters statewide is estimated at 13,000 adults, 2,400 youth age 18 to 24, and 5,000 children.