Amid skyrocketing crime rates, residents of one Minneapolis neighborhood are crowdfunding to pay for a city program that will give them more police patrols.
The Minneapolis Police Department has a “buyback” program that lets outside organizations have extra police patrols and presence in exchange for paying for police overtime hours.
Denizens of the Lowry Hill neighborhood created a nonprofit, the Minneapolis Safety Initiative, to secure a buyback contract. The group is paying “$210,000 in extra police patrols at $107 per hour worked by an officer, starting Jan. 17 and running through Dec. 31, 2022,” according to MinnPost.