Minneapolis, Minnesota – Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is one of our favorite mayors and it’s never been for his intellect. His latest idea to reduce crime came this weekend at the MinnPost Festival.
“Apparently, if you’ve got a whole bunch of people that are looking to cause trouble – if you put bubbles out there, it’s really hard to look tough when you’ve got bubbles floating around,” Frey said.
Axios Twin Cities reporter Nick Halter, who moderated the Saturday panel, followed up, asking Frey: “We’re talking about (bubbles), like at a kid’s birthday?”
“Yeah. You think I’m joking. I’m actually not,” Frey responded. “It’s a bubble machine – and the people who are looking to cause trouble are like, ‘I can’t look tough around these bubbles.’ So they disperse and it deescalates the situation and people who aren’t looking to cause trouble love bubbles.”
Frey said he’d heard from his staff about a new public safety strategy on his drive over to the event held at Westminster Presbyterian Church, calling the bubble tactic “very premature… But obviously I thought it was pretty innovative.”
Using bubbles is not an official Minneapolis Police Department strategy, MPD officials clarified this week. However, some downtown businesses do use bubbles in parking lots to deter crime, according to the mayor’s office spokesperson Ally Peters.
Similar in concept to bubbles, Twin Cities businesses have also tried using classical music to deter crime.
MPD has been working to address the downtown violence, with a focus on teens, but bubbles have not been a recent talking point within MPD, Sgt. Garrett Parten said. Instead, MPD increased officer presence over the weekend. The department also has deployed a unit designated to interact with teens prior to the downtown curfew. Youth under the age of 12 must be out of downtown and home before 10 p.m., under the age of 14 by 11 p.m. and ages 15-17, by midnight.
