Minneapolis police have said over a dozen people have been hurt in two separate shootings at homeless encampments across the city on the same day.
The first shooting at a transit station wounded five people, and happened in an area that had seen two prior shootings in the past month.
Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara rued the shootings as disturbingly commonplace.
“Here we are yet again in the aftermath of a mass shooting. This is not normal,” O’Hara said.
The second shooting, which wounded eight, happened just two miles away, in a site that has been a topic of controversy in the Minneapolis area. Private landlord Hamoudi Sabri, who has been involved in homeless activism since 2021, has allowed the encampment on his property because he does not believe the city is addressing the root causes of homelessness.
“If this city truly treated these shootings like the emergencies they are, people would already see grief and trauma counselors on the ground,” Sabri told local media after the shooting. “Instead, the mayor’s answer is the same tired move we’ve seen for years: displacement. Bulldoze people’s tents, fence off their space, and call it leadership.”
The city promptly moved to clear out the encampment on Sabri’s property, which could nullify the drawn-out legal battle between the two.
As housing affordability continues to soar beyond the means of most Americans and the number of unhoused people rises across the country, the topic is increasingly prevalent on the national stage.
The shootings were two of five mass shootings to occur in Minnesota’s largest city in the past two weeks, including one at a local Catholic school that killed two children.
A Trump executive order which month directed governments to begin “shifting” people without stable housing into “long-term institutional settings,” something many critics feared could lead to a direct criminalization of homelessness.
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade recently floated the idea of “involuntary lethal injection” for homeless individuals around the country, stating: “Just kill ‘em.”
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