Minnesota faces a critical police staffing shortage of 1,000 officers amid violent crime problems, with 170 murders recorded in 2024 and concerns over recruitment.
As violent crime endangers communities across Minnesota, police say they were left stretched thin and underfunded while state leaders directed millions elsewhere, a gap now drawing sharp scrutiny from public-safety experts and police union leaders.
That gap is under the microscope as the state deals with a massive fraud scandal involving hundreds of millions of dollars, including allegations of taxpayer money finding its way to terrorist group Al-Shabaab in Somalia, all under the nose of Democratic leaders.
Randy Sutton, a police veteran and founder of The Wounded Blue, told Fox News Digital the crisis extends far beyond one agency or city.
“The public safety is at risk… we are in a criminal justice crisis in America”, Sutton said. “Political leadership is destroying public safety through their ideology.”
Mark Ross, president of the St. Paul Police Federation, says Minnesota is living that crisis in real time.
“We’ve been down anywhere from 50 to over 100 officers since 2020, and we just haven’t recovered from that”, Ross told Fox News Digital. “Right now we’re about a thousand police officers short in the state of Minnesota, and we’re on pace to lose another 2,000 to 2,500 over the next few years.”
The staffing shortages come as Minnesota recorded 170 murders in 2024, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), only slightly below the year before, with firearms involved in nearly 75% of those killings. Statewide, carjackings rose 5.5% and rapes increased 5.2% from 2023 to 2024. Assaults on peace officers also jumped up 1.5%.
Ross said recruitment and retention have reached a breaking point, not only in St. Paul but statewide.
“The overall landscape for policing in Minnesota has gotten really, really competitive. We’re losing officers to other departments paying more and offering greater incentives.”
He said the state’s massive fraud losses, now the subject of multiple federal investigations, have worsened long-term pressures on public-safety agencies.
