2026 is turning out to be a bad year for car thefts in Minneapolis.
Mayor Jacob Frey telling WCCO's Chad Hartman that after two years of decline, they have seen nearly 1,200 thefts in 2026 compared to 935 at the same time last year.
What is diffent now? Frey says technology.
"There is this tool that can be acquired illegally that basically allows you to access somebody's clicker remotely," says Frey. "And so you can access the clicker which then allows you to get in the car. Once you're in the car, you can steal the car."
However, Frey says it is more than that. He says another part of the reason for the increase is simply resources.
Minneapolis police spent the first couple of months of 2026 dealing with issues stemming from the presence of federal immigration agents in the city, and were not able to respond appropriately to the thefts, or other crimes.
"We've got to make sure that we're on top of this," Frey adds. "It's not acceptable in the city. We, as I said, we were seeing a dramatic decline in both car thefts and carjackings in part because we were able to catch the perpetrators of these repeat offenses. But we've got to get back on top of it right now."
The city had seen a downturn in thefts the last two years, after dealing with major increases following the COVID pandemic and George Floyd, as the police force grappled with staffing issues.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara also has said that the influx of federal agents in the city drew resources away from their normal work.
“The problem is, if you pull investigators and you pull cops out of the neighborhoods, because you have to do all this order policing, we have a lot of work we have to get back to,” O’Hara told the Minneapolis City Council recently.
