The Mall of America plans to add a gun detection K-9 unit to its security force during the upcoming holiday shopping season.
Will Bernjelm, the Mall of America's vice president of security, told WCCO Radio's Mark Freie on Wednesday about the program that's been in the works for the past several months.
"We're looking to roll out a new addition to our team which is firearm detection canines," Bernhjelm said. "We're going to roll it out for the holidays and hope to buildout the program from there."
Bernhjelm said that Lt. Kenny McDonough, the mall's head trainer, has been working to get the program in a spot where it will be effective as the mall enters its busiest time of the year.
"We looked at a lot of different things after last year, after the challenges we had," added Bernhjelm. "We kind of focused on this as a new and emerging thing in security and in the canine world as well. So the dogs will be trained to detect firearms on people in the mall."
The new measure comes after shootings rocked the Mall of America in 2022.
19-year-old Johntae Hudson of St. Paul was killed in shooting at the mall's Nordstrom store on December 23rd. In August 2022, a shooting at the Nike store sent the mall into lockdown.
Not long after the shooting at the Nike store, a man was tackled inside the mall after robbing two stores while carrying an AR-15 style rifle.
"We had gone 29 years without that level of incidents here and then all of a sudden last year we had three," Bernhjelmsaid. "We understood that things weren't the same anymore. We'd had had a robust program prior to this. We're always trying to evaluate and stay leading edge in this industry. It really forced us to dig in and see what else we should be doing here."
The Mall of America considered how they might implement a gunshot detection system and facial recognition system.
Metal detectors were also evaluated last fall.
"We evaluated two different systems and what we found is that it's not the right fit for our building. I completely understand why it works in certain venues, but for our venue, it's incredibly difficult. If you think of US Bank Stadium, they have seven entrances, maybe 40 different events per year where they need them, and run metal detectors for four hours per event. The Mall of America has 27 public entrances and is open 360 days per year. We would run metal detectors for 16 hours per day. It's incredibly difficult."
In addition to the gun detection K9 units, the Mall of America will have an increased police and security officer presence. The mall will look to expand the gun detection K9 unit after the holiday season.
