Minneapolis is launching a plan to shut down open air drug markets

"What we're going to do here is provide a choice," said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. "You can get services that we will offer and you can get better. We'll make sure that those services are readily accessible. But if you don't accept those services, you can't continue to hurt our neighborhoods and make our streets less safe."

That plan includes a partnership with several Indigenous organizations to not only enhance public safety, but increase opportunities for healing and recovery throughout Minneapolis.

Vin Dion is a member of the community who is in recovery.

"Our elders are living in fear right now," Dion says. "We have single mothers out here that are worried for their children. We have people in recovery that are having a hard time staying sober because they come out here and they see all the open air drug usage."

Assistant Police Chief Mark Klukow said that open-air drug use will not be tolerated.

"Using narcotics outside is illegal," he says. "Soliciting sex from children is illegal. Defecating outside, robbing people, assaulting folks, and peddling narcotics to very vulnerable people, it's all illegal."

The crackdown will initially focus on daylight drug trafficking, deploying extra patrol officers and surveillance cameras to reclaim neighborhoods where children have reportedly been recently injured by discarded needles.

This comes just days after the arrests of 25 gang members for running violent, open-air drug markets along Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue.