Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt is calling for a larger facility to house jail inmates

"We're finding ourselves in that position to have to house people in other counties," Witt said Tuesday. "But I want taxpayers to know it's not people that are being held on misdemeanors or anything like that. We do need to have that conversation. Is the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office jail big enough for what we're seeing right now?"

Moving inmates to other county jails is covered by Hennepin County tax dollars, Sheriff Witt told WCCO's Adam and Jordana. It's not the first time this has come up. She raised the idea of a new jail in 2024.

"We do need a bigger facility, and that's unfortunate to say," Witt added Tuesday. 'And everybody, whether they're in custody or not, deserves to be treated in a humane way and we need the spaces and the programs to do that when they're in our custody. And so, it's unfortunate."

The Hennepin County jail was built to house 835 people. The Hennepin County Jail dashboard showed 832 people in custody Tuesday afternoon.

Witt also is heading up a community meeting Tuesday night where she will discuss the two mass shootings that happened on Sunday in Minneapolis.

One person died and about a dozen more were wounded. Witt says there seems to be more anger among the public than ever before, without going into specifics on those shootings which are still under investigation.

"Nobody has the right to infringe on other people's happiness and freedom and things like that," Witt adds. "And we're seeing so much of that with this entitlement. You're entitled to make your own life miserable, but you're not entitled to make other people's lives miserable, if that makes any sense."

The meeting takes place at Grace Trinity Church beginning at 7:00 p.m.