Ten-year-old boy has been charged after driving a stolen car near a crowded playground in Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS – Minneapolis police arrested a 10-year-old boy last month for allegedly driving a stolen vehicle near a school playground — and it’s not the boy’s first run-in with the law, police said.

The Sept. 20 incident was captured on video. Minneapolis police said it happened at Nellie Stone Johnson School in north Minneapolis when the playground was “overcrowded.”

“Fortunately, no children were hit by the driver on the playground,” the authority said.

Police sent the 10-year-old to the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center on Thursday. According to the department, this is at least his third arrest and he is a suspect in a dozen cases ranging from “carjacking to robbery to assault with a dangerous weapon.”

“It is unimaginable that a 10-year-old boy could have been involved in criminal activity of this magnitude without effective intervention,” said Police Chief Brian O’Hara. “Prison is not an acceptable option for a 10-year-old boy. But the adults who can stop this behavior in the future must act now to help this child and his family.”

Police said the boy’s family members cooperated and “asked for help to prevent their son or anyone else from being injured or killed.”

On Friday, the Hennepin County District Attorney’s Office announced that criminal charges had been filed against the boy, but could not comment further because of his age. O’Hara said charges were also approved against the boy for an attempted carjacking in August.

The office says that if a court-appointed psychologist finds an offender, including a child, unfit to stand trial and a judge agrees to the recommendation, “the proceedings must be dismissed or stayed and the child must be released from custody.”

“We are facing an urgent crisis in our community related to a small group of children who are unable to navigate the juvenile justice system but cannot be safe at home,” a law firm spokesperson said in a statement.

The office says it “cannot prosecute or prosecute to emerge from this crisis,” adding that it is working with law enforcement, county and state partners in hopes of providing “out-of-home housing” for young offenders with “complex needs”. “

“What we need is clear: residential placements with varying levels of security in our community that have the resources and staff to accommodate and successfully treat our youth with complex needs,” the spokesperson wrote. “And we need urgent and immediate action to address this problem now.”

O’Hara reiterated the need for residential care for young offenders at a news conference Friday afternoon.

“We’ve noticed this year that the age of juvenile offenders who are very active has gotten younger,” O’Hara said. “The system has no answer as to what to do with someone so young.”

In 2019, two Metro facilities for juvenile offenders closed after operating for more than 100 years: Hennepin County Home School in Minnetonka and St. Paul’s Totem Town.

The closures came after leaders in Hennepin and Ramsey counties decided to move away from the practice of locking up juvenile offenders in favor of a new data-driven system that emphasizes the use of alternative methods such as intensive treatment homes and community- and cultural-specific programs.

Data shows that since the shutdown, juvenile-committed crimes such as arson, car thefts and robberies increased in the metro between 2019 and 2021.

Critics like Ramsey County Undersheriff Mike Martin say the move away from incarceration has backfired.

“We are failing these children,” Martin told WCCO in 2022. “The criminal justice system is no longer holding them accountable and failing to provide them with meaningful intervention.”

“It’s literally a matter of life and death when we talk about what’s going on with these little children,” O’Hara said Friday.

MCF-Moorhead and MCF-Red Wing are two juvenile correctional facilities in Minnesota that house the state’s most violent young offenders. But the rest are mostly sent home after arrest.

Lisa Clemons, founder and executive director of the Minneapolis-based A Mother’s Love Initiative, told WCCO in 2022 that young offenders are emboldened by the lack of consequences.

“You know it’s a revolving door downtown,” Clemons said. “They’re taking full advantage of their youthfulness, and we’ve allowed the lawlessness long enough that they have absolutely no fear.”

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