More than five years after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, the city’s Democratic leadership has largely held on to 2020-era police reform attitudes hostile to law enforcement, despite these anti-police positions falling out of fashion with Democrats elsewhere.
But a progressive Minneapolis city councilman appears to be changing his tune toward policing after he was carjacked earlier this week.
Jamal Osman, a Democrat on the Minneapolis City Council, was the victim of an armed carjacking in his own district on Monday night. While in office, he has pushed for policies that handle crime with “cultural sensitivity.” Now, he is calling for the criminals who carjacked him to face “consequences.”
“Something has to be done,” Osman said during a Tuesday news briefing, addressing his car being stolen from him at gunpoint. “There has to be some kind of consequences — has to be some kind of way of dealing with this heinous crime.”
Osman reiterated later on, “I’m not a legal expert, but there has to be some kind of consequences. If individuals know they can get away [with] this kind of heinous behavior or crimes, they’re going to continue doing it again.”
In an X post, Osman said he “really appreciates the quick response” from the Minneapolis Police Department and thanked them again at the press conference for their “phenomenal” services.
Osman, who was recently reelected, promised on the campaign trail to “expand restorative justice programs for low-level offenses.”
As a councilman, he has championed reallocating funding from the city’s police force toward “alternative public safety solutions.” In March, the councilor introduced a motion that reallocated $650,000 in public safety funds for non-police violence response programming.
On behalf of one organization sending out “community patrols” to high-crime areas, Osman publicly pushed back against the city cutting off funding for the Metro Youth Diversion Center’s deployment of so-called “violence interrupters” in his ward, saying that such services are “working.”
Osman successfully fought to secure the Metro Youth Diversion Center’s $708,400 government contract with the city, enabling the group to retain its “violence interrupters.” The program is comprised of civilian “outreach workers” dressed in neon-orange vests who are dispatched to de-escalate violent situations through “culturally aware” conflict resolution, as opposed to traditional policing.
Minneapolis has hired teams of violence interrupters in response to the defund the police movement. The city adopted this “community-oriented” approach to policing under the Cure Violence Model, a philosophy that treats violence as a public health disease and believes “compassionate” rehabilitation can change criminal behavior.
Minneapolis has the highest number of carjackings and homicides in Minnesota, with 329 and 77 committed in 2024, respectively, statistics reported by the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension show. In comparison, Minneapolis was the only Minnesota city, besides St. Paul, to surpass single-digit victim counts for those crimes. According to 2023 data, homicides have increased in Minneapolis by 6% and carjackings jumped up 21% between 2023 and 2024.
MPD Chief Brian O’Hara, who stood next to Osman on Tuesday to deliver a case update, said the city “continues to see a troubling number of violent incidents and, in particular, incidents that involve juveniles.”
According to O’Hara, one of the two juveniles who targeted Osman, as part of a carjacking spree, was “known” to police. Officials believe that the same suspects, aged 15 and 16, punched a woman repeatedly in the face as she tried to protect her daughter during another carjacking earlier that evening.
“I just didn’t really think it was going to happen to me,” Osman remarked.
Osman told the Washington Examiner that he handled the incident like any resident would by calling 911 and waiting for officers to respond, but said it has not changed his beliefs about the best approach to curbing crime.
“My values have not changed,” Osman said. “Violent crimes demand accountability, and at the same time, Minneapolis needs strong prevention and support for our young people so we can stop these incidents before they happen. My heart aches for these kids — but caring about them does not mean excusing serious harm. Consequences and hope can, and must, coexist.”
In a statement, Osman’s office said the councilman’s position on public safety “has been clear and consistent since the day he took office,” saying that he is “a mainstream Minnesota Democrat” who has defeated several defund-the-police candidates.
“[H]is record reflects the values he has always stood for: accountability for violent crimes, strong prevention and intervention for young people, and restorative justice for low-level, nonviolent offenses. Those values have not changed,” Osman’s office told the Washington Examiner, adding that “Monday night’s carjacking was a frightening incident, but it does not alter his long-held views.”
From the outset of his tenure, Osman has sought to “reimagine police.” In 2020, then a newly elected city councilor, Osman, told the MinnPost that the MPD is “too powerful.”
“The resource[s] and funding they get—we should definitely look at it,” Osman said of the city’s police department. “And maybe we should take those resources and spend it in [the] community, however that looks.”
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Osman, a Somali-born immigrant, has also rallied behind efforts to recruit ethnically diverse police personnel “who reflect our neighborhoods,” particularly officers of Somali, Latino, and Hmong descent. Osman’s Ward 6 district is home to the city’s largest East African population.
In addition, Osman supports mandatory MPD training in “bias awareness” and “cultural sensitivity.”
