Lou Raguse, KARE-TV, September 12, 2019

Once again, the topic before the Minneapolis City Council was police staffing, as Chief Medaria Arradondo explained how the 14 officers he and Mayor Jacob Frey are asking for in the budget would be used.

The proposal includes 3 additional investigators, 8 neighborhood outreach officers, and 3 in a re-established traffic enforcement unit.

The proposal was again met with skepticism by several council members.

That, as disturbingly violent videos of recent downtown robberies are made public, causing business owners to speak up.

The surveillance video is brutal. One shows a group of people on the Target Field Plaza start punching a man, then jumping on him, stripping off his pants and stealing from his pockets, throwing a potted plant on him, then running over him with a bicycle.

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A second video given to KARE 11 this week shows a group surrounding a man at 5th and Hennepin, snatching his cell phone then beating him senseless.

And Sherman gave KARE yet another video, recorded in July, of the same thing happening to two men in that same area.

Police recently arrested 16 people allegedly involved in these incidents.

At this time last year, there’d been 156 robberies in the downtown precinct. This year, there’s been 240. That’s more than a 53% increase.

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Fletcher says they don’t want officers targeting people for things like loitering.

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