More than 100 rounds were fired overnight on Harriet Avenue in Bloomington, Minnesota, police say — one person hurt with minor injuries, a bullet punched through a bedroom window two blocks away, on a quiet residential block near an at-home daycare.
Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges played doorbell camera video at a Tuesday press conference and pointed to what he said were switches on the guns — the illegal device that turns a handgun into a machine gun. He tied the shooting to Somali-American gangs and called it retaliatory. As of the briefing, nobody was in custody.
This was not a one-off. Friday night, two Somali teens were shot outside Eden Prairie High's homecoming game, and police suspect gang violence. Monday night, shots were fired at an Eden Prairie Speedway. No one was hit. Police say that one may be tied to the same gang activity, though they also said they do not have evidence linking it to the football-game shooting. Last month in Edina, teens were shot at while playing basketball near Our Lady of Grace. Investigators picked up 55 casings there.
Hodges stood with the Hennepin County sheriff and the Edina and Eden Prairie chiefs and said these gangs are not the old kind. His words: they are coming from two-parent homes, living in apartments at about $3,500 a month, driving BMWs and Mercedes, in houses that cost more than his mortgage. No drugs. No big stashes of cash. "They're out here simply shooting each other based on social media beef. Period."
He called them the violent version of a rich kid playing gangster — loose crews named after suburbs like Shakopee, Burnsville, and Hopkins, not the ranked gangs of the '80s and '90s. Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher says his office has identified about 300 members across 12 gangs. They want a regional task force back.
Hodges also went after Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty. Her office stopped charging most felony cases that start as low-level traffic stops. His argument: with no drugs to investigate, a stop is often how officers find a switch before someone has already fired into a street.
To be clear about what Hodges himself said: the vast majority of Somali Americans are working and raising families, and these kids are not the whole community. He also said witnesses who know what happened are not talking, and that is slowing the cases.
That is the record. A residential street took about 100 rounds. Police say the motive was a social media beef, the shooters had money and stable homes, and the guns were illegally converted. The chiefs want a task force. The county attorney's charging policy is now part of the fight. And the witnesses, for now, are silent.