MINNEAPOLIS — American Indian leaders on Minneapolis’ South Side say they’ve been overwhelmed this summer with large outdoor gatherings of transient people, drug users and dealers, and are demanding police escalate arrests.

The executive directors of several community organizations have resolved to draw 50-yard “exclusionary zones” around their properties, prohibiting homeless encampments and volunteers from helping them with food, Narcan and other survival gear. If an encampment forms in the proximity of one organization, others are obligated to help clear it.

The Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors, or MUID, a coalition of organizations trying to craft cohesive positions on issues in the Native community, adopted the resolution. But many of its member organizations also serve the South Side’s most vulnerable residents, taking in homeless people on winter nights and providing supplies while doing street outreach.

MUID Chair Robert Lilligren, who is also a Metropolitan Council member and CEO of the Native American Community Development Institute, acknowledged that not everyone in the coalition agrees with the resolution. Conversations have been full of “passion and anger” and ultimately organizations will have to interpret it for themselves, he said.

“At the risk of sounding a little dramatic, this was a desperate cry for help,” Lilligren said. “Things are really untenable in our Native community.”

Joe Hobot, president of the American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center, or OIC, vocational school, said he proposed the resolution because addiction in the community has destabilized his campus.

The school at 1845 Franklin Av. E. has lost staff and students — many of whom are in recovery and trying to find jobs after serving time in prison — because they have to walk through stretches of public drug use. Staff members are constantly having to chase off vehicles where prostitution takes place.

“We didn’t want to villainize the people within these encampments. We understood what they were contending with: addiction,” Hobot said.

“We are out of balance,” he added. ”Too much of our time, resources, energies and spirit has been dedicated to these folks under the bridges, and we have lost sight of maintaining safe and secure campuses for our community members that are not in the throes of addiction.”

In June, occupants of an nearby encampment approached American Indian OIC property. An argument with staffers nearly came to blows, and at one point individuals threw rocks, shattering the school’s front doors and windows.

A 27-year-old man was later charged with felony property damage.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara issued a special order earlier this year reinforcing officers’ authority to disband encampments and arrest trespassers. Since then, large tent cities have all but disappeared, with Mayor Jacob Frey’s office celebrating their decline in a report this week showing the city spent $63,000 on sweeping 13 small camps between December and March, compared to $333,000 spent on closing 17 larger ones in the second half of 2024.

“Encampments have never been the answer — safe, stable housing and a dignified place to sleep at night have been,” Frey said in a prepared statement.

While tent cities have declined, unsheltered homelessness and large gatherings with public drug use persist. The MUID member organizations say they are still seeking reprieve.

Last month, American Indian female leaders said trafficking in the community has reached emergency levels.

Ruth Buffalo, CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, said bad actors target her organization because they help women leave dangerous and exploitative relationships, disrupting the trafficking economy. The center’s community room windows were shattered this spring, and lately large crowds of people have been crowding the back steps. They’ve exhausted their resources on private security, she said.

“All of the Native orgs are doing what we can, but we can only do so much,” Buffalo said. “People are dying, and we’re going above and beyond of what we’re budgeted for because we love our relatives, we love our community members and we want everybody to live and thrive.”

The MUID resolution insists Minneapolis police increase patrols around member organizations and provide a weekly report to prove they are making arrests.

Third Precinct Inspector Jose Gomez, who attends MUID meetings, said the department needs to figure out what data it can release, especially when juveniles are involved. A regular report can be done and is being developed internally.

“Part of their frustration is the community sees a lot of what they describe as an open-air drug market, and hand-to-hand drug deals, and they’re not getting arrested,” Gomez said. “It’s challenging, because I tell them, they can call 911, and they can describe it, but we as law enforcement need to develop our own probable cause to stop, search and arrest somebody.”

Gomez said his Southside REACT (Relief, Emergency And Community) Team has been tasked with monitoring cameras in the hotspots MUID has identified to catch suspected traffickers in the act. They’ve also discussed bringing back a 1990s-era strategy of placing court-enforceable area restrictions on repeat offenders, so they can be arrested on the spot if seen in a place they’ve been banned from.

Outreach workers are grappling with how to help those who are hurting others.

Vincent “Vinny” Dionne, who works with the community security group Many Shields Society, said at a recent MUID meeting that going to prison saved his life by forcing him to get sober. Yet harm-reduction practices, like having Narcan on hand, are sometimes all someone has to get to the next day.

“I want to be on both sides,” Dionne said. “All of us in the community need to figure something out. What are we going to do? Are we going to continue to let our people kill themselves?”

Community activist Mike Forcia, who works at the Homeward Bound shelter, agreed with MUID’s demand for more arrests of drug dealers. But he hopes society comes to see that the people under the bridges — some he’s known since they were kids — are self-medicating deeper problems.

“In my community specifically, we are tethered to our historical and generational trauma,” he said.

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