MINNEAPOLIS — The City of Minneapolis, alongside park, county and transit law enforcement agencies, announced Thursday it is expanding enforcement against open-air drug markets throughout the city, pairing new patrols and surveillance cameras with continued outreach and recovery services.
The announcement comes just two days after federal prosecutors charged 25 alleged members of two Minneapolis street gangs, the Family Mob and the Amani Hudson Drug Trafficking Organization, in a sweeping takedown that involved a dozen arrests and multiple SWAT teams. Court documents allege the groups operated open-air drug markets along Lake Street and Park Avenue South and near 19th Street and Nicollet Avenue South, distributing fentanyl and fueling violent crime in the area.
Prosecutors said the scale of the alleged trafficking was staggering. The Family Mob group is accused of operating near Lake Street and Park Avenue for years, distributing large quantities of fentanyl, crack cocaine and methamphetamine, and using violence, including a fatal shooting in September 2025, to protect its territory. DEA Omaha Field Division Special Agent in Charge Dustin Gillespie said the defendants attempted to traffic more than 333,000 doses of fentanyl into Minneapolis communities over five months.
Mayor Jacob Frey framed Thursday’s enforcement push as connected to, but distinct from, the federal case, telling reporters the city’s approach targets the open-air markets themselves rather than the encampments sometimes associated with them.
“It’s time that we stop talking about [open-air drug markets] as homeless encampments,” Frey said. “The primary driver here is not homelessness and it is not a lack of shelter, it is deep addiction and pain.”
The strengthened enforcement is aimed at locations already known to the city for narcotics sales, assaults and weapons crimes, and draws on the Minneapolis Park Police, Metro Transit Police and Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office in addition to the Minneapolis Police Department. The effort includes installing surveillance cameras, adding patrol officers, and increasing citations and arrests for drug sales and use under city ordinance.
“We’ll never stop helping people who are struggling with addiction, and we will provide every opportunity to get care and get better,” Frey said in the city’s official announcement. “But if you’re dealing drugs, openly using drugs, or exploiting vulnerable people in any neighborhood, there will be consequences.”
MPD Assistant Chief Mark Klukow acknowledged the limits of enforcement alone but said inaction was no longer an option.
“We shouldn’t be arresting our way out of addiction, but we can’t and won’t ignore it,” Klukow said. “Open-air drug use will not be tolerated. The surrounding communities should not bear the burden of these issues.”
The concerns are not new to neighborhoods along the Lake Street corridor. On Blaisdell Avenue just north of West Lake Street, residents and business owners have spent the past year describing what many call an open-air drug market that persists despite periodic clearings, according to a Minnesota Star Tribune report. The nearby Whittier neighborhood has recorded a jump in stolen vehicle reports and a rise in assaults so far in 2026, with gun violence remaining well above pre-pandemic levels after peaking in 2024.
Similar tensions have surfaced near Baby’s Space, a south Minneapolis childcare center close to an encampment and drug market that has grown under the Cedar Avenue and Highway 55 overpass, according to CBS Minnesota. Staff there said a fence meant to discourage gathering has done little to stop it.
City Council Vice President Jamal Osman, who represents Ward 6, said the status quo was untenable for residents caught between addiction and public safety concerns.
“Open-air drug markets prey on people who are already struggling, put children and families in harm’s way, and force people in recovery to walk past the very crisis they are fighting to survive,” Osman said. “The community has been clear: we cannot keep managing this pain the same way and call it compassion.”
The enforcement announcement also included new partnerships with Indigenous organizations, reflecting the disproportionate toll addiction has taken on Native communities in Hennepin County. According to Hennepin County data, 264 people died of opioid-related overdoses in the county in 2024, and more than 10,000 emergency room or hospital visits involved opioids that year. Fentanyl was involved in more than 91% of those deaths, and American Indian and African American residents experience disproportionately higher rates of opioid-related deaths and hospitalizations, the county reports.
Red Lake Tribal Chairman Darrell Seki said the new partnerships were meant to build on, not replace, existing recovery work.
“Recovery and public safety are not competing priorities,” Seki said. “This commitment is not the end of the conversation. It’s the beginning of even stronger partnerships.”
City officials emphasized that the enforcement push does not come at the expense of existing services. The city’s Homeless Response Team will continue daily outreach efforts, and the Health Department will keep deploying its Mobile Medical Unit to provide addiction and health care services. The city said its three NARCAN vending machines have distributed more than 11,000 doses of the overdose-reversal medication to date.
Ellie Skelton, CEO of Touchstone Mental Health, said the goal is coordinated care rather than repeated crisis response.
“People living with untreated mental illness or substance use disorders deserve access to coordinated care rather than cycles of crisis,” Skelton said.
