Push is on to bring St. Paul's success solving nonfatal shootings statewide
ST. PAUL, Minn. - When St. Paul police launched a nonfatal shooting unit in 2024, the improvements came almost immediately: The department's clearance rate for solving nonfatal shootings nearly doubled in just one year.
In an effort to replicate that success across Minnesota, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and other local officials on May 7 pushed for the state Legislature to pass a bill that would put $1 million toward a statewide grant program aimed to improve investigations of nonfatal gun violence.
Created in January 2024, St. Paul's nonfatal unit investigates shootings with the same resources and intensity as its homicide unit. Nonfatal shootings in St. Paul dropped 62% from 2024 to 2025.
Speaking at a Thursday news conference, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said passing the bill to create the Minnesota Clearance Grant Program would go a long way toward helping other cities reduce gun violence.
"These cases are solvable, as St. Paul has proven in the last two years, but you need the resources to solve them," Fletcher said.
If the bill is approved, the state's commissioner of public safety would be responsible for creating the grant program. The commissioner would also need to prioritize approving grant applications from agencies that have high rates of unsolved nonfatal shootings and inadequate staffing.
The bill was authored by DFL Rep. Cedrick Frazier.
One of the benefits of focusing on solving nonfatal shootings just like homicides, officials said Thursday, is that it can help with reducing other crime rates since it leads to the arrests of potential repeat offenders.
In St. Paul, the creation of a nonfatal shooting unit was made possible by a $2.9 million grant the Legislature approved in 2023.
The money has helped pay for overtime for nonfatal shooting investigators to come in after hours and for the forensic services unit to process shootings in real time. In the past, investigators would be assigned the next morning, St. Paul Assistant Police Chief Paul Ford said at the news conference.
"This funding is critical, and I think what we did in St. Paul can be replicated in other communities that are experiencing the same problems," Ford said. "I would implore our legislatures to pass this funding."
The work of St. Paul's nonfatal shooting unit means shooting suspects are arrested more often and don't have a chance to reoffend, Cmdr. Nikkole Peterson, who leads the unit, said in an interview last year. The city recorded 15 homicides last year, the lowest in a decade.
Several other crime stats have improved significantly since St. Paul's unit was created, according to Choi's office.
While $1 million is less than what St. Paul received for its unit, Choi said it's a positive start in order to start a statewide program and will hopefully lead to additional funding in the future.
"I think a great victory for the state of Minnesota and for the people would be to get this funding started, get a process started, get people thinking about this," Choi said.
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This story was originally published May 7, 2026 at 8:56 PM.