Sheriff Says Somali Youth Gangs Are Running Wild in Minneapolis

A Minneapolis sheriff has triggered an uncomfortable conversation by saying out loud what you are not supposed to talk about in Minnesota. “Out of control” gangs of Somali youths are terrorizing the city, and the mayhem is poised to get worse.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher released a livestream video on July 6 decrying widespread violence by Somali gang members over the Fourth of July weekend. He also took the opportunity to criticize media outlets in the Twin Cities and the state for refusing to cover the problem.

Fletcher “stated that the Somali gangs are responsible for at least 14 murders in the last two years as well as over 100 shootings – many of them at high-profile events like graduations and the State Fair. Fletcher also said in his promo video that he heard from a Minneapolis police officer who said that 20 percent of their homicides are now Somalis,” local news site Alpha News reports.

The situation is blowing up right in front of the public eye.

‘It’s All About Ego for 99% of It’

“Investigators say Somali gang violence is growing quickly and now spans the metro [area], with 12 Somali gangs tracked from Minneapolis and St. Paul to St. Cloud, Apple Valley and Burnsville. Most of the violence involves guns, according to the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office,” Fox-9 TV in Minneapolis reports. “Authorities say the gangs are still young and growing, with about 300 people involved right now.”

Ramsey County Deputy Ben Seidel said the Somali youth gangs don’t operate like traditional inner-city gangs in the sense of being motivated by money. “From what I’ve seen... it’s all about showboating. It’s all about ego for 99% of it. They aren’t selling narcotics. It’s all about just gloating,” Seidel states in the video.

There’s a history to Somali gang violence in Minneapolis that explains the seeming novelty of these officers’ remarks. In blue-dominated Minnesota, criticizing the Somali community in any way is immediately defined as racist. The “R card” has been so weaponized in the state that health-care fraud was allowed to flourish for years, which may have cost American taxpayers up to $9 billion.

There is nothing new about Somali gangs in Minnesota. They have been identified as a growing problem for 20 years or more. And it has never sounded like child’s play. Every few years, the issue is ventilated, only to recede amid de rigueur pressure from “anti-racist” organizations and personalities.

The City of Minneapolis commissioned a study in 2007 after a series of robberies by Somali teens in 2005. As Minnesota Public Radio detailed at the time:

“The report’s author, consultant Shukri Adan, presented her findings to members of the city council.

“Adan says at first it was thought the Somali youth were involved in loosely organized groups of ‘troublemakers.’ However, Adan says as these young people ended up in jail, they met established gang members and learned from them how to organize.

“‘They’re very sophisticated and they’ve adapted some of that into the Somali gang structure. But for the Somali gangs that I’ve identified, they were specifically Somalis and all their membership were Somalis, even though they had associations with other gangs.’”

Yet leftist MPR made sure to point out that “[t]he report says gang activity is relatively small. Statistics from the Minnesota Gang Strike Force identifies 52 Somali gang members – less than one percent of all known gang members in Minnesota.”

Three years later, the Somali youth had moved on to serious organized criminal activity.

Somali Gangs Trafficking African American Girls

A “federal indictment unsealed in November [2010] in Tennessee charges 29 people with crimes from sex trafficking to credit card fraud to witness intimidation. It said the accused were members or associates of three Somali gangs – often acting as one larger gang – bent on forcing girls into prostitution for their own profit,” the Associated Press reported in 2011. The gangs were trafficking girls from Minneapolis to Nashville and Columbus, Ohio – three cities with significant Somali populations.

The article featured a harrowing account of the brutalization of a 12-year-old girl. And there was a further revelation that the professional “anti-racists” would rather you not hear about.

“The indictment details several instances in which young Somali or African American girls were taken from place to place and forced to engage in sex acts with multiple people. One girl was under 13 when she was first prostituted. Another girl was 18 when she was raped by multiple men in a hotel room,” the AP reported in November 2010.

Whereas much of the violence perpetrated by Somali youth gangs is targeted at their fellow East African immigrant communities, underage native-born American black girls were among those being sexually exploited by this ring, as well. Where was the outrage from the Congressional Black Caucus?

Just as with MPR, the AP seemed to downplay the number of Somali gang members in 2011. “There are seven Somali gangs in Minneapolis, and a total of about 200 documented Somali gang members and associates, [Minneapolis police officer and Somali community liaison Jeanine Brudenell] said – about 10 percent of the roughly 2,100 documented active gang members in the Minneapolis Police Department’s system. The gang members are a small fraction of the Somali population,” the AP stressed.

Fast forward to 2026 and we’re up to 300 gang members (and who knows how many more yet to be identified?). Even Sheriff Fletcher, while calling out the problem nobody wants to talk about, treads carefully.

“Fletcher was careful not to castigate the entire Somali community or even all of their youth in his comments,” Alpha News noted of the livestream video. “Rather, he said that the violence is stemming from a small number of misguided, mostly male youth, which he later clarified is about 300 young people participating in about 12 gangs across the metro [area] and Minnesota.”

There’s one final element we should emphasize. As Somalis moved en masse to states like Minnesota, they retained their fiercely held tribal identities.

“[C]lan rivalry is often the most important reason for gang violence” within the Somali community, Viktor Marsai at the Center for Immigration Studies wrote in March. “Clan violence is fueled not only in the offline space. More and more Somali TikTokers and Youtubers are using online platforms to glorify their own clan tradition and savage rival groups. In many cases, tens of thousands of people are following these accounts and add hundreds of comments. The inflammatory effects spill over from the online... these influencers utilize their clout to support violence in their country of residence and in Somalia.”

Americans may not be able to comprehend the meaning behind what Deputy Seidel refers to as “showboating” among Somali gang members. How much of this comes from lingering clan identification dating back to the old country? How much is fueled by a foreign culture wholly incompatible with the American way of life?