By Jake Weyer
Northeast Beat Contributor

Crime trends, safety tips, photos of wanted criminals and a variety of other public safety news delivered to your doorstep.

That’s what the creators of new publication the Minneapolis Defender plan to provide Northeast Minneapolis and parts of Southeast Minneapolis once a month starting April 24.

The newspaper is the brainchild of Northeast Citizen Patrol (NECP) leaders and crime-prevention activists John Schulte, Shelley Leeson and Mark Fox. The trio’s goal is to increase community awareness of crimes in the area and spur readers to play a part of preventing those crimes.

“To stop a problem, you have to become aware of a problem,” Schulte said.

The 20,000-circulation paper will be distributed free to homes and businesses in a rotation of 2nd Precinct neighborhoods each month. Schulte said he would like to deliver the paper to every home in the area and eventually expand coverage and circulation throughout the rest of the city.

Subscriptions are offered and 40 percent of the money made will be used to fund the NECP. The newspaper idea originally came from an NECP finance and promotion discussion about a year ago. The group was originally going to hire an advertiser and occasionally publish articles.

“We thought if we’re going to be doing all of this we might as well have a whole new paper,” Schulte said.

To further the paper’s crime prevention focus, Schulte, Leeson and Fox are working with area schools and youth organizations to get kids involved in the paper’s delivery. The job pays handsomely, Schulte said, and should help keep young people away from illegal ways of making money such as drug dealing.

The Defender is in a league of it’s own when it comes to Northeast publications, but the new paper will still compete with other area media outlets. Schulte said the paper would provide more detailed public safety information than is offered in other publications that cover the area.

Kerry Ashmore, longtime publisher of community newspaper the Northeaster, said his paper reports significant crimes and trends, but does not run regular maps or other public safety information. Ashmore said he welcomed the Defender, which will undoubtedly compete for the same advertising.

“There’s hardly anything in the business world that doesn’t get better when competition increases,” he said.

Residents will probably have mixed reactions to the Defender, said Waite Park resident and artist Lauri Svedberg. Some are going to say a publication focused on crime will make the neighborhood look bad, she said, while others will embrace the information the newspaper provides.

She is among the latter group.

“I think knowledge is power,” she said. “If we know, we can deal with what we need to deal with.”

Svedberg has lived in Northeast since 1980 and regularly walks the area with her dog. Nuisance crimes committed by juveniles are among the more noticeable crimes in the area, she said. She likes to keep tabs on what crimes are happening and where, so she can be a part of getting rid of them.

“The worst thing to do is ignore it and hope it goes away,” Svedberg said. “Because it’s there.”

Northeast Crime Prevention Specialist Carol Oosterhuis said she encourages residents to join neighborhood block clubs as a way to be proactive about keeping Northeast safe. She said she was concerned that the Minneapolis Defender might scare residents rather than get them involved in community crime prevention.

“I think if you have people reporting on crime, it’s not as good as hearing it directly from your neighbors,” Oosterhuis said.

Leeson said the Defender is not meant to frighten readers and she, Schulte and Fox are confident it will pull the community together to fight crime.

“We think that by bringing awareness of these issues people will be more alert,” Leeson said. “And they can protect themselves.”

An online version of the Minneapolis Defender can be found at www.minneapolisdefender.com.

Who’s looking out for you? John Schulte and Shelley Leeson of the Minneapolis Defender, a new newspaper covering crime and livability issues in Northeast and Southeast Minneapolis. Not pictured: Mark Fox. (Photos by Jake Weyer)

 Email This Article  Print This Article
Filed under: Crime, Media