07/07/2026
📢📄City Council Vice President Jamal Osman issued the following statement in response to recent comments by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher about Somali youth and gangs.
Community violence must be taken seriously. But scapegoating Somali youth, spreading fear, and connecting local young people to terrorism abroad is harmful, dangerous, and does not make our communities safer.
At a time when law enforcement should be deepening relationships with Somali families, youth leaders, faith leaders, service providers, and community organizations, Sheriff Fletcher is choosing to blame instead of partner.
We can take violence seriously without demonizing a community. Somali youth deserve investment, dignity, opportunity, and respect.
📎Full statement attached.
👇🏾Full Text of Statement:
Statement from Council Vice President Jamal Osman on Sheriff Fletcher’s Comments About Somali Youth
I was dismayed and deeply disappointed to hear the recent comments made by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher on his social media show, Live on Patrol. His remarks painted Somali youth as responsible for violence in Minneapolis and went even further by attempting to connect local youth violence to terrorist organizations abroad.
That kind of rhetoric is not only wrong - it is dangerous. It targets an entire community, creates fear, and makes it harder to build the trust we need to actually keep people safe.
Community violence is a serious issue, and it affects all of us. But we cannot solve it by scapegoating one group of young people or by using fear to divide our neighbors. The root causes of violence are years of disinvestment, poverty, lack of opportunity, social isolation, and systems that have failed too many families for too long.
At a time when law enforcement should be deepening relationships with Somali families, youth leaders, faith leaders, service providers, and community organizations, Sheriff Fletcher is choosing to blame instead of partner. That is not public safety leadership. Real leadership means showing up with humility, listening to the people closest to the problem, and working together on solutions that protect everyone.
As elected leaders, our responsibility is to bring people together and do the hard work: investing in youth, supporting families, expanding opportunity, and building public safety systems rooted in relationship, communication, accountability, and trust - especially with communities that have too often been over-policed, misunderstood, or ignored.
This is not the first time Sheriff Fletcher has singled out ethnic or racial communities during his time in office. That pattern should concern all of us. It shows a troubling willingness to sow division, stoke racial resentment, and speak about communities without the cultural understanding and care that public leadership requires.
Our Somali neighbors are an essential part of who we are. Somali youth deserve investment, dignity, opportunity, and respect - not public officials using their platform to stereotype them.
We can take violence seriously without demonizing a community. We can demand safety while also demanding fairness. And we can build a future where every young person, in every neighborhood, has the support they need to thrive.
