From anger to action: St. Paul crime victims work with lawmakers on new juvenile justice concept
ST. PAUL -- It was a few days after Christmas 2021 when Patrick Connelly said he saw and heard the worst thing in his life.
"The scream was horrific," Connelly recalled to WCCO. "Seeing and hearing your wife run for her life with our daughter in her hand. It's awful."
Connelly's wife was carjacked at gunpoint after being followed home by a car full of teenagers. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and police would soon track down the car - and arrest the kids, many of whom had a prior record of committing crimes.
"I was mad as hell," Connelly added. "I was really angry. Their records were pretty lengthy, and our belief was they should've been in a secure facility of some sort, and/or the programming they had gone through should've had more impact on their lives."
Thanks to mutual friends and colleagues, the family would soon connect with John Choi, the Ramsey County Attorney. Connelly said he also engaged in some "spirited" discussions with his neighbor, Erin Murphy, who happened to be a leading Democrat in the state senate.
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"We had some really tough conversations with folks, and I probably owe a lot of people an apology for the tone and language I used," Connelly quipped. "But Senator Murphy said to me that she's my neighbor first before being my Senator, and that was really meaningful."
The conversations would grow both in substance and in occurrence, with other stakeholders like the St. Paul police chief and Ramsey County sheriff joining in. The result was a proposed bill that would appropriate $10M to Ramsey County for up to seven "intensive trauma-informed therapeutic treatment homes" in residential settings. After remaining on the sidelines in the 2021-2022 session, the bill passed in 2022-2023 thanks to broad bipartisan support.
"It was, in that way, unusual but also powerful that this many people from divergent backgrounds got behind an idea that was solving a problem that everyone can see," Sen. Murphy (DFL-St. Paul) explained to WCCO. "We're not just sending [juveniles] to prison and throwing away the key. We recognize with support, they can return not to a life of destruction but a life of production, of being productive, and contributing to this beautiful life we have in Minnesota."
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi echoed that sentiment, and compared the secure residential facilities concept to rehab centers.
"What this bill is about is doubling down on this notion that if we had a setting not like a prison but more residential like of environment, where we have intensive services and staff working with a smaller number of kids," Choi said. "I think a lot of this is we're moving from a correctional model to a more a health and human services model."
The funding officially moves to Ramsey County's account on July 1, at which point county commissioners say they will lead a process that fully involves the community in identifying properties and building up staff and treatment resources.
"It's a really, really big deal," Commissioner Rena Moran emphasized. "What has not worked is taking them far away and not having parents, mothers, support services they need. What we know that we need is some wraparound services to support this type of concept, because what we're going to have at the end of the day is often the youth are coming from a community and they're going to go back into those communities."
For Connelly, as proud as he is of the bill, he's just as excited if not more enthusiastic about the entire process leading up to it - a combination of creativity and humility.
"It doesn't happen easily, I should say. It takes a lot of work," Connelly said.