The Cost Of Keeping The Mall Of America Safe
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- An 18-year-old Minnesota man has pleaded guilty to trying to join the terror group ISIS.
Abdullahi Yusef was charged last month with conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization.
He was arrested in November at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as he tried to leave Minnesota to go to Turkey.
Yusef pleaded guilty Thursday morning and could face up to 15 years in prison.
That news comes less than a week after a video from the terrorist group Al-Shabaab warned of an attack at the Mall of America.
So how safe is the mall, and how much does it cost to keep it that way?
A WCCO investigation found Bloomington police spend $1 million a year on Mall of America security.
That money is offset by taxes generated by the mall, but just barely. The city makes less off the mall than you might expect.
Our investigation found that because of an old deal, Bloomington hasn't gotten any of the half a billion dollars in property tax revenues generated by the mall.
It might receive money now, but it was part of the deal set up in the 80s to pay for the mall's infrastructure.
That deal is about to expire and in 2017. The city of Bloomington and its schools will start getting about $6 million a year.
For more than 20 years, Bloomington's share of the annual property taxes has gone to pay back the cost of building the roads, sewers and infrastructure that made the mall possible.
It's a common type of deal for major projects called "tax increment financing." It's the type of deal that would likely not happen today, according to Bloomington Port Authority Administrator Schane Rudlang.
"It was a huge gamble on Bloomington's part to finance the public improvements on the front end of the project," Rudlang said.
The city does collect $1.3 million a year from taxes on rides, movie admissions, liquor and from hotel stays at the mall.
And that pays for the nearly $1.1 million annual cost of the Bloomington police operation at the mall.
WCCO wondered how safe the mall is in light of last week's terror threat. We reviewed ten years of arrest records.
Last year's record was typical. While there were more than 1,600 arrests in 2014 -- mostly for shoplifting -- there were only 12 violent crimes, nine robberies and three aggravated assaults.
It's a remarkably-low number considering the mall has 42 million visitors a year -- and on some days could be counted as Minnesota's third biggest city.
"That's a lot of people and we want to think about that and we want to make sure that's a good, safe experience for them when they come here, and we want to keep them coming back," Maj. Doug Reynolds, the chief of the mall's security force, said.
Mall officials would not tell us how much they spend on their own security force.
Bloomington police do get federal grants, but they could not give WCCO a figure for how much of that is for the mall.
There has never been a terrorism arrest at the Mall of America.
