Minneapolis Handed a Violence Prevention Group Millions and Never Checked Who It Hired

A Minneapolis violence interrupter was caught on video assaulting a homeless man outside a grocery store.

A new city audit just revealed his program was one of dozens getting paid with no real oversight.

Millions of taxpayer dollars went out the door and almost nobody checked where the money actually landed.

The Violence Interrupter Program Minneapolis Never Checked Up On

Minneapolis built an entire industry out of the summer of 2020.

City Hall handed out more than a hundred contracts to community groups branded as alternatives to policing, all under the banner of "violence prevention."

Five of the biggest programs alone pulled in thirty six million dollars since 2023.

One of the groups on that list is called We Push for Peace.

A staffer from that Minneapolis-funded program was filmed assaulting a homeless man during an incident just across the city line, outside a St. Paul grocery store.

The city kept the contracts flowing anyway.

The city's own Neighborhood Safety Contract Management Audit, covering 2020 through 2025, found the reason why.

Contractors submitted invoices with no supporting documentation.

The city paid them anyway.

There were no standard site visits to confirm the work was even happening.

There was no system for escalating concerns when something went wrong.

Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota free-market think tank, put it plainly.

"The city seems primarily interested in shoveling money out the door," Glahn said, without ensuring recipients could perform the work or that residents saw any benefit.

Mayor Jacob Frey's administration ran this system for five straight years.

The Two Hundred Fifty Million Dollar Warning Minnesota Already Ignored

Minnesota did not need a new audit to know this playbook.

Federal prosecutors already proved it once, in a scheme prosecutors called Feeding Our Future.

Aimee Bock ran a nonprofit that was supposed to feed hungry kids during the pandemic.

Prosecutors called her the scheme's gatekeeper, the person who approved fraudulent meal sites in exchange for kickbacks, and a federal jury convicted her for building and protecting the network behind it.

That network took nearly two hundred fifty million taxpayer dollars meant for children's meals and spent it on a Plymouth house, a Minneapolis office building, Mercedes and Rolls-Royce vehicles, and designer jewelry, according to court records.

Minnesota built the exact same structure again for violence prevention: hand cash to community groups, skip the paperwork, and hope nobody asks where it went.

Governor Tim Walz has led the state through both scandals.

Nobody in St. Paul Wanted This Math Done in Public

Here is the part that should make every Minnesota taxpayer furious.

This was not a hidden scheme uncovered by federal agents years after the fact.

The violence interrupter assault happened on camera, in public, and the city funded that same program anyway.

An audit had to spell out, in writing, that Minneapolis handed out contracts with no invoices, no site visits, and no consequences.

That is not bureaucratic sloppiness.

That is a city government that built a funding pipeline for politically favored groups and then made sure nobody was watching it.

Feeding Our Future proved Minnesota's oversight system fails when the cash is flowing to the right kind of nonprofit.

This audit proves nobody in Minneapolis or St. Paul bothered to fix it.

Taxpayers in Walz's own state are now paying twice: once for a program that was supposed to stop violence, and again for the audit that had to explain why it did not.

Sources:

• City of Minneapolis, Neighborhood Safety Contract Management Audit Report (2020-2025), Office of the City Auditor.
• Bill Glahn, policy fellow, Center of the American Experiment, quoted commentary on the audit.
• "New audit in Walz's backyard exposes massive fraud risk tied to post-George Floyd era," Fox News, September 29, 2026.
• "Minneapolis Audit Points to Possible Fraud in Tim Walz's State," Breitbart, September 29, 2026.
• "The fraud never stops in Minnesota," Power Line, September 2026.
• "Before Minnesota's Latest Somali Scandals, There Was the Post-George Floyd Fraud," RedState, September 29, 2026.
• "Dozens Charged in $250 Million COVID Fraud Scheme," FBI.gov, September 21, 2022.
• "Federal jury finds Feeding Our Future mastermind and co-defendant guilty of $250 million fraud," U.S. Department of Justice, District of Minnesota.