The latest addition to the Alpha News team, Emmy Award-winning reporter and anchor Liz Collin, spoke with the person behind Crime Watch Minneapolis on the premiere episode of “Liz Collin Reports.”
For reasons of privacy and safety, Crime Watch Minneapolis has remained anonymous. The interview was conducted without video and the person’s voice has been disguised.
Crime Watch Minneapolis was created in 2010 by a person involved in public safety advocacy since the mid-2000s. The idea started as a simple Facebook page and has ballooned over the years to multiple pages covering different areas and a Twitter account with over 56,000 followers. Across all platforms combined, Crime Watch has nearly 400,000 followers.
“I thought people want to know what’s going on in their neighborhood,” Crime Watch said. “If you live in south Minneapolis and Linden Hills, you don’t necessarily want to have your feed filled up with what’s going on in north Minneapolis. It might not be important to you. So that’s why I split all [the pages] up.”
As for why they run Crime Watch, the person emphasized that they care deeply about public safety and drawing attention to serious problems with Minnesota’s “lax” criminal justice system.
“I’m a public safety advocate. I’m a law and order kind of person, and I’m not afraid to say that. I think that’s okay,” Crime Watch said. “I think that criminals need to be held accountable.”
“I’ve come to learn so much over the years of how our system is not working, that people are not being held accountable. And it’s driving me more and more to tell people the system isn’t working, people are being more and more victimized by this lax criminal justice system,” they added.
Liz and Crime Watch also discuss how they obtain and post their information in such a timely manner, the Twin Cities crime situation, and plenty more.
LISTEN:
Evan Stambaugh
Evan Stambaugh is a freelance writer who had previously been a sports blogger. He has a BA in theology and an MA in philosophy.
