Open drug use continues in Whittier

Dennis lives a few blocks from “chicken alley,” a nickname for a now fenced-off alley behind Lake Street where people have been loitering, selling and using drugs, and camping out for years. The open drug use and sales happening on Blaisdell Avenue between 29th and Lake streets didn’t start infiltrating his block until this year. Now it’s “non-stop.”

The drug activity is happening on Dennis’ block, he believes, because a drug dealer lives in a nearby apartment building.

He has watched, and documented, people buying drugs from an open window.

Minneapolis police have arrested the drug dealer twice. The first time was on a narcotics charge but he was back in his apartment less than 48 hours later, selling drugs to people. There is additional investigation being done to develop that case, according to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.

A second arrest for the drug dealer possessing a firearm occurred about a week later.

According to the Hennepin County Attorney Office’s complaint, police officers tried to stop the suspect after witnessing him sell drugs at 29th Street and Blaisdell.

The suspect fled on foot, tossing his possessions and attempting to hide. At the time of publication, the suspect is being held on bail of up to $100,000.

Neighbors say not enough is being done to cite and arrest people as they buy and do drugs on private property.

“MPD told us to put up no trespassing signs but their officers almost never cite people for it,” Dennis said. “It’s infuriating.”

Another neighbor close to 29th Street and Blaisdell Avenue said she is erecting a fence around her property to address the open drug use.

“We don’t believe in fences. We don’t want to put up boundaries,” Alice said. “We really want the community to be able to participate together, but putting up fences is the short-term answer.”

The Minneapolis Police Department said it “remains actively focused on addressing drug activity, trespassing, and quality-of-life concerns in the area.”

According to MPD Sgt. Garrett Parten, the Fifth Precinct deploys high-visibility patrols at Lake Street and Blaisdell Avenue every shift, leading to “numerous arrests, citations, and enforcement actions involving individuals engaged in criminal activity, including narcotics-related offenses.”

Dennis and other neighbors keep watch on the alley with video cameras, documenting drug sales, drug use, and people defecating on private property.

Calls to 911 in the Whittier and Lyndale neighborhoods for narcotics (drug) activity, overdoses, a person in crisis, a suspicious person, or unwanted person have spiked since early May.

Hennepin County response
When Uptown residents dealt with an influx of public drug users this winter, Minneapolis police and Hennepin County approached the situation with different tactics.

MPD asked businesses to post no trespassing signs so they could more easily cite people for trespassing. Police had issued a total of 176 trespassing citations and 91 arrests by the end of March in Uptown. Through April and early May, that number dropped to 61 trespassing citations and 39 arrests.

Hennepin County set up shop in Uptown and worked with people going through addiction and homelessness.

“We’re dealing with something that’s wild,” Julie Bauch Hennepin County’s senior strategist in opioid response said. Bauch said the medical field is confounded by the crisis and it is “pushing against all of our systems in ways that we have never seen before.”

Hennepin County takes a human-centered approach, acknowledging that everyone has a different reason for using drugs.

“There’s a lot of partnering around meeting someone where they’re at, and then not leaving them there,” Alexandra Kraak, a program manager in Hennepin County’s Adult Behavioral Health Department said. “That’s maybe why it feels like nothing’s getting done, but a change process is just so lengthy and unique and individual.”

Hennepin County provided pop-up weekly social services at Walker Library in April 2026.

“There’s a trillion different reasons why somebody is out there,” Hennepin County’s Deputy Director of Housing Stability Danielle Werder said.”It may look like a static group of people are being moved from place to place, but what’s happening in between that on a daily basis is a person is ready to engage in housing services, is ready to say yes to treatment, is ready to take harm reduction supplies, is ready to talk to that outreach worker.”

Hennepin County housed one chronically homeless person every day in April, Werder said.

“Our job is to be there with the services they need, to keep on showing up, and to get them to where they need to go as quickly as we can,” Werder said.

Getting people off of fentanyl is an important step of stopping the cycle of pushing groups of people around Southwest Minneapolis. But people need to want help in the first place.

“It’s not like an addiction we’ve ever seen before,” Bauch said. “It’s just so potent, and because it’s synthetic, which means it’s man-made, we don’t actually really ever know what we’re getting with fentanyl.”

Help is available via a “silver bullet” called suboxone, that people addicted to fentanyl can take daily as a pill or as an injection. If people addicted to fentanyl stay on the drug, it can be life saving.

“If we can get people on it, and then keep them on it, that’s the trick,” Bauch said.

There is a perception that the same group of people are being moved around Southwest Minneapolis, but social service experts say it’s not a static group.

“It’s this really fluid evolving group of people,” Bauch said. “Once you’re in recovery, it’s not linear, you’re in, you’re out.”

People who use drugs in public are not necessarily going through homelessness. “A lot of people are stably housed, but that housing place is not a place where they can use drugs, and so they go somewhere where they can,” Kraak said.

Mayor Jacob Frey said his thinking has shifted on addiction.

“I can’t overstate the impact that addiction has had on our streets, not just on one individual but on an entire neighborhood,” Frey said at an Uptown safety press conference on April 21.

“This is an area where my perspective has changed over the last seven years.”

Frey said people need to be met “where they’re at” by providing support systems like mobile medical units, treatment, and other social services.

“We also can’t be allowing open drug use on our streets,” Frey said.

Creating specific spaces for people to use drugs is federally illegal and Hennepin County follows federal law. (This hasn’t stopped cities like New York City from establishing safe injection sites.)

“Where we’re left is that (drug use) often happens in places that may make other people feel uncomfortable,” Kraak said.

In the meantime
In the alley behind what neighbors Jerry and Shirley call “the drug house,” are security cameras and no trespassing signs.

Jerry and Shirley were searching through their bushes on a summer morning, looking for a bag someone stashed, all caught on camera. It was gone before they could grab it and call the police.

The night before, a gun and narcotics connected to the nearby drug dealer had been thrown into Jerry’s yard that Minneapolis police recovered.

Neighbors have noticed that the police have been “cleaning” Blaisdell Avenue more often, which means people getting pushed off of the street.

“But then they’re here or somewhere else,” Shirely said. “And now they are back on Blaisdell.”

Editor’s note: We have used pseudonyms to protect the names of some of the residents quoted in this article, recognizing that they have received threats to their safety.