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SPEAKER 1: Squad 313, info.

SPEAKER 2: Squad 313.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Barely two minutes into Minneapolis Police Sergeant John Paylo's patrol on East Lake Street, he's flagged down by a cabbie.

SPEAKER 3: I got a drunk guy here, and he won't move.

JOHN PAYLO: OK.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: While he's out on the sidewalk, a police radio bulletin warns of a man with a shotgun, seen getting into a dark-colored Lincoln near the pizza shack. Paylo takes a long look in the direction of the restaurant, about four blocks away. While Paylo attends to the call, the Lincoln vanishes into the night.

JOHN PAYLO: There's nobody that's been in this occupation that hasn't been hurt. And one of the first things you learn when you become a cop is that you will be hurt. You will probably be hurt numerous times throughout your career. Cops come to work, they wonder if tonight's the night they're going to get hurt.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Police call the night shift the dog watch. It's 11:00 o'clock, and the streets are busy. People talk on front porches and street corners. A woman is pushing a stroller, followed by two preschool-age kids. This is a part of the city police refer to as a gang war zone, where competing cartels carry out periodic battles over turf.

North of lake is populated by the Hispanic gangs, such as the Sereno Thirteens and Vatos Locos. South of lake, there are more African-American gangs, like the Rolling 30s Bloods, the Gangster Disciples, and the Vice Lords. It was the Vice Lords that figured prominently in the killing of Officer Jerry Haaf, September 25, 1992.

MIKE SAURO: I remember that night very well.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Police lieutenant Mike Sauro was a third precinct shift commander at the time of Haaf's murder.

MIKE SAURO: We were pulling left onto Lake Street, and we were going to the pizza shack to eat, which was approximately a mile away. As we cross the railroad tracks approaching Hiawatha, a garbled call came out on the radio.

[GARBLED SPEECH]

SPEAKER 4: Pizza shack, 1623 East Lake. We got a cop that was just shot here.

SPEAKER 5: Where on the body?

SPEAKER 4: We need an ambulance quick. I don't know where he's been shot. All I know is he's down.

MIKE SAURO: In the ascertain, that was officer needs help, officer down at the pizza shack.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Sauro and his partner were the first officers on the scene.

MIKE SAURO: I distinctly remember seeing Officer Haaf laying on the ground, chest And I saw where the injuries were, the bullet wounds that were on him. And I saw the blood coming out of him. And at that point, I felt it was definitely fatal wounds by their location.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: The Haaf shooting is widely believed to be retaliation for an incident earlier in the evening. Transit police were removing a passenger in North Minneapolis who didn't have bus fare. The man was black and also blond. An altercation erupted, and a crowd formed. In a brief, tense exchange, one of the transit cops got punched. Later that night, police chief John Laux and other city officials were meeting with neighborhood residents at North High School to talk about police relations.

JOHN LAUX: A group just kind of burst into the meeting and wanted to know what I was going to do about this blind Black bus rider that was thrown off the bus for not paying his fare. And just another example of police brutality and police insensitivity.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Someone at the North High School meeting broke out the windshield of a squad car in the parking lot. Hours later, Haaf would be shot dead.

JOHN LAUX: Certainly, we could say something was going to happen, but cold blooded murder of a police officer, that's-- that just isn't what happens in Minneapolis.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: In the summer of 1992, the lines between community activist and gangbanger were blurred. Gang leaders had sway over an impoverished minority population that police departments, politicians, and social service organizations had trouble reaching. A group of known gang members formed United For Peace and worked with police, reaching out to young black residents to stop gang shootings. But many officers reviled United For Peace and openly opposed police administrators who met with the group. The Haaf shooting not only shocked the city, it also opened a chasm in the department.

JOHN LAUX: It is a tight rope. It's a balancing act to keep the officers engaged, and motivated, and feeling that they're supported by their chief and also keep officers, in some cases, who always walk that fine line edge, who look for any excuse to be judge and jury out on the street.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: It was a tense seven weeks before police brought charges in the shooting. In that time, the Minneapolis Police Federation aired a radio ad, looking for tips.

SPEAKER 6: They stalked him, waited until he was alone, snuck up behind him, fired their illegal guns into his back.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: The ad urged citizens to call the union, not the administration.

SPEAKER 6: What will Jerry Haaf's death mean? That's up to us. People are afraid in Minneapolis. If the police aren't safe, who is? Your police, members of the Minneapolis Police Federation are asking for your help. With your help, we'll catch the killers. But the violence must stop or jobs will continue to leave. Your neighbors will keep moving. Call us.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Police eventually arrested four black men, all connected to the Vice Lords gang. Amwati Pepi Mckenzie was convicted as one of the two gunmen. He maintains he wasn't given a fair trial and unsuccessfully took his complaints to the Minnesota Supreme Court. He continues to work on his own behalf from the state prison in Oak Park Heights, where he's serving a life sentence. He recently filed a new challenge to have his conviction overturned.

AMWATI PEPI MCKENZIE: You know, you get jurors, 12 people from, I mean, Minnetonka. Come on now. They live in their own secluded world. Their world is going to work, making money, coming home, and focusing in on what's on channel 11, 5, 4, and what's on the news. So basically, what's going on in the inner city has no bearing on them. They don't even care.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Haaf's death awakened the entire state to the extreme threat of gangs. Lieutenant Sauro, a controversial cop who has clashed with the administration, theorizes the killers may have acted out of some sort of delusional attempt to gain power, but instead generated a backlash.

MIKE SAURO: I think people realize, a lot of the politicians realize that these gangs have to be destroyed, end of discussion. Destroy their leadership and get rid of them.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Gang violence helped push Minneapolis' homicide rate to its highest peak ever in 1995. Violent crimes have decreased since then, though. And police say the creation of the Minnesota Gangs Strike Force and increased sentences for crimes associated with gang activity are big reasons for the progress. Department officials and officers alike say gangs are still active, but are a much lesser threat than they were 10 years ago, partly because so many gang bangers are in jail. But any bridge between the police and the city's poor black residents is fragile. Former chief Laux says 10 years later, the same undercurrent of tension remains.

JOHN LAUX: When there isn't some sort of pressure, you get lulled into, well, it's kind of calmed down, so what's the big deal? And we'll just go on business as usual. And maybe 10 years from now, we'll dig out the headlines and say, look, we haven't accomplished anything. I hope not.

(SINGING) That saved a wretch like me.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: I'm Brandt Williams. The tensions between Minneapolis police and the city's minority residents have eased little in the 10 years since Jerry Haaf was killed, even though crime is down in some neighborhoods. Just weeks ago, tensions erupted into a riot in the Jordan neighborhood, after police accidentally shot a young boy during a drug raid. Reporters were assaulted, and news vehicles were burned. For a long time, residents of the city, the scene was a too familiar one.

(SINGING) It was grace that taught my

A north Minneapolis church holds an outdoor service on a cool, blue, breezy last day of summer. The 25 congregants sit on metal folding chairs in the church parking lot, some shivering from the nippy weather. The wind reminds them they are at the mercy of the environment.

SPEAKER 7: I guess it's going to be a little windy, as you could tell.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: The wind is just one harsh reality facing members of the Jordan New Life Church. During the service, two open air drug deals are conducted within sight of the churchgoers. Later, a police cruiser drives by slowly, as officers closely watch a young black male in a bright red sweat suit walk by. For churchgoer and neighborhood resident Linda Robinson, both sights are common. Robinson says she's tired of the crime and drug dealing in the neighborhood. But she says some police officers treat law-abiding black residents and law-breaking black residents the same way.

LINDA ROBINSON: I mean, they could have dealt with somebody on 26 and come to my house to see a possible robbery. And they're dealing with me the same way they just dealt with somebody who's selling drugs. So it depends where they are. I guess they need to go back to humanity classes.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Both Robinson and the church are located just blocks from the epicenter of the disturbance in August. She says she's lived in Minneapolis for over 20 years and remembers the shooting of officer Jerry Haaf. Robinson says she thinks police community relations have declined since then. Activists like Spike Moss agree.

SPIKE MOSS: We're still dealing with the same situation of race hate, not racism, race hate perpetrated on our people behind the badge. And that's a dangerous situation when you abuse the law, or abuse the badge and the oath that you take, and use that to abuse people of color.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Moss is the vice president of The City, Inc. In 1992, he helped form United For Peace, the group of gang members who worked with Minneapolis police to quell gang violence. Ten years later, the police brought in The City, Inc to help keep the peace in Jordan.

Moss and other activists point to statistics that show the incarceration rate for African-Americans in Minnesota is 20 times higher than that for White people, the widest such disparity in the country. Traffic stop data collected by both Minneapolis and Saint Paul police departments show that African-American motorists were more likely than Whites to be pulled over.

JIM NELSON: From my perspective, having worked in South Minneapolis since 1971, it was easy for me to see how you would call the police force an army of occupation.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Jim Nelson was the director of The City, Inc 10 years ago when officer Haaf was shot. Nelson knew the young men convicted of the Haaf killing. He says the race and residency of police officers are still factors which instill distrust of the police among the city's minority residents. Nelson says the predominantly White police force is made up of people who don't live in the city and can't or won't distinguish between law-abiding African-Americans and those who are criminals.

JIM NELSON: You don't live here. You work here. You don't look like us. You don't know us. That's a huge problem.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Over the past decade, the crackdown on gang activity has led to a decline in violent crime. But Nelson, who wrote his doctoral thesis on his 14 years at The City Inc, says crime fighting is only one strategy. And so far, he says, not enough energy is being put into keeping young people from entering a life of crime.

JIM NELSON: Folks, we've learned these lessons. We've learned these lessons. If you're not going to directly engage young people that are causing problems, to find out what's up with them, and then to figure out how you can develop opportunities for them to get involved in other things, you're going to reap what you sow.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Nelson and other activists say until those larger community problems are tackled, there is always a chance for unrest, like that in August in Jordan and that which claimed the life of Jerry Haaf 10 years ago. With Art Hughes, I'm Brandt Williams, Minnesota Public Radio.