Talk:Crime in Minnesota

Neutrality

Hello. I removed some content for bias and neutrality issues. According to the rules it should require a consensus before just being readded to the article. I didn't see a talk page discussion so I made one. Encyclopedic Poptart (talk) 05:41, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Mass deletion does not appear to be the solution for "bias". The linked article appears to balance the coverage of the issue. 49ersBelongInSanFrancisco (talk) 06:32, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Given the number of different editors who have reversed your wholesale removal, there appears to be no consensus for the change. Consensus can and usually does develop through editing. Could you be more specific about the "bias and neutrality issues"? —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:20, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Per WP:ONUS no consensus for a change results in that change staying out. It was all added by you as well. Not to mention, with WP:BLP a talk page consensus seems to be the norm. Luna (talk) 11:31, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Notable incidents isn't a very good section to have regardless, but as it stands I also think that there are issues with the placement there. Outside of conservative political circles the case is very fringe. Luna (talk) 11:42, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

WP:BLP is hardly applicable here - no individuals are named in the content. And even if it were, that would be relevant only if the content were unsourced or poorly sourced. It is not. Do you have any suggestions for improvement? Or is removing content wholesale the only thing you're capable of in this topic area? —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:22, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Lunarscarlet Anything else to add here? Any suggestions for improvement? —Ganesha811 (talk) 00:22, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

WP:BLP is very applicable because it's a case about named people. The placement here would also violate WP:NPOV in a variety of ways because, as mentioned, outside of conservative political circles the case is fringe. Luna (talk) 02:01, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Whether or not BLP applies, it's only a problem if the content is unsourced or poorly sourced. This is not. As to your comment that outside of conservative political circles the case is fringe - could you explain what you mean by that? I'm certain you must know that Feeding Our Future, Operation Metro Surge, the killing of Renee Good, and the killing of Alex Pretti were extremely widely covered in all kinds of national and international media. Essentially every reliable source has written about these topics, usually repeatedly. In what way is that fringe? —Ganesha811 (talk) 02:42, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

@Lunarscarlet anything further to add? Again, any suggestions for improvement? —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:28, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

BLP applies to more than verifibility. See WP:VNOT or the text in BLP which says WP:NPOV. outside of conservative political circles the case is fringe means exactly what it says. We are talking about Feeding our Future, not Operation Metro Surge, or the two incidents with those people. Luna (talk) 09:36, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

You removed the content about Operation Metro Surge and the killings of Good and Pretti too! There is clearly no answer that will ever satisfy you. I hate to launch RfCs all over the place, but since that's clearly required, that's what I'll do. I'm done arguing with you about this. —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:18, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

RfC: Inclusion of certain events

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

No consensus. Participants were split, with objections based on WP:BLPCRIME, WP:RECENTISM, and WP:DUE. This was not mentioned in the discussion, but I'll note that for articles where due weight is the only objection, Category:Crime in Minnesota or a subcategory might be an appropriate alternative.

---

Should this article (Crime in Minnesota) include any mention of Feeding Our Future, Operation Metro Surge, the Killing of Renee Good, or the killing of Alex Pretti?

See the above talk section for WP:RFCBEFORE. —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:37, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Survey

• Include all. All four of these topics are relevant to Crime in Minnesota. FoF was the largest pandemic-era crime by dollar amount and has received extensive statewide and national coverage since 2022. Operation Metro Surge was launched in response to FoF and resulted in the killings of Good and Pretti. All four are inextricably linked and at least three of them are crimes committed in Minnesota, perhaps the most widely covered in many years (since the murder of George Floyd). All four should be mentioned at an appropriate level of detail, given a high-level summary in a few sentences like the Floyd murder. —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:43, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
• Include all per Ganesha. The objections in the above section from those arguing to exclude are not convincing; one mentions unspecified "bias and neutrality issues", while the other claims without justification that "the case is very fringe", ignoring the mountains of coverage that it has received in reliable sources.

Feeding Our Future was indeed the single costliest COVID-era fraud scam , making it worthy of mention in an article about "crime in Minnesota". Operation Metro Surge was launched at least partly in response to FOF and other Minnesota fraud cases . I think the killings of Good and Pretti are WP:DUE for mention as part of the operation, but per WP:BLPCRIME shouldn't be mentioned as "crime" unless a conviction is secured. Astaire (talk) 12:38, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

• Include only Feeding our Future. That one I think is pretty clearly worth including considering the scope of it, but the inclusion of the other ones raises the question: how exactly is this "Crime in Minnesota"? What about Operation Metro Surge and the killings are "Crime in Minnesota"? In order for these events to be part of the article we have to be asserting some part of them are criminal, and how exactly are we going to do that without running afoul of WP:BLPCRIME? I'm not seeing it. I looked at the diff posted in discussion and I'm not seeing anything in it that explicitly states what about these events are criminal, and that pretty much means it can only be interpreted as Operation Metro Surge and the killings being acts of criminality. If any convictions are secured in relation to these events I would be in support of adding them to the article, but until then WP:BLPCRIME has to be respected. ―Maltazarian ^{(talk$\lor$investigate)} 13:38, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
• Exclude Feeding our Future and Operation Metro Surge Feeding our Future was added under "notable incidents" despite not being very notable, and the wording was biased. While it's questionable if this article should even exist, the point of these sorts of articles isn't to single out cases, it's to talk about broad trends. Encyclopedic Poptart (talk) 01:30, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

  — Encyclopedic Poptart (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. —Ganesha811 (talk) 04:10, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

• Yes, this is very well documented. Hi! (talk) 07:08, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
• Exclude A combination of categorical issues and being not WP:DUE. There are significantly more prominent Minnesota events that are not present, and I don't think the intention of these articles was to be individually curated POV list of what editors think meets the cut and doesn't. See Crime in Ohio. Luna (talk) 10:50, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

  What events do you refer to? Why can we not include them and the subject of this discussion? ―Maltazarian ^{(talk$\lor$investigate)} 16:04, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

• Include all Fraud is a crime; Minnesota has been embroiled in fraud controversies (which we have an article about: see 2020s Minnesota fraud scandals); and Feeding Our Future has been called the "country’s largest [Covid] pandemic relief fraud scheme"; the content is well-sourced and WP:DUE to include in the Crime in Minnesota#Notable incidents section. Some1 (talk) 14:11, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
• Exclude Reliable sources do not support that Feeding our Future is a notable incident when looking at all Minnesota history and Operation Metro Surge is not relevant to this article. I don't have as much of an opinion on the others. ~2026-14073-12 (talk) 15:03, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

  — ~2026-14073-12 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. —Ganesha811 (talk) 15:05, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

• Exclude all, but really we should reconsider the entire notable incidents section, which is a mess of WP:RECENTISM (which these additions would only exacerbate.) Were there no significant crimes in Minnesota between 1920 and 1965? We go from two prior to 1960, to (almost precisely, to a suspicious extent) one a decade from 1960 to 1990, to three in the 00s, to ten in the 2010's, to fifteen in the six years from 2020 to 2026. Nothing in the article or sources suggests that crime has increased, or that these crimes are actually more notable or have any more long-term coverage; they're simply being thrown in because people add things whenever it dominates more than a few news cycles. But this article isn't supposed to be a list of every crime in the state that got coverage, it's supposed to summarize the broad topics. Touching on broad eras might make some sense, but nothing in the sources supports the idea that this is an era comparable to the "gangster era", and combining them into a section is WP:SYNTH. We need to set clear standards for inclusion for individual crimes, apply them evenly across all decades, and look extremely critically at anything that would result in an unusual number of crimes being listed for recent years - obviously there's no guarantee that notable crimes are evenly distributed but the idea that there were sixteen noteworthy crimes from 2020 to 2026 and none from 1920 to 1965 doesn't pass a sniff test; and any standard that would allow 15 individual crimes to be listed for just 6 years is obviously too permissive to produce a meaningful list. Regardless, the ultimate standard for inclusion ought to be "clear coverage indicating that these crimes are significant examples of the overall direction of historical crime in Minnesota, and none of these pass that threshold yet. Honestly, my preference would be to just delete the notable incidents section entirely, which seems like it's just going to be a magnet for coatracks and recentism; it might be reworkable into a section on broad eras of crime (the "gangster era" part is perhaps workable) but I'd expect each era to be backed by high-quality academic coverage discussing the era as a whole, not synthed together out of news coverage for individual incidents. Either way I see no reasonable standard for the section that would allow these additions; they don't pass the WP:10YEARTEST for a section that is meant to cover the entire history of crime in the state rather than merely what happens to be in the headlines today. --Aquillion (talk) 04:46, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  I think this is a fair argument, but really deserves broader consideration among the whole set of articles found in Template:CrimeUS. Though given that FoF was the largest single fraud in the United States related to covid (which led to a vast increase in fraud nationwide), you don't think it could pass the WP:10YEARTEST? The case has already received regular national coverage for 3+ years and involves scores of defendants and hundreds of millions of dollars. This was no run-of-the-mill crime. —Ganesha811 (talk) 05:11, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Discussion

• This diff shows the most recent version of the disputed content, but this RfC is not about that specific wording, but whether those topics are relevant to this article in general. —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:39, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

  I mean, realistically, what wording would be used? Something about it has to be criminal if it gets it's own section in the article, but what exactly is it that we are calling criminal? How are we doing that without WP:BLPCRIME issues? ―Maltazarian ^{(talk$\lor$investigate)} 13:40, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

  I think it's a fair point and we would have to consider BLPCRIME - your position above is reasonable. —Ganesha811 (talk) 15:23, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

• To be clear, if you intended for this RFC to be a referendum on that diff, then you misworded it and needed to either start another RFC or make sure that people who want a full section for these events say so specifically - there is a huge difference between any mention, which you asked for in the RFC, and an entire section, to the extent that I feel this can reasonably be called a motte-and-bailey RFC, whether you intended it to be one or not. A positive result in the RFC would allow only a bare mention in the list, nothing else. --Aquillion (talk) 04:55, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  I didn't. I think specific wording can and should be worked out between editors, with the most recent version given as a starting point - any mention means what it says. I think that would likely go beyond inclusion in the list - it doesn't say a brief mention or a mention in the list. —Ganesha811 (talk) 05:07, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Close followup

(moved from User talk:Beland)

Hi! Thanks for assessing consensus at the RfC on Talk:Crime in Minnesota. Could you explain further why you view the discussion as no consensus? Focusing on Feeding Our Future, I see five editors who supported including that material. On the other side of the ledger, there were 2 SPAs in an area that has seen some sockpuppetry (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Ethiopian Epic/Archive). There were only two additional editors who opposed inclusion of Feeding Our Future in the article (Luna and Aquillion). Thanks. —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:51, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Taking a second read-through...discounting the SPAs, some reasonable objections were also made by established editors. 2020s Minnesota fraud scandals does seem pretty notable, but it's unclear if in the context of all crime in the state over hundreds of years, by due weight it should have its own section. The Discussion section pointed out that inclusion in the list and having a full section are different questions. I've added it to the list of incidents for now; maybe that's a reasonable compromise given the conflicting preferences of RFC participants. The question about recentism and the list of incidents seems like it needs a broader discussion to resolve, either to set criteria for this article or US crime articles generally. That would probably more firmly answer the question of how this incident should be treated.

It would probably also help resolve some objections and get a clearer sense of due weight if more material was added to the article about the long history and general trends of crime in the state. How much is there to say overall? That helps determine how much to say about any one given thing.

There are similar questions for Operation Metro Surge, but also problems of scope: immigration violations are usually a civil offense, not a crime, and as far as I know no one has been charged with a crime for these killings. So should they count? That wasn't really discussed in detail. Setting a clear scope for the list would help classify these incidents. In the meantime, I have added them to List of killings by law enforcement officers in Minnesota, where they are clearly in scope.

Good luck with the article! -- Beland (talk) 00:00, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Beland, can you read over this "Fraud scandals" section: (the content that prompted the RfC above), and let me know if you think that section is DUE for inclusion? If not, what changes would you make to the section to make it "due"? (I would be fine with removing that whole "Operation Metro Surge" subsection, but I do believe the fraud scandals themselves are noteworthy and notable to include in the main article as prose, as those scandals spanned years.) Some1 (talk) 00:26, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on crime in Minnesota, and did not intend to get involved beyond closing the RFC. I defer that judgement to interested editors and recommend engaging those who expressed concerns about that above. -- Beland (talk) 02:02, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree that this class of articles is a bit of a mess, and that this one in particular could be substantially improved in many ways. For now, adding FoF and the broader set of cases to the list seems like a suitable compromise. —Ganesha811 (talk) 15:16, 2 May 2026 (UTC)