Police arrest former ‘violence interrupter’ from taxpayer-funded group for allegedly selling drugs

A former “violence interrupter” from a nonprofit group meant to help Minnesota police was detained Saturday on drug and weapons charges.

The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office arrested Saaundre Burns for allegedly selling cocaine or methamphetamine, selling heroin or fentanyl, a controlled substance crime, and illegal gun or ammo possession, county records show. Burns was a team lead for Teaching Our Urban Communities Hope Outreach, which deploys violence prevention workers whom Minneapolis has contracted as a proactive response to crime in troubled areas. His biography remained on TOUCH Outreach’s website as of Wednesday, but Burns has not been a member of the group for about a month due to medical issues, Executive Director Muhammad Abdul-Ahad told the Washington Examiner.

The Minneapolis nonprofit organization received more than $2.1 million in overall public funds since 2023, according to its latest available tax filings. Burns’s arrest reflects a pattern of similar violence prevention activists getting charged with crimes in liberal cities.

Saaundre Burns, 44, poses for a mugshot after his Sept. 26, 2026, arrest in Minnesota on drug and weapons charges. (Image credit: Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office)

TOUCH Outreach is “aware of” the incident, Abdul-Ahad told the Washington Examiner. “We acknowledge the reports that are circulating,” he said.

Court records do not yet list an attorney for Burns, who is held on a $400,000 bond.

Burns’s group began its work in 2020 as the city grappled with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody and the resulting demands for police reform. A June audit from the city found that funding for violence interrupters is at “increased risk of fraud, waste, and abuse,” the Washington Examiner previously reported.

Improving public safety “means looking closely at instances that do and don’t require a police response and realizing efficiencies for sworn personnel as we’re able,” Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a 2021 budget speech praising private-sector violence interrupters. Frey said the following year that he was “making violence prevention funding a matter of practice.”

“In Minneapolis, we’ve rejected the false dichotomy that good policing cannot coexist with effective public health-based violence prevention,” he said then.

Burns was previously convicted of drug sale and possession in 2008, fare evasion in 2014, drug possession the same year, and traffic offenses several times, according to court records.

DEEP-POCKETED DONORS FLOCKED TO THE SPLC TO HEAL AMERICA’S DIVISIONS. DID IT PAY OFF?

Multiple media outlets covered Burns sympathetically since 2020, with the left-wing publication The Appeal complaining in 2024 that “a lack of consisting funding” was hindering TOUCH Outreach’s work.

“We’ve been boots on the ground for quite some time now,” Burns told the outlet. “We gotta keep doing the work and we got to stay consistent.”

Share this article:

Facebook

Twitter