"Let's split up the loot boys and destroy all the evidence. We can all meet up later out near the old Anderson place by the dry wash. We can make plans there to re-group as the Drug and Firearm Task Force and start this all over again."

Omodt, a captain in the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office, became commander of the Strike Force in late January, after a preliminary audit by Campion's office discovered about $400,000 cash in a Strike Force safe. That audit was unable to account for the whereabouts of some money taken in seizures.

What I want to know is: how the hell did the Trib get those emails about the shredding so fast?

Gang Strike Force / Sheriff turns up missing vehicles
Police union head says politics being played with audit

By Mara H. Gottfried
mgottfried@pioneerpress.com
Updated: 05/27/2009 12:09:24 AM CDT

Ramsey County sheriff's investigators say they've tracked down the 14 vehicles that couldn't be located in an audit of the Metro Gang Strike Force.

The legislative auditor's review of the task force released May 20 was critical of sloppy bookkeeping. Some paperwork was missing for the vehicles in question, which is why they needed to be hunted down. But "the facts demonstrate the vehicles were never missing," said Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher.

Hennepin County sheriff's Capt. Chris Omodt, Gang Strike Force commander, suspended task force operations Thursday, after he said he found evidence investigators were shredding documents at the task force's New Brighton headquarters the previous night.

St. Paul Police Federation President Dave Titus has said at least two officers present were St. Paul officers who told him the documents being destroyed "were completely unrelated to anything to do with the audit."

Fletcher and Titus asserted Tuesday that Omodt should have accounted for the cars when auditors told him about them, before the report was released.

Titus said he believed "there are political motives behind it. I don't get why anyone would go to this level or this extent, but some wanted the old regime to look bad."

The audit focused on activity during Ron Ryan's tenure as the Gang Strike Force's commander. Ryan, a former St. Paul police officer and Ramsey County sheriff's deputy, retired in October.

Omodt did not return calls seeking commentTuesday.

As the audit was under way, Legislative Auditor James Nobles said his staff shared information with Omodt when they couldn't locate cars "and he would attempt to help us in any way he could, and some vehicles he was able to locate."

The Gang Strike Force's advisory board meets today to discuss its response to the audit and how to move forward. Fletcher said he plans to present the information his office found.

The report said the Gang Strike Force couldn't locate 13 of 80 vehicles forfeited between August 2005 and October 2008 because its records and case files didn't contain documentation. The vehicles still had active titles as of April, and three "were still registered to the person they were seized from or a lien holder," the report said.

Another car that was being held as evidence pending a hearing also couldn't be located, the report said.

The report noted the Gang Strike Force had a contract for towing and impound services, but investigators sometimes had cars towed to other law enforcement impound lots. "The strike force's vehicle tracking report was not always consistent with the information contained in the criminal case files about where a vehicle was actually towed," the report said.

A St. Paul police officer and a Ramsey County sheriff's deputy assigned to the Gang Strike Force contacted the Ramsey County sheriff's office during the weekend and reported "they believed there had been no effort to locate the cars before, during or after the audit," Fletcher said.

The two strike force investigators brought information to the sheriff's office at 9 a.m. Tuesday, and the case was assigned to the sheriff's office Special Investigations Unit at 10 a.m., Fletcher said. By 4 p.m., all the vehicles had been accounted for, Fletcher said.

Investigators with the Special Investigations Unit hit the streets, visiting locations where the vehicles were thought to have passed through, and matched the vehicle identification numbers (VINs) of the cars that were listed as missing with records at the locations. Fletcher said they determined:

# Four had gone to Cars With Heart and were resold.

# Six had gone to Twin Cities Transport & Recovery, of which two were sold to new owners and four were scrapped.

# Three had gone back to the registered owners.

# One was in a police impound lot.

The forfeiture documents were in order, but the final disposition documents showing what had happened to the cars were lacking, Fletcher said.

"However, it wasn't difficult to backtrack that simply by going to those two locations and getting the documentation," Fletcher said.

Auditors couldn't find documentation for the 14 cars, but they believed they "can be found and should be found," Nobles said Tuesday. "It wasn't our job to necessarily find them, though we went to extensive effort to locate the ones we could."

The issue for the auditors "was the strike force should be able to keep track of the cars it seized and document where they are and how they're being used," Nobles said.

An e-mail sent from an auditor to Omodt on April 21 asked for information about 17 cars. Paul Meskan, a Ramsey County sheriff's deputy assigned to the Gang Strike Force, said he was given the list that day or the following day.

Meskan said he and his partner went through case files and talked to investigators. They determined where 11 cars were that same day and gave the information to Omodt, Meskan said.

On the final list, six of the 17 original cars don't appear and three others were added, said Ramsey County sheriff's Lt. Dale Sommerhause.

"It was never communicated back to us that there were still other questions," Meskan said. "We would have been happy to resolve it, but we didn't know there was anything to resolve."

Nobles said his office can "only vouch for what the records showed at the time we examined them."

"We gave anyone and everyone at the strike force an extended period of time to find the cars or show us records of what happened to them. If they show up now, that's good, but it does raise the question as to why they couldn't find them weeks and weeks ago."

Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at 651-228-5262.

FBI to investigate gang strike force
by Tim Nelson, Minnesota Public Radio
May 27, 2009

St. Paul, Minn. — Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner Michael Campion put it bluntly today.



"The credibility of the Metro Gang Strike Force, I think, has been called into question, not only in the public but even within the criminal justice community," Campion said.

Campion was talking to more than a dozen police chiefs and sheriffs in St. Paul, sitting as the strike force's advisory board.

The state's top cop said he was troubled about allegations involving investigators who went to the unit's headquarters after he'd suspended its operations last week.

"My understanding, the reports that came to me, it was after hours and there was some shredding and there were some computers that were unplugged," Campion said. "Whether that was true or not, I don't know. But I think we need to sort through that and get some answers before we can proceed to go forward."

Campion told the board that he asked the FBI to investigate, and he gave more details about a state probe he announced last week. He said he'd hired former federal prosecutor Andy Luger and retired FBI agent John Egelhof to review the unit's operations.

The Legislative Auditor issued a report last week, saying the unit couldn't account for more than $18,000 in cash and 14 vehicles it had taken from alleged gang members. The unit has been operating since January on the financial proceeds of similar seizures.

The report also found lax financial controls. It questioned a trip by investigators to a conference in Hawaii, and found the unit hadn't been adequately reporting its seizures and activities to the state.

The state pays nearly $1 million a year to keep the strike force going, and cut off the money last week.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said officers feared that would kill off the unit. He said they had been retrieving their case files and destroying paperwork that might endanger gang informants if it fell into the wrong hands.

But Fletcher said there wasn't anything criminal about it.

"The timing was boneheaded and created a terrible perception. You can argue that it looks suspicious," Fletcher said. "But rest assured that those 30-some guys on that gang strike force are some of the hardest working cops that I have myself worked with over the years, and I have worked firsthand with a lot of them.

"These are some of the best cops that we have in the state of Minnesota. Are there things they could do better? Absolutely. I'm telling you, they're not bookkeepers. They're good cops."

But the questions about the unit have only been deepening. For example, the Minneapolis Police Department is dropping out of the joint effort, citing its own budget problems.

That's prompted some other departments to question the value of a cooperative effort that doesn't include the state's biggest city.

Other departments have also been questioning a new direction for the strike force, toward longer-term undercover investigations, rather than street-level intervention.

St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington said having the gang unit's boots on the ground has been critical in his city.

"The strike forces have largely been my savior for the last few years," Harrington said. "Whether its big special events where we know lots of gang members have come, or flareups that happen periodically, the strike force has saved my bacon on a bunch of occasions, because they gave me a 30-person team that could saturate an area and could put that fire out."

But other commanders say gang and drug task forces, squads that track down violent offenders and other specialized units, may be soaking up too many scarce resources.

Brooklyn Park Police Chief Michael Davis said he's not convinced a gang strike force, particularly one without Minneapolis on board, is a good investment.

"What I want to see is a complete re-examination of all our task forces. All the law enforcement resources in the metro area," said Davis. "Let's look at what we're trying to accomplish. Let's look at the tools we have to accomplish that. Do they got to take a new form? Do they need to be reincarnated in a way that makes sense back in our home agencies? I want to make sure that there's not redundancy."

Still, the strike force is taking steps to get its affairs in order. The state probe is scheduled to issue findings and recommendations by the end of June.

The strike force is also about to hire a bookkeeper to track its finances. Police hope to have it back up and running by mid-summer.

"These are some of the best cops that we have in the state of Minnesota. Are there things they could do better? Absolutely. I'm telling you, they're not bookkeepers. They're good cops."

Anytime Bob Fletcher says, "Rest assured", I know there's a whopper coming.

-Mark

"The credibility of the Metro Gang Strike Force, I think, has been called into question, not only in the public but even within the criminal justice community," Campion said.