Mpls Officers Investigated for Off-Duty Antics

Published : Monday, 31 Aug 2009, 7:46 PM CDT

MINNEAPOLIS - The Minneapolis Police Department’s internal affairs unit is investigating a police softball team after an alleged night of drinking and brawls.

The softball game itself was in Northeast Park last Tuesday, where Minneapolis police took on Minneapolis firefighters.

By the time the off-duty Minneapolis officers arrived at the Double Deuce strip club, still in their softball uniforms, the owner told FOX 9, the cops were so intoxicated that the bouncer wouldn't let them in the strip club.

The owner says the officers even started flashing their badges, trying to intimidate the bouncer. And in retaliation, one of the officers allegedly urinated on the club's wall. The incident was caught on video.

With closing time nearing, the team went to Mayslak's Bar a few blocks away. The owner and staff told FOX 9, the officers picked a couple of fights and told patrons no one could stop them because they were all cops.

Outside the bar, one of the cops allegedly assaulted a man, who was passing by, after he tried to break up one of those fights.

The Minneapolis Police Department’s internal affairs unit has been making the rounds at the northeast bars, looking for witnesses, trying to get the story straight.

The Minneapolis Police Department’s internal affairs unit has been making the rounds at the northeast bars, looking for witnesses, trying to get the story straight.

The incident was caught on video.

'Fed-up' Minneapolis police chief: We're "better than ever"

By ROCHELLE OLSON, Star Tribune
Last update: September 4, 2009 - 12:34 PM

Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan said today that he and his 900 officers are "fed up" with bad publicity about the department when he says they are performing better than ever in crime fighting and officer behavior.

Dolan said recent publicity about some police incidents has clouded the larger picture of the positive changes, including a drop in crime. He noted that recent videos and lawsuits are available only because of greater transparency that he started when he took the top job in the department three years ago.

"I believe the Minneapolis Police Department is better than ever," Dolan said. The number and percentage of complaints is down, as is crime, while officers are being held to a higher standard. Dolan said he has fired or reassigned 16 officers in his three years -- a number that surpasses any previous chief's tenure.

Dolan spoke to the Star Tribune in an interview the day after news broke of a lawsuit involving a video of an incident in a parking ramp last December. Nicholas Kastner, who was arrested in a surveillance operation targeting car burglaries, contends police used excessive force on him even though he was on the ground and completely submissive. He and his lawyer, Frederick Goetz, are seeking more than $50,000 in damages for both injuries and punishment.

The video was the second to surface this summer in which an officer is seen kicking a suspect lying on the ground face down. The other recording from two squad cars showed Derryl Jenkins face down in a snowbank after a traffic stop in February. Jenkins said he wanted to change police policy and has not filed a lawsuit to date.

Because of the Jenkins video, Dolan changed policy to require that any video must be seen by an internal affairs investigator if a stop results in injuries to a citizen or officer. The Jenkins video didn't make it that far and Dolan had not seen it when it was obtained by the Star Tribune.

In contrast, Dolan said he saw the Kastner video the morning that the incident occurred on Dec. 12, 2008. He sent it to the St. Paul City Attorney's office to consider criminal charges. The attorney declined to pursue charges against the officers.

Asked what he thought of the video, Dolan said, "Look where it went." He declined to comment further.

In the Kastner matter, he said the process went "as it was supposed to." Last month, he sent the Jenkins video to the FBI for an investigation. He said he has not heard back from the agency on any decision.

The videos are part of a rocky recent few months for the department that started with the trial in a federal excessive-force lawsuit Officer Jason Andersen. A jury cleared Andersen in the 2006 shooting death of Fong Lee, a teenager in north Minneapolis. But weeks of publicity leading to the trial questioned police tactics.

A settlement last week with the city gave $495,000 to Eldridge Chatman, a man who was punched in the head by an officer trying to execute a high-risk search warrant in his apartment building. Chatman was an innocent bystander going to his mail box in the April 2008 incident. He needed two brain surgeries as a result of the punch.

Throughout it all, Minneapolis police officers are also seeing continued questioning about the now-disbanded Metro Gang Strike Force, which remains under federal investigation over allegations of misconduct. Some Minneapolis officers were part of the strike force.

"Recent cases in the media have really made myself and a lot of my officers really mad," Dolan said, adding that the vast majority of officers are hard-working and frustrated by the bad publicity. "The Minneapolis Police Department is the department that does the most and expects the most from our officers," Dolan said.

He noted that the department chose to put video cameras in squad cars to better document what happens. On a given day, Minneapolis police respond to 1,100 calls, or 400,000 a year, resulting in more than 30,000 arrests. Of all those, some 200 resulted in complaints in 2008. Of those, 90 investigations were opened and 12 were found to have excessive force, Dolan said.

Despite making it easier for citizens to file complaints, he said the percentage per contact has gone down to 2 percent, which he noted is below Los Angeles, a city whose progress has been praised.

"We're going to see more videos," Dolan said. "We learn from those videos." He said 99 percent of the time they add in prosecutions.

"It's not a department that's gone amuck. We are actually seeing decreasing levels in use of force," Dolan said.

Rochelle Olson • 612-673-1747