By David Hanners
St. Paul Pioneer Press
The cops who might’ve had dirt wouldn’t talk, the cops who did talk had no dirt, and the people who thought they had dirt couldn’t keep their stories straight.
In brief, that’s how Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman on Wednesday summed up the findings of a special criminal inquiry into the defunct Metro Gang Strike Force: Two “intensive” months of digging by six seasoned investigators turned up no criminal wrongdoing.
It doesn’t mean there wasn’t illegal behavior, Freeman said. It just means there was nothing prosecutors could find that rose to the level of a crime that could be proved in court.
In announcing the findings in a 19-page report, the prosecutor minced few words in his criticism of the former gang unit’s commander, Ron Ryan Sr., for not cooperating with investigators and for running a unit where record-keeping was “so bad it was stunning.”
The responsibility for problems lay at Ryan’s feet, Freeman noted in the report detailing the investigation and its findings.
“It is a tragedy that the commander’s failure to meet those responsibilities unfairly tarnished the reputations and careers of the many able and professional officers who served on the (gang unit),” the report said. “Those officers and the public deserved better.”
Ryan, who was with the Ramsey County sheriff’s office when he was named the unit’s commander, has since retired. He did not immediately return a call for comment.
The report noted that of the 73 former officers and employees who served with the unit, 29 either ignored “repeated requests” for interviews or claimed they had no information.
Six said their lawyers advised them to remain silent.
“A reason for noncooperation expressed by many others was either anger or paranoia created by what they believed to have been unfair and unwarranted allegations of misconduct,” the report noted.
Unless new evidence surfaces, it appears the report will be the final state-level word on alleged improprieties in the multijurisdictional gang unit that was snuffed out by state Public Safety Commissioner Michael Campion in July 2009.
Federal authorities are continuing to investigate possible civil rights violations arising from the gang unit, but so far, that inquiry has resulted in a single indictment. That case involves Minneapolis police officer Jason Andersen, who spent six months assigned to the unit and is accused of kicking a teen in the head during an arrest in 2008.
He is due in federal court today; among the motions before the judge is a defense request to dismiss the indictment.
The report suggests Andersen could be the sole person charged. Noting that civil rights attorneys with the Justice Department conducted a “six-month review” of several allegations, the report says, “With the exception of a single incident involving an alleged assault to date, the Civil Rights Section has declined prosecution.”
The Metro Gang Strike Force, created by the Legislature in 2005, included officers from 13 area law enforcement agencies. When lawmakers set up the unit, they made it largely self-funding, requiring it to finance the bulk of its budget through property seizures and forfeitures.
By early 2009, the state legislative auditor was investigating claims the unit misused funds. In May 2009, the auditor released a report critical of the unit’s record-keeping; among other things, auditors couldn’t find 13 cars the unit had seized.
That report prompted Campion to set up an independent review by a retired federal prosecutor and a retired FBI agent. Their August 2009 report found the unit’s problems went far beyond mismanaging money.
Among the improprieties: Its members targeted minorities for searches and arrests, improperly seized property and took seized items such as computers and even an ice auger for personal use.
Campion disbanded the unit.
But as Freeman took pains to note, those reviews had a different standard of proof than what is needed for criminal prosecution, and in the end, the investigators just couldn’t find enough admissible evidence. He said the allegations in the two reports had more smoke than fire, but by the time his office looked into the claims, all they could find were smoldering embers that hinted at impropriety.
“You can’t prosecute somebody for smoldering,” he said.
Freeman’s explanations didn’t sit well with Randy Hopper, an attorney who won a $3 million settlement from the strike force last month. He had filed a civil suit in federal court that alleged the unit’s officers stole almost $12,000 worth of cash, jewelry and other property in four incidents.
He said the auditor’s report and the subsequent investigation provided “ample evidence ... to establish the egregious conduct and evidence of wrongdoing.”
“Yes, there was destruction of evidence of spoliation of evidence,” he said. “No case is perfect, no case has all the evidence and all the documents you want and, yes, some of these cops are probably going to take the Fifth Amendment. But there’s evidence out there to prosecute these cops.”
Hopper also questioned the propriety of the Hennepin County attorney’s office investigating the matter since the county was a defendant in the civil suit.
Freeman said that his office handled the investigation after conferring with the Ramsey and Dakota county attorneys, as well as the city attorneys for Minneapolis and St. Paul. The investigators were two Hennepin County sheriff’s deputies, two investigators from the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and two FBI agents.
They looked at possible crimes, including theft, embezzlement, misconduct by a public officer and failure to protect property.
The Freeman report said the inquiry faced “difficulties and constraints,” including the state’s three-year statute of limitations for such crimes.
But the biggest problem, the report said, was “the lack of adequate record keeping and property handling procedures at the MGSF.”
“Generally, the poor condition of the record-keeping system made it impossible for investigators to construct a paper trail connecting seized property with specific investigations and/or prosecutions,” the report said.
"[T]his entire investigation may not have been necessary if adequate records had been kept,” the report said.
The Freeman report doesn’t mention it, but the strike force’s lone administrative assistant, the person who kept the unit’s records, was fired by the Ramsey County sheriff’s office last November for violating departmental policies.
Copyright 2010 St. Paul Pioneer Press