County Attorney arbitrarily changes state law

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‘Deeply troubling’: Law enforcement reacts to Moriarty decision limiting felony prosecutions

Traffic stops during which felony is discovered won’t be prosecuted in Hennepin County - home of Minneapolis, Louisville's sister city

After Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced that her office would no longer be charging felony crimes that arise from “low-level” traffic stops, Hennepin County law enforcement agencies pushed back, calling the move “harmful” and “deeply troubling.”

Moriarty established the new policy targeting what she claims are non-public safety traffic stops or “pretextual” stops, which she said in a press release “actively harm our community, particularly our Black and Brown community members.”

Moriarty cited Minneapolis Police Department data from 2017 and 2018 for equipment and moving violations, in which she says a gun was recovered less than half of one percent of the time. “This is a gun recovery failure rate of 99.5 percent,” she said.

Several members of the Hennepin County Chiefs of Police Association and Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt released a statement and also held a press conference at Minneapolis City Hall Friday morning to speak against the “blanket” policy they say puts criminals first over community safety.

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Police speak out

My name is Scott Boerboom. I serve as president of the Hennepin County Chiefs of Police Association. Our association is made up of 34 police chiefs, police chiefs, and the sheriff serving 45 communities and more than 1.3 million residents, over 800,000 of whom live outside the city of Minneapolis. We are here today because of the Hennepin County Attorney's Office harmful announcement this week to no longer prosecute felony charges that come from low-level traffic stops.

This one-size-fits-all policy will have serious consequences for policing and for public safety across our county. As an association, we are not often in front of the cameras. Most of the time, we are working behind the scenes collaboratively with local leaders supporting our officers and making sure we deliver on our mission to serve and protect.

But this new directive is deeply troubling and we felt we had no choice but to speak out today. When we take the oath to become police officers, we swear to serve, to protect, and to uphold the laws of the state of Minnesota. We do not pick and choose which laws to enforce. Yet, this decision by the county attorney does exactly that, putting us in an impossible position, making it harder for us to do our jobs.

The decision also fails to recognize that each community in Hennepin County is different. The people of Minnetonka have very different needs from the people of Minneapolis, Madina, Bloomington, or Rogers. Yet, this policy paints every community with the same broad brush. It was made without consultation, without collaboration, and without respect for those of us who serve these residents every day.

This lack of transparency and communication is part of a larger ongoing problem. Just two weeks ago at a public meeting, we asked the county attorney's office if they were developing this policy. We were told the there were no updates. We stressed then and we stressed today the importance of working together of communicating openly and of ensuring that the voices of law enforcement and our communities are included in these discussions.

Once again, we were ignored. Public safety policy should never be made in a vacuum. These decisions directly impact the work of our departments and the safety of our residents. Community expectations differ from city to city. They deserve a voice in these decisions. This one-size-fits-all policy denies them that voice. Decisions of this magnitude should either be left to individual cities so each community can decide what works best for their residents or taken up by the state of Minnesota through the legislative process. What should happen is a sweeping policy dictated unilaterally by the county attorney without input from those most affected.

We stand here today because we owe it to the people we serve to speak out against policies that weaken public safety, limit accountability, and create confusion across the county. Our commitment is and always will be to the residents of Hennepin County. I thank you for all being here. And at this time, I'd like to introduce Sheriff Dana Wit.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Dana Witt. I'm the sheriff of Hennepin County. This morning, we are here to talk about the Hennepin County's decision not to prosecute felony cases that stem from low-level traffic stops.

Lawful traffic stops are routinely led to the removal of illegally possessed guns, narcotics, and other serious threats from our streets. Again, lawful traffic stops. Just this year, our deputies and detectives have seized 377 illegally possessed guns. Nearly half, 47% of those illegally possessed guns we've confiscated are from traffic stops.

That's 175 guns just this year that were found during traffic stops. In May, our deputies made a traffic stop for illegal window tent in Minneapolis. The two occupants were wearing ski mask and gloves. A 9mm handgun that was modified to be fully automatic was found during that traffic stop. Through our investigation, we learned the firearm was connected to a shooting in Minneapolis and a homicide in Robindale.

Last May, our deputies made a stop for window tent and no license plate displayed. During that stop, they found a female passenger had been had visible injuries consistent with being assaulted. She had been stabbed by the driver and told that he was searching for a place to kill her. That victim credits law enforcement for saving her life that day from a traffic stop.

I want to point out the page of Wednesday Star Tribune headline--12 shot in Minneapolis in the span of 12 hours. With that amount of violence our area has endured over the last few months, now is not the time to lower the standards for public safety.

The county attorney already has discretion in charging decisions. But a blanket refusal to prosecute felonies uncovered during these stops is a reckless overreach.

This policy will embolden criminals. We see it every day in traffic stops where people who are committing criminal activities in our community say we're not supposed to chase them. We're not supposed to pull them over. The criminals are paying attention, people.

It will worsen the Hennepin County's already serious accountability problem and it will put more lives at risk. At a minimum, these stops offer an opportunity to educate drivers about the law. when they do result in the seizure of illegal guns and contraband, it serves as crime prevention tool as well. Once again, the county attorney is prioritizing offenders over public safety.

This policy will only create more victims, further harming all the residents of Hennepin County and particularly those communities already suffering from some of the most unchecked crimes, unchecked violent crimes.

There are laws in place for a reason. I have been pushing for lawmakers to make new laws to help prevent the violence that we have seen in our streets. That work is undermined if we refuse to prosecute existing statutes. If the county attorney doesn't agree with the law, she should also she's also welcome to go to the legislature to try to change that.

In the meantime, there may be a new policy. But that does not deter us from the work we do on the street every single day, the work that or Minnesota statutes allow us to do. In the meantime, with that policy, rest assured that the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office will continue to act under the law. Our deputies will continue to operate within the law, making lawful stops and lawful arrests, seizing illegal possessed guns, drugs, and other illegal matters that will cause harm to our communities in Hennepin County.

We will continue to prioritize the safety of those we took an oath to protect and serve. With that being said, I'd like to invite Plymouth Chief Fadden up to the podium.

Thank you, Sheriff.

Good morning. My name is Erik Fadden. I am the public safety director for the city of Plymouth. I want to take just a few moments to highlight some of the great outstanding work that our police officers do on a daily basis.

Our officers enforce laws that are in place on the statute books and conduct outstanding police work that are and that is what our residents expect in a time that we're talking so much about gun violence. Um I think that it's important to highlight just a couple recent examples um of the great work that our officers are doing throughout Hennepin County, not just in the city of Plymouth. Year to date in the city of Plymouth, our officers have recovered 22 guns.

Some of them are from lower level traffic stops. Two recent examples, just a week ago today, last Friday, one of our officers stopped a vehicle for illegal window tint.

The officer during the traffic stop observed a firearm in the vehicle. And when they notified the driver of that vehicle that they saw the weapon, the driver fled. They were later located and uh were found to be a convicted felon and a person prohibited from carrying a firearm. Just 28 minutes after that traffic stop and fleeing occurred in our city, another officer stopped a different vehicle for illegal window tint. That vehicle fled from the officer and they never stopped. We later located that vehicle and learned that just hours before that vehicle was involved in a homicide in another state and was coming to the state of Minnesota, presumably to flee from that crime.

Those are just two examples. Uh now I'd like to turn it over to New Hope Chief Tim Hoyt.

Good morning. I'm the chief of police for the city of New Hope. Um I asked my staff to take the policy that was given to us-- that didn't work with us, with Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty. I took this policy, gave it to my staff, and I told them to pick a couple of months and look at some of the laws that are in place and find out if we've had anything resembling what she wants to stop in any of our cities and tie it back to some crimes in the city of New Hope.

One in particular, a victim from the city of Minneapolis reported to the Minneapolis Police Department within the past year that she is having an argument with her boyfriend. In quotes from the Minneapolis Police Department report, she said she tried to open a passenger door and get out. The person, her boyfriend, exited the driver's side and produced a black semi-automatic 9 millimeter handgun and fired it at her leg. The victim said the shot missed her. The bullet was so close to striking her leg that she felt the blast of the gunfire.

She could actually feel the bullet going by her. It didn't stop there. She said she tried getting out again and her boyfriend grabbed her and fired a round at her head, just barely missing her. The Minneapolis Police Department took the report. They did everything correctly.

They put an alert out to all of our agencies. Six days later, um, one of my officers saw a vehicle traveling through our city with an obscured license plate. He notified the neighboring agency which is the Crystal Police Department. The officers worked together. They ended up trying to stop the vehicle and the vehicle ended up fleeing and crashing. The New Hope Police officers in Crystal took the person into custody safely. It happened to be this male subject that had just assaulted six days prior his girlfriend.

He was arrested for possession of a firearm-- prohibited person in possession of a firearm, firearm with an altered serial number, and that domestic incident. Without making that traffic stop and our officers being diligent in looking at these violations, this would have never happened and that person would have never been brought to justice.

We're just asking that the Hennepin County Attorney at least ask us and get our input, which she did not do for this policy.

AN ASIDE: Louisville police were consistently performing traffic stops in 2018 in areas of high crime to work toward lowering the crime rate. They became less aggressive after a legal suit was brought by a young man who was offended by their action. He sued the city and won a settlement of $385,000 in 2022.