Star Tribune
Minneapolis Police Department celebrates officers who went above call of duty
From the other side of a locked door, Minneapolis police officers Bryan Matlon and Daniel Oppegard could hear a little boy screaming.
They forced entry to confront a man holding a knife to the child’s throat. The 12-year-old boy was covered in blood and had been stabbed multiple times in a meth-fueled knife attack at the hands of his mother’s ex-boyfriend. The man threatened to kill the boy as police demanded he drop the knife.
Officer Matlin deployed his Taser, allowing the child to escape as they tangled with the suspect inside the south Minneapolis apartment last May. Once restrained, the partners administered a chest seal to the boy’s wounds.
“It is because of their heroic actions, tactical proficiency and quick decision making the boy is alive today,” Chief Brian O’Hara said in presenting them with the Medal of Valor on Wednesday night.
Matlon and Oppegard were among several dozen honorees, both sworn and civilian, recognized for going above and beyond the call of duty at the department’s annual awards ceremony in northeast Minneapolis.
The event was meant to celebrate officers and investigators for outstanding performance, dedication and acts of heroism that sometimes goes unnoticed by the public, officials said. Beaming relatives snapped photos as their loved ones shook hands with top brass clutching their new hardware.
Among those lauded were cops who successfully prevented suicides by calmly talking down distressed citizens from area bridges, officers who rescued an elderly couple from a house fire and those who safely disarmed gun-wielding suspects.
On just his third day of field training, Officer Timothy Davis responded to a chaotic shooting call in May 2021 where he found a critically injured man. Davis applied a tourniquet and worked to comfort the victim, while radioing a description for the shooter. The injured man survived 11 gunshot wounds as a result of his quick actions, said Ast. Chief Christopher Gaiters.
The top honor of the day went to Third Precinct officer Nicholas Kapinos, who was named Officer of the Year.
Supervisors described Kapinos, a part-time firearms instructor, as a compassionate and proactive officer who conducts himself with integrity. Last year, he was credited with helping to find and arrest two armed carjackers, thwarting a home burglary in progress and evacuating a family from an apartment complex after their neighbor starting shooting through the walls.
Officer Jeffery Werner was named Investigator of the Year for his efforts to aggressively pursue individuals who illegally use firearms and flood city streets with narcotics. Werner, a nearly 30-year veteran who serves on a joint task force with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reviewing cases for federal prosecution, recovered 23 firearms and more than 2,500 fentanyl pills, among other seizures, last year.
Civilian honorees included Aileen Johnson, a North Loop resident who organized several safety block clubs to patrol Minneapolis neighborhoods in hopes of deterring crime.
That hasn’t ebbed with Simpli-Fi. The startup incorporated in 2018 as a company based out of Florida that integrated technology systems together in commercial buildings to work as a single unit. But business sputtered when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and Campbell had to make staff cuts to his team of 16 employees. He called it one of “the worst times” of his life.
“But during that time is where we made a pivot,” Campbell said.
He set out to find a new technology, eventually spotting NASA’s electronic nose thanks to Brown Venture Group, a St. Paul based firm that supports Black, Latino and Indigenous tech startups. Campbell’s brother, Paul Campbell, is a partner at the firm but said he recused himself from the investment decision.
Chris Campbell was skeptical of the electronic nose’s capabilities at first but sprung for a commercialization license after spending a year researching the technology. By this past summer, he had moved the company to Minnesota and specifically the Osborne building because both are “known for device creation,” he said.
Simpli-Fi’s sensor packs some of the science of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry — which require huge machines — into a sensor the size of a dime, Campbell said. Using nanotubes, the sensor picks up metabolic qualities in the air and breath, he said.
For now, the company is focused on the C. diff-sensing Provectus Canary device, which scans the air around a hospital patient to detect the bacteria that causes the infection, which has gastrointestinal symptoms like diarrhea. The company is working toward the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval for using the sensor to detect various diseases.
A Minneapolis man was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for murdering his neighbor in their North Side apartment building last year.
Walter Lee Hill, 59, had pleaded guilty on Monday to second-degree intentional murder. He will get credit for having served nearly a year in jail.
Police were called to the Gateway Lofts on W. Broadway Avenue last November on a report that someone was shot. Officers found Donald Edmondson, 60, dead on the floor of his apartment with a gunshot wound to the chest.
A video camera in the hallway showed Hill knocking on Edmondson’s door, reaching into his sweatshirt pocket and firing his gun once. Hill then left in his Lexus, which officers found near Elliot Park downtown.
They spotted Hill walking nearby, asked for his ID and arrested him when he said something to the effect that they had the right guy.
A witness told police they saw Hill shoot Edmondson, and another said there had been an ongoing dispute between the two. Two days before the murder, Hill had called police because he believed neighbors were breaking into his apartment.
In a statement, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Edmondson “should still be alive. A violent act committed with such disregard by Mr. Hill has taken him from his family. This sentence delivers accountability and protects our community, and I hope it brings some measure of peace to Mr. Edmondson’s loved ones as they attempt to move forward with their lives.”
ROCHESTER – Buoyed by strong growth in the health care industry, Minnesota’s third-largest city continues to outpace the rest of the state in job creation.
The Rochester Metropolitan Statistical Area added about 7,000 jobs over the past year, a 6.3% year-to-year increase, according to the September jobs report from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). By comparison, Minnesota as a whole was up 1.2% during the same time period. The next closest region to Rochester was Mankato, which grew 1.6% year to year.
Much of the growth in Rochester MSA, which includes Dodge, Fillmore, Olmsted and Wabasha counties, was driven by a 15% year-to-year increase in the education and health services sector. The sector employed 62,435 people in the region in September, nearly half the overall workforce.
The strong job numbers come as Mayo Clinic breaks ground on the first phases of “Bold. Forward. Unbound. In Rochester.” The $5 billion project — the largest investment in Minnesota history — is expected to bring about 2,000 construction workers to Rochester in the coming years.
While Mayo has not said how many employees it plans to hire once the new facilities open, local economic development officials expect the impacts of the expansion to reverberate across the region.
“As their growth goes up, the rest of the economy grows as well,” said John Wade, president of the Rochester Area Economic Development, Inc. (RAEDI). “If you think about neighboring communities, too, there will be more housing opportunities and job opportunities and businesses looking to expand.”
Wade said he also sees potential for growth in other sectors tied to Mayo, such as hospitality, which makes up more than 8% of the region’s workforce. Precision manufacturing and medical technology were also identified as potential growth sectors.
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