Star Tribune
Christina Bogojevic named new chief of Minnesota State Patrol
Interim Col. Christina Bogojevic will be the next chief of the Minnesota State Patrol, making her the second woman ever to lead the State Patrol, the Department of Public Safety announced Thursday.
Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson praised the selection in his announcement, saying Bogojevic brings a “wealth of knowledge, leadership and dedication, not only to the organization, but to law enforcement as a whole.”
Bogojevic “embodies the State Patrol’s core values and cares deeply for the people with whom she works and serves,” Jacobson said. “I am confident she will continue to make a positive impact within the State Patrol and communities across our state.”
Bogojevic, who joined the State Patrol in 2003, was named to lead the agency in an interim role following the departure this month of Col. Matt Langer, who left for a position with the International Association of Chiefs of Police. She had been lieutenant colonel with the patrol since December 2022.
The first woman to serve as chief of the Minnesota State Patrol was Anne Beers, who led the agency from 1997 to 2005 and was the second woman to lead a state police agency in the United States. Beers said Thursday that she “couldn’t be happier” about the selection of Bogojevic.
“To have this opportunity of having another woman rise through the ranks and be in a position to be colonel, I just praise the organization and I praise her for her commitment and her abilities,” said Beers.
In the last year, the State Patrol has actively sought to recruit more women to its ranks in hopes of boosting its female troopers and support staff to 30% by 2030.
Beers said she met Bogojevic when she was promoted to second in command, and thought it was a “great step” by Langer to put Bogojevic in a spot where she could eventually serve in the agency’s top job. Beers described Bogojevic as “very capable” and said the State Patrol was in good hands.
In the announcement, Bogojevic said she cares “deeply about our people and our mission” and that she’s “honored to have the opportunity to serve as chief.”
“I look forward to working with Minnesota State Patrol staff and allied agencies who work so hard to keep residents safe on Minnesota roadways,” she said.
Gov. Tim Walz posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he believes Bogojevic will bring leadership, compassion, and a dedication to law enforcement to her new role.
“I’m grateful for her service and look forward to working together to keep Minnesota’s communities safe,” Walz said.
Among her jobs with the State Patrol, Bogojevic has been captain of the Rochester district, a lieutenant in the Commercial Vehicle section, an investigator and a crash reconstruction specialist. She was previously a part-time law enforcement officer in Grand Meadow, Minn., according to the Public Safety Department.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
