Star Tribune
Hoax email prompts Wright County sheriff visit to Rep. Tom Emmer’s Delano home
Someone tried to draw police and a hostage negotiator to the Delano home of U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer over the weekend by claiming a murder had taken place inside, the Wright County Sheriff’s Office says.
The five-term Republican posted about it on X Saturday. “Tonight my family and I were the target of a ‘swatting’ incident involving a 911 prank call that wrongly diverted a police presence to my home,” Emmer wrote. He noted that other elected officials around the country have been similarly targeted recently.
A person who claimed to live at the house emailed the Wright County Attorney’s Office to claim he’d killed a man with whom his wife had been cheating. He requested a hostage negotiator and said he had her tied up inside, according to a copy of the police report.
A Wright County deputy identified the residence as Emmer’s home. Emmer was not in the state at the time.
“Thankfully, no one was home or injured,” Emmer wrote on X. “I condemn this illegal abuse of police resources.”
A Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said U.S. Capitol Police are investigating the incident.
The call came about a month after other high-profile Republican lawmakers reported having police summoned to their homes amid fake reports of violence. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, reported a similar incident on Christmas.
Several Minnesota schools and Jewish facilities were also the subjects of fake bombing and shooting threats in early December.
The term “swatting” came into prominence over the last decade as fully kitted out police departments and SWAT teams made headlines by responding to fake reports of shootings across the country. Those encounters sometimes turned deadly.
A St. Cloud man was held by police at gunpoint in 2015 when someone called local law enforcement with a fake tip. Nearly two dozen officers from six agencies responded to a hoax call at a Minnetonka man’s home in 2019 — Edina had even sent an armored vehicle.
A Kansas man was shot and killed in one such incident in 2017 after police were summoned to his house after a game of “Call of Duty” ended badly. A man suspected of making that and similar calls in 17 other states was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2019.
Transforming the heart of both downtowns, which have much larger buildings than old warehouses, is going to take a lot more money, creativity and time. Josh Talberg, managing director at downtown Minneapolis brokerage JLL, said with no major apartment buildings on the drawing board in either downtown, the fleet of empty office buildings present a golden opportunity to create more housing and lead both cities in a new direction.
“You can can certainly see the fundamentals improving, and you can feel that vibrancy, and that’s ultimately the foundation that’s needed to get investors to reinvest in the city,” he said. “But it’s not as if these 18-wheelers can turn on a dime.”
The Minnesota Department of Transportation closed part of a state highway Wednesday evening near Austin because of a “major hazardous materials release” in the area.
Hwy. 56 from Hayfield to Waltham, a stretch covering about five miles, was closed in both directions and drivers were directed to follow a detour to Blooming Prairie on U.S. Hwy. 218.
No information on the hazardous materials released was immediately available.
A federal judge dismissed a civil lawsuit against Minnesota state trooper Ryan Londregan in the shooting death of Ricky Cobb II during a 2023 traffic stop.
The decision is the latest development in a case that has drawn heated debate over excessive use of force by law enforcement. Criminal charges against Londregan were dismissed by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty in June, saying the prosecution didn’t have the evidence to proceed with a case.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel granted Londregan’s motion to dismiss the civil suit, arguing he acted reasonably when he opened fire as Cobb’s vehicle lurched forward with another state trooper partly inside.
Londregan’s attorney Chris Madelsaid Wednesday that it’s been a “long, grueling journey to justice. Ryan Londregan has finally arrived.”
On July 31, 2023, the two troopers pulled over Cobb, 33, on Interstate 94 in north Minneapolis for driving without taillights and later learned he was wanted for violating a felony domestic no-contact order. Cobb refused commands to exit the car.
With Seide partly inside the car while trying to unbuckle Cobb’s seatbelt, the car moved forward. Londregan then opened fire, hitting Cobb twice.
In her decision, Brasel said the troopers were mandated by state law to make an arrest given Cobb’s domestic no-contact order violation. She said it was objectively reasonable for Londregan to believe Seide was in immediate danger as the car moved forward on a busy highway, which would make his use of force reasonable.
