Star Tribune
Minneapolis auditor to probe secretive process of ‘coaching’ police officers who break the rules
Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne has asked the city auditor to open an assessment into a secretive process the police department uses to close out misconduct complaints, known as “coaching.”
A resolution authored by Payne and passed by a City Council committee last week asks the auditor to examine cases of coaching over the past 13 months, since the city entered into a court-enforceable agreement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The document asks the auditor to determine whether the closed-door coaching practice is in compliance with the sweeping public safety reforms, including greater transparency, mandated by the settlement.
In an interview, Payne said he was inspired to ask for the assessment after meeting with police-civilian oversight officials in Oakland, Calif., which has been under a costly consent decree for over 20 years and is still not in full compliance. Rather than waiting for the court-appointed monitor to decide, Payne said he wants the city government to use available tools to determine whether coaching is being used within the bounds of the settlement.
“What I want to do is start building a foundation right now—today—for the way the city should operate in a fully compliant way,” he said.
Attorneys for Minneapolis say coaching is a gentle form of corrective action, used to swiftly deal with officer misbehavior, that doesn’t amount to real “discipline,” and therefore isn’t a matter of public record. In public meetings and statements to media, police and city officials long claimed they use coaching in response only to the lowest-level policy violations, like uniform infractions or not wearing a seatbelt.
The U.S. Justice Department also criticized coaching as part of the city’s “fundamentally flawed” accountability system in charges alleging a pattern of discriminatory policing in Minneapolis. Only one in four cases referred for coaching through a city oversight office ended up being coached, the charges say, and some allegations were “far from ‘low-level,’” including an officer who “smacked, kicked, and used a taser on a teen accused of shoplifting.”
Both MSA schools have foundations to support their missions, though the report found that MSA “did not obtain required financial reports from its affiliated foundations, including their annual financial statements or their annual reports about fundraising activities.”
The Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf Foundation was inactive between 2020 and 2023 because the foundation board members had moved out-of-state, according to the report. And the Minnesota State Academy for the Blind Foundation did not file as a nonprofit corporation with the Office of the Secretary of State until the auditor’s office inquired about a filing status in May.
In his letter, Wilding said that, by next month, a school administrator for each school will be assigned to act as a liaison between each school and its foundation. But, he added, “The [Minnesota State Academy for the Blind Foundation] is considering its future and may not continue their operations. If this is the case, we will obtain financial documentation of their fund disbursements for record keeping.”
Over the last several months, Wilding wrote, MSA has updated or implemented new procedures to address several concerns, including how payroll and deposits are monitored and how both petty cash expenses and travel expenditures are approved.
A quarterly review of donation acceptance forms will begin in 2025, he said. MSA’s fiscal services director will also work with the state Department of Education “on the process for returning overreported expenditures” — a process Wilding wrote should be completed by January 2025.
Star Tribune
Sentence topping 8 years for man whose ricochet gunshot struck Minneapolis girl, 11, in face
A 45-year-old man received a prison term Tuesday topping eight years for squeezing off automatic gunfire moments into New Year’s Day in Minneapolis that ricocheted and struck a girl in the face while she was looking out her second-story bedroom window.
James William Turner, of Fridley, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of ammunition in connection with the shooting of Laneria Wilson, 11, on Jan. 1 near 23rd and Bryant avenues N.
With federal sentencing guidelines recommending a sentence of anywhere from 8⅓ to nearly 10½ years in prison, Judge Ann Montgomery opted for the lowest point in that range and added three years of court supervision after his release.
Ahead of sentencing, prosecutors pointed out to Montgomery that “instead of celebrating New Year’s with her friends or family, [Laneria] spent the evening having bullet fragments removed from her face. The victim could easily have been killed. Moreover, the bullet that struck the 11-year-old appears to be one of 24 shots Turner fired that night — 24 bullets that could have injured or killed innocent people.”
Prosecutors also noted that Turner’s criminal history spans his entire adult life and includes convictions for second-degree assault in Anoka County and domestic assault in Ramsey County. Those convictions barred him from possessing guns or ammunition.
Defense attorney F. Clayton Tyler asked that Turner receive a five-year term, arguing that he has abstained from illicit drugs and alcohol since his arrest and has completed mental health therapy.
Also, Tyler added, while Turner admitted to firing the automatic rifle, “he did not do so maliciously or with intent to hurt or frighten anyone. On the contrary, he considered himself close friends with the child’s mother and had previously babysat the child.”
Laneria’s mother, Shenedra Ross, told the Star Tribune in May that since the shooting, she moved her family about two hours west of Minneapolis, where they had lived previously. In the days after being shot, just shy of her 12th birthday, Ross said, Laneria had difficulty coping and was afraid to be near windows.
A 34-year-old Dilworth man who was hit in the head by a stray bullet Saturday while deer hunting is not expected to survive.
According to the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, Jace Srur was shot by someone within his hunting party in rural Moorhead on Nov. 9. Authorities had responded around 8 a.m. and provided first aid before an ambulance arrived and Srur was air lifted to Sanford Hospital.
As of Tuesday, Srur’s injuries were considered “life-threatening and non-survivable,” according to the sheriff’s office. The shooting is still under investigation.
On the same day, a 37-year-old man was injured in a hunting accident in Lee Township, Minn., however, his injuries weren’t life threatening.
Saturday was the start of Minnesota’s firearm deer hunting season.
