Minneapolis police criticized after handling three high-profile cases

NINA MOINI: Well, the Minneapolis Police Department is facing criticism for how it handled three cases involving people of color who made multiple reports of violence to police. The city auditor is looking into the response in the cases of Davis Moturi and Allison Lussier in 2024. Last month, auditor Robert Timmerman publicly criticized MPD for missing meetings and slowing down the review. In response, Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell told officers to cooperate in an order reported by the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Chief Brian O'Hara has also ordered an internal review of the police response to reports of domestic violence by a woman named Mariah Samuels. She was fatally shot in September, and her ex-boyfriend is charged in her killing. Star Tribune reporter Liz Sawyer published an investigation of Samuels' case and has been covering the others, along with her colleagues. And Liz joins me now on the line. Thanks for sharing your reporting with us, Liz.

LIZ SAWYER: Thanks for having me, Nina.

NINA MOINI: Can you start by reminding us what happened in the Moturi and Lussier cases?

LIZ SAWYER: Sure. Yeah, the department faced pretty widespread criticism in both of those cases, the first involving Davis Moturi. He's a 35-year-old Black man living in South Minneapolis. He was shot in the neck, allegedly by his white neighbor, John Sawchak, who has a history of mental illness and a history of harassment against Black residents of that home, actually, lots of complaints against him in that neighborhood.

Mr. Moturi faced escalating harassment by Mr. Sawchak and called the police at least 19 times over the course of a year. And he was not arrested until five days after Mr. Moturi was shot in his yard. He did survive that incident but will take a long time to recover.

The other case is involving Alison Lussier, who is a 47-year-old Native woman who was found dead in the North Loop in February of last year. And, her case was ruled a suspicious death by the police department. The medical examiner said that she died of a head wound, a subdural hematoma, but they couldn't determine how she sustained that injury. The police department said that the evidence pointed to drug use and maybe an overdose. Her family believes that it was the result of a domestic violence killing by a longtime abusive ex-boyfriend.

NINA MOINI: Thank you. It's important to get some of the details and the context there. Can you talk a little bit too, Liz, about what are the city auditor's frustrations with MPD and their participation in the process? It's the city's own auditor who's frustrated.

LIZ SAWYER: Yeah. The police department underwent an internal review of the Moturi case. We still haven't seen the results of that, even though Mr. Moturi has requested the findings there. The city says it won't release them. They don't want to unduly influence the auditor's report, which is a separate probe. So the auditor is looking at the Moturi case and the Lussier case. It was supposed to be done by December. But the auditors said that they've faced a lot of resistance and delays from the officers and from MPD administration.

They tried to sit down with department leaders. They sent about a dozen messages. And it took a long time. It wasn't until about last month, I believe that happened. And they got emails from individual officers who asked whether they would be subject to discipline if their answers were believed to be incomplete or untruthful. And that was really concerning to the auditor. They have since been ordered by the top administration to participate in these interviews with the auditor. And they're told that if they don't participate, that would subject them to discipline.

NINA MOINI: So that's a little bit about the police department's response there. But what else have you heard from the department and also the police union leadership?

LIZ SAWYER: Sure. Well, the union leadership says that they are not trying to delay this process and actually dispute that their officers have done so. They say that it's within their rights to ask these clarification questions and make sure that they're protecting their own rights. They want to know what will happen based on those findings. And so they say, we're trying to cooperate here. The police department says that they are cooperating now. But it's not clear to us immediately whether those interviews have actually taken place at this point.

NINA MOINI: Thank you for that. And so city council members have compared these cases that you talked about to the more recent death of Mariah Samuels. And you've done a lot of reporting on this case. What steps had she taken to try to get protection from her ex-boyfriend, who's now charged in her killing? This happened pretty recently, right, Liz?

LIZ SAWYER: Yeah. This is a really tragic case. Mariah was a 34-year-old mother of two and a local dog groomer. She broke up with her boyfriend the month before, and she had done everything right. All the experts agree that she had documented this abuse by the former boyfriend appropriately. She'd called police after a prior violent domestic violence episode. She sought and achieved a restraining order against him. And still, he showed up three weeks later and is accused of shooting her 10 times in front of her own home.

Unfortunately, even though all of that abuse was documented, there were police reports filed, an investigator in the domestic violence unit was never assigned to her case. And that's what her family really struggles with, not just the outcome, but missed opportunities here.

NINA MOINI: What are you learning about how widespread these issues are? Because that's the point of these audits, right, Liz, is to figure out, where did things go wrong and how often is this happening?

LIZ SAWYER: Well, that there's a backlog, or was a backlog, of nearly 50 domestic violence cases like Mariah Samuels, where the suspect-- they call it gone on arrival. If you call the police about a domestic violence episode, and the suspect is no longer on the scene-- they flee before police arrive-- those cases are reported and reports are made, but then the police are supposed to look for that person. We know from prior reports in 20--

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NINA MOINI: Oh, Liz, are you there?

LIZ SAWYER: Oh, can you hear me?

NINA MOINI: I lost you for one second.

LIZ SAWYER: I'm so sorry.

NINA MOINI: No, no. That's OK. Just go ahead and start over.

LIZ SAWYER: There were some long standing issues with how the police respond to domestic violence incidents. In 2023, a local nonprofit, Global Rights for Women, wrote a big report about this. And one of their top line findings was that the Minneapolis Police Department often didn't look for assailants after they fled the scene of a domestic episode, which they felt emboldened suspects in this case.

In Mariah's case, something very similar happened, where she had a prior episode of abuse. The suspect fled the scene. And then officers-- it's not clear what efforts exactly were made to look for him in the interim. But three weeks later, he returned. She called police again, and just hours later, she was killed.

NINA MOINI: What has MPD said about some of these gaps that you're finding? I know Police Chief O'Hara's called for an internal review now of the Samuels case. Any indication there that another city audit will be done or an independent review on this case, Liz?

LIZ SAWYER: It's not clear. I'm sure the family would like another independent review by the auditor. But based on Robert Timmerman's comments before the council last month, it's not clear that they have the time or the money to add on another case.

Just the current probes into the Davis Moturi shooting and Allison Lussier's death are already costing them two times as much. It's up to $200,000 and have taken a lot of extra time because of those delays. So there's no indication that they will add on the Mariah Samuels case to that audit. The department has vowed to review their domestic violence protocols, that they will retrain all of their officers by the end of the year, and now ask victims on arrival whether they feel safe when they respond.

But it's clear that there were missed opportunities here. And they say that her death was very tragic. But they point to their low staffing numbers. Most of their investigative units, just through attrition, are down about 50%. The domestic violence unit has fared worse. They used to have 12 officers in 2019. Now, they have just five. And they're triaging hundreds of cases. Domestic violence, unfortunately, is one of the top emergency calls that the department responds to.

NINA MOINI: Just lastly, Liz, there are so many different factors at play here. But all of this is happening at the time when the department is actively trying to rebuild trust after the murder of George Floyd, as you know. And you do tremendous reporting. People trust you. They tell you their stories. You're always there. And I just wonder from community members, including the families and the victims, the surviving victim here, what are you hearing from people just about how this impacts relationships between law enforcement and community members?

LIZ SAWYER: Yeah, a lot of these families are hoping for positive change. Even ones who have had really negative interactions with law enforcement, Minneapolis and otherwise, want to see the system improve. And they still continue to call and report these incidents there. They're not losing enough faith that they're not calling. And of course, the department wants them to continue calling. But it really hinders what fragile trust already exists.

When you have these high profile cases and either investigation is not happening quickly enough or not happening at all, it harms community trust and outreach. And so we are hiring more officers at a faster pace. But it takes a long time for those officers to become investigators. And until we do more to bolster those units and respond adequately, I think these families feel that we're going to continue to have these tragic incidents.

NINA MOINI: All right, Liz, thanks so much for sharing your reporting with us. Really appreciate it.

LIZ SAWYER: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: Liz Sawyer is a reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune. If you or someone you know is in a dangerous situation with a partner, there is a 24-hour statewide domestic and sexual violence hotline. You can call Minnesota Day One at 866-223-1111, or you can text 612-399-9995. We'll have that information at mprnews.org as well when you click on this story.