Shooting suspect arrested after overnight SWAT operation in south Minneapolis

[MUSIC PLAYING] NINA MOINI: Our top story today, police arrested a Minneapolis man early this morning after he allegedly shot his neighbor on Wednesday. That was after the shooting victim reported threats of physical violence from his neighbor at least 19 separate times since April.

City leaders put pressure on the Minneapolis Police Department, who said not enough was done to prevent the shooting that resulted in serious injuries to the victim. MPD made dozens of attempts to reach the man in order to arrest him since that time but said they were unable to do so.

Here's Police Chief Brian O'Hara at a press conference on Friday. This was two days after the shooting and two days before the arrest.

BRIAN O'HARA: Anyone who suggests that the cops don't want to arrest this person is simply wrong. To be frank, the officers, however, are scared. They're scared of being prosecuted if they get into a situation where they make a mistake trying to do their job and protect the public.

I'm sick and tired of hearing this situation. The reality we are in is you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. And it's got to end. If we did go in with a SWAT team and wound up in a deadly force situation, the headlines would read, MPD shoots a mentally ill person.

Because we have not and have been trying to safely and take this person into custody without further injecting violence into the situation, the headlines might read, MPD refuses to arrest suspect.

NINA MOINI: Minneapolis City Council member Emily Koski, representing Ward 11 in South Minneapolis, was one of a handful of council members to speak out against what she said was inaction on the part of the police department and mayor to prevent the shooting. She's here now to reflect on the situation. Council member, Koski, thank you for being here.

EMILY KOSKI: Thank you for having me.

NINA MOINI: We heard a lot of frustration there from Chief O'Hara. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see you as a council member who has very often agreed with Mayor Jacob Frey and Chief O'Hara on public safety issues. What led you to speak out about this situation in particular?

EMILY KOSKI: Well, this situation in particular unfortunately came to a head with a tragic incident when Mr. Moturi was shot in front of his home. And the reality of it is our city deserves safety. And it deserves leaders who see this tragic situation and do everything they can to make sure it doesn't happen again.

And I absolutely support police and MPD, and I'm always here to make sure that they know that we are here to help support them. But in this instance, and in the information that you just shared from the chief-- that was on Friday-- I wanted to make sure that Mr. Moturi understood and that we were sorry.

And I heard no apology and no accountability from us in these actions. And so I felt that we had heard only silence from the mayor. We hadn't heard from him in four days after this incident had happened. And that continues to erode trust. When there is an absence of information and an absence of leadership, it erodes trust.

NINA MOINI: So you heard Police Chief O'Hara's comments there. Do you see where he's coming from? Or how do you interpret when he says, damned if they do, damned if they don't? If they'd taken immediate action to arrest the suspect, it would have been an issue. Waiting would have been an issue. What was your thoughts on what he had to say?

EMILY KOSKI: I understand that this is complex. And there are often no easy answers. But in this situation, there had to be somewhere in between doing nothing and an extreme. And I'm grateful to see that last night that happened. We used de-escalation tactics. And the individual was arrested without injury.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. And you also mentioned some council members were frustrated they were not hearing from the mayor. So let's listen to what Mayor Frey did say last night about the situation at a press conference, or rather, early this morning after the arrest.

JACOB FREY: I know there have been several individuals out there, including council members, telling them to immediately barge in, to do this the wrong way. I stand with our police officers.

Doing this the right way takes courage. It takes the willingness to deescalate a tense situation. It takes resources. It takes a whole lot of people that were standing behind me just a few moments ago to make sure that the surrounding neighborhoods are safe.

NINA MOINI: What are your thoughts?

EMILY KOSKI: Well, what I have to say to that is that I, myself, nor did I hear any of my other colleagues suggest or tell the mayor or the chief what to do or say that they wanted them to barge in. What they wanted was our leaders to show up.

And so that wasn't the request. So I'm unclear of what he was necessarily asking for there.

NINA MOINI: From your perspective as a council member, what can you do when a constituent contacts your offices or city staff and says, I feel unsafe? I imagine that's quite frustrating. What can you all actually do at that level?

EMILY KOSKI: We do have-- it's a great question. We do have a plethora of resources. We have our crime prevention specialists. We have 311. We have our officers. We have different navigators within the city that we are potentially working with.

And I think that there was a slew of emails that I'm sure people have seen that Councilmember Jenkins in this situation had tried over and over to do. But oftentimes, we do hit a wall.

And we're doing a lot of connecting. I feel like that's our job. We're advocating for residents. We're making sure that they're getting connected to the resources at the city. But I myself can't actually implement and do anything about what's happening at the back end.

NINA MOINI: O'Hara mentioned as well that his department wasn't just sitting on their hands, that they had tried to make contact with this suspect, John Sawchak, for months but were unable to make contact, saying that they don't really have enough resources to take care of this issue earlier.

What is the council doing to get MPD more resources? Or what did you think about that explanation as well?

EMILY KOSKI: Well, the council last year in the budget we did allocate over 40 new FTEs for the police department this year in the budget presentation. They are requesting an addition to their budget and additional FTEs. I do not see us standing in the way of that.

So the council is doing everything that we can in order to make sure that they have the resources that they need. When we've been asked, we have delivered.

NINA MOINI: Well, I also want to switch gears a little bit while I have you and talk about more violence that we've seen in Minneapolis this past week. There were two separate shootings in or near encampments that led to three people losing their lives.

And this isn't a new issue. There's been back and forth between members of the council, MPD, the mayor's office on how to handle violence like this, how to try to curb violence and bring safety and security to people.

Chief O'Hara and Mayor Frey have said a lot of the problems that happen stem from fentanyl, not as much-- a lack of housing or perhaps many issues together. Can you explain why this is so complicated to figure out at the city level? And what does the council need to make a significant impact here?

EMILY KOSKI: Yeah, this is extremely complex. And it was tragic of what happened just in the course of a few days to lose additional lives and also to continue to have all this violence right within our neighborhoods.

I know that this weighs heavy on my fellow colleagues. But it weighs heavy on our neighbors and our residents because they know that they don't want to see this.

There is a multitude of reasons that this is happening. Fentanyl and addiction is one. A lack of housing is another. And also there are policies that we can put into place. And that's what I'm excited to see as my colleagues continue to move forward.

They are working on policies that will help us think creatively about how we can solve these solutions. We've been sitting on what I would call a little bit of a merry-go-round here and continuing to do the same work over and over.

And I think, as we can see, it's not working. And so my colleagues are going to be bringing forward a few different ordinances to make sure that we can think more creatively, but also organizations can think more creatively.

And I'm looking forward to making sure that we educate and help the community understand what we're going to be doing here.

NINA MOINI: Real quick, what's one of those policies you'd really like to see passed that the council has proposed?

EMILY KOSKI: Yeah. I want us to be thinking about safe outdoor spaces and what does that look like. And from my understanding, the work that they're looking at is one of the issues that we have. And one opportunity that we've noticed has worked is low-barrier shelters.

So take Avivo Village. That's an exceptional example of how we've been able to support individuals who are trying to get out of homelessness. And the reality of it is, though, it's very expensive to build more Avivo Villages. It's very expensive to maintain an Avivo Village.

And so there is work to try to broaden the Avivo Village model. But we might have to think creatively and think about different organizations and neighborhoods that will want to have safe outdoor spaces.

And we want to put forward an ordinance that would allow that to happen. It does not mean that there can be an encampment. It means that an organization has to have a permit. They have to have wraparound services. And so there's a lot that will go into this. But we can't even think about doing this until we're able to pass these types of policies.

NINA MOINI: Councilmember Koski, thank you for your time.

EMILY KOSKI: Thank you. I appreciate it. Have a great day.

NINA MOINI: You, too. That was Minneapolis City Council member Emily Koski who represents Ward 11 in South Central Minneapolis. And we also want to say that we have reached out to Mr. Moturi's family. We have heard that he is out of the hospital but not feeling up to giving interviews at this time. We certainly will check back in if he does want to give his account of what happened to us.