At Metro Transit, fighting crime and disciplining officers
By MIKE KASZUBA
Most Minnesotans are familiar with the drumbeat of bad news for Metro Transit:
A man was found dead in a light rail car from a drug overdose in January. A shooting occurred on a light rail train in St. Paul in February. A man was stabbed on another light rail train in March.
And, despite a nearly eight percent drop recently, reported crime on buses and light rail trains in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region was up 32 percent in 2023 – even as ridership was just over half of what it was in 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But documents obtained by Public Record Media (PRM), a non-profit based in Saint Paul, show that Metro Transit has also wrestled with one other problem: Having to discipline its police officers for misconduct, at a time when the number of officers available to fight increased crime has dropped.
One officer was investigated in 2018 for dragging a handcuffed man down a light rail platform, with the officer also reportedly “laughing and clapping his hands in a mocking fashion.” In 2021, another officer was reprimanded for cursing at a homeless person at the Lake Street light rail station in Minneapolis, and pushing them to the ground. In 2022, a Metro Transit police sergeant claimed a work-related injury, said he could not work, and began receiving worker’s compensation benefits from Metro Transit -- only to then be found working as a security guard at a US Bank facility.
Two officers were disciplined for racing wheelchairs on a light rail platform, with one of them seen “popping a wheelie.”
PRM reviewed more than 50 disciplinary files for Metro Transit officers over a six-year period, ending in 2023. The files show that the disciplinary actions were highest right before -- and during -- the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A variety of Metro Transit discipline cases
In 2018, a passerby found an agency-issued handgun on the ground in the middle of a roadway intersection in St. Paul – the handgun belonged to a Metro Transit officer. The officer, who had been hired four months before the incident, told investigators that he accidentally left the handgun on top of his car and had driven off.
One officer was disciplined for watching – but not helping -- an intoxicated man lying in the snow on a set of light rail tracks. According to Metro Transit records, the officer also did not ask that approaching trains be halted. The intoxicated man was helped from the tracks instead by a civilian watching the incident.
Said one bystander of the officer: “They did not give a f---.”
In another instance, an 18-page investigative report showed that Metro Transit officers transported a suspect “with his face and head upside down in the back seat of the squad car.” When the suspect arrived at the Ramsey County jail, the suspect “remained in the upside down position for an extended time.”
The suspect had been found by officers wielding a knife during an argument with another person at the Union Depot light rail station in St. Paul.
The lead Metro Transit officer who responded to the incident told investigators, according to the report, that he “was only eight to ten blocks from the jail when the transport began. He stated [that] if he would have been a greater distance from the jail, it would have been a different situation.”
Investigators said the lead officer “took limited responsibility” for the actions, and defended what he did by saying that Metro Transit policies detailing the transporting of suspects were “guidelines” for police conduct.
Three Metro Transit officers were suspended for the incident. The lead officer was suspended for eight hours, with another 32 hours of the suspension held in abeyance for two years.
Though the overall number of cases was not overwhelming – a Metro Transit spokesperson said there were just two completed disciplinary cases in 2023 -- they came as the agency began facing a worrisome set of external and internal pressures.
The agency, on one hand, struggled with a sizable drop in the number of officers. At almost the same time, Metro Transit police were facing a complicated set of challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic, an overall increase in crime, and the aftermath of the riots in Minneapolis and St. Paul following the death of George Floyd.
In 2019, Metro Transit had 124 full-time officers, and 48 part-time officers.
According to the agency, in 2020 there were 113 full-time officers, and 44 part-time officers. Two years later, in 2022, there were just 78 full-time officers and 48 part-time officers.
In 2023, there were 79 full-time officers and 33 part-time officers –56 fewer full and part-time officers than there had been a decade before.
Money to hire more officers, but numbers drop
The shortage of officers has also shown up when comparing how many police officers Metro Transit has budgeted for, and how many it actually has on hand.
In 2021, Metro Transit budgeted for 142 full-time sworn officers, but only had 111 -- a gap of 31 officers.
For 2024, the agency said that it had budgeted for 171 full-time sworn officers, but only has 104 – a gap of 67 officers.
Some of the disciplinary actions against Metro Transit officers involved lesser issues.
In April 2020, a Metro Transit officer was disciplined for damaging a squad car while driving it over a cement kiosk in downtown Minneapolis, and also for not reporting the incident. A Metro Transit property and evidence administrator received a written reprimand for releasing a confiscated backpack to someone who was not its owner. In 2019, a Metro Transit officer was also given a written reprimand after he accidentally fired his gun while cleaning it at a training facility.
One Metro Transit officer received a 160-hour suspension partly because he could not satisfactorily explain why three days went by before a confiscated substance (that was likely crack cocaine) was properly logged into an evidence room.
And although there were just two completed disciplinary cases in 2023, one involved a Metro Transit officer who crashed his vehicle four times in 12 months -- including twice in two days.
Some of the disciplinary actions against Metro Transit officers have made headlines.
In December 2021, two Metro Transit officers were disciplined for accepting laptop computers for their children that were part of a program to help the underprivileged. One of the officers, Brooke Blakey, was demoted from her position as sergeant and was given a 160-hour suspension. “Your actions surrounding these incidents leave me disappointed in your behavior,” Metro Transit police chief Eddie Frizell said in a disciplinary letter.
“My character was basically assassinated,” Blakey told a FOX-9 TV reporter after the discipline. “The purpose was to soil my name and make it difficult for other opportunities to be present.”
Blakey, who had served as chief of staff to Frizell, was later appointed as director of the City of St. Paul’s Office of Neighborhood Safety. Her father was the long-time police chief at the Minnesota State Fair.
Many of the disciplinary actions that did not receive media attention have exposed other issues involving Metro Transit officers.
One Metro Transit police officer hit a suspect with his squad car in 2019 when the suspect tried to flee on foot from the Chicago Avenue transit center in Minneapolis. It was, according to an investigative report, the officer’s second preventable crash of a Metro Transit squad car in 12 months.
In July 2020, an off-duty Metro Transit officer got into a fight with bouncers at a bar in Spicer, MN. Despite being asked repeatedly for his identification, the off-duty officer refused to cooperate. “[I] know how this works,” the off-duty officer responded.
When the off-duty officer was asked whether he treated people like this while performing his own job as a police officer, he replied, “yes.”
The off-duty officer-- who was intoxicated during the incident, according to a police report -- also called the investigating female officer a “puta’’, (Spanish for “prostitute”, or “whore.”)
The officer was suspended for 30 hours by Metro Transit for the incident.
Metro Transit officers racing wheelchairs, “popping a wheelie”
When the Super Bowl was held in Minneapolis in February 2018, two Metro Transit officers were disciplined for racing in wheelchairs at a light rail station and “popping a wheelie” when they were supposed to be assisting people at the station on the day of the game.
The incident occurred at the light rail station at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Minneapolis.
The two officers posted photos on social media of them sitting in the wheelchairs and giving a thumbs-up sign.
“Numerous images depicted the officers using their cell phones, sitting in the wheelchairs, and racing on the platform. Included with the pictures is an image of officers losing control of the wheelchairs resulting in the wheelchairs landing on the [light rail] tracks,” an investigative report stated.
During the civil unrest in Minneapolis and St. Paul following the death of George Floyd, one Metro Transit officer was disciplined for leaving her post. The officer, upon being told that all police were being told to remain at their jobs, left her office, kicked a door on the way out and sat in her car for several hours.
An investigative report stated that the officer said “she has family and that she lived near where the rioting [was occurring] and that it was bullshit that she had to stay [and] wanted to leave.” Said the officer, according to witnesses: “What if I don’t stay?”
Some of the incidents meanwhile involved Metro Transit officers as they interacted with homeless individuals, whose presence on light rail trains and at train stations have sometimes caused significant problems.
In January 2020, one Metro Transit officer – a member of the Homeless Action Team – struck a handcuffed person with his closed fist after the suspect bit his hand. The officer was part of a team trying to find them shelter on a cold night. The suspect, according to an investigative report, was angry at officers because they could not find him a bed.
The officer told investigators that having his hand bitten “shocked the living daylights outta him.”
The officer added that he regretted his actions, and that he knew “he shouldn’t hit him with a fist” but that “he couldn’t stop his arm from coming forward” and “attempted to pull his punch.”
The investigative report added: “Considering the national conversations regarding community policing strategies, [the officer] went against the mission and core values of [Metro Transit] by engaging in behavior prohibited by policy.”
Complaints of swearing at, threatening to shoot homeless individuals
In an incident in late December 2021, a homeless woman said she was asked to leave the Lake Street light rail station by an officer who was “very rude”, swore at her and pushed her to the ground.
According to an investigative report, the woman said she felt “helpless” and “demoralized and treated this way because she was homeless.” A witness added that he was at the light rail station at the same time and was “not doing anything except staying warm” -- although he acknowledged others in the group were drinking. He said a female Metro Transit officer told him “she would put a bullet in his head and shoot him.”
The investigative report stated that the Metro Transit officers said they came upon the group of homeless individuals loitering at the train station and that “the group became argumentative with the officers and challenged the validity of their stop.”
But a Metro Transit investigation concluded that the officers should have used de-escalation tactics and faulted them for instead exhibiting “discourteous, disrespectful or discriminatory” conduct.
Metro Transit officials faulted two officers for how they handled the incident, and suspended one of the officers for 36 hours.
One other investigation stood out – a probe into whether Metro Transit officers had violated agency policy by leaking data to the local media.
A 16-page internal affairs report listed 11 officers, including two sergeants, who were questioned as part of the probe.
The April 2020 investigation came after a local TV station aired a report on whether officers were properly wearing protective gear while on duty during the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigation focused on the TV station’s airing of a photo of the Metro Transit standard operational procedure regarding personal protective equipment and another photo showing comments about the topic on a squad car’s computer screen.
The internal investigation, which was described in a report as “long and challenging”, found that a Metro Transit officer “violated policy by not reporting his contact with the news media.” The initial complaint, according to the report, “was to find who/whom [sent] data to the media as an unauthorized person.
“All this could have been settled from the beginning if [one of the officers] and [others] had integrity,” the report concluded.
Public Record Media would like to thank state Data Practices Act expert Rich Neumeister for his assistance with this article.
(Supporting documents for this article can be accessed by contacting Public Record Media at admin@publicrecordmedia.org , or at 651-556-1381)