A Minneapolis police squad car in front of the burned out Third Precinct police station blocks off Minneahaha Avenue for a street festival in October 2021. Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer.
The Minneapolis Police Department released a batch of nine disciplinary decisions as part of a November public records request, including a suspension of an officer for taking a vehicle home without authorization and driving it thousands of miles.
The records request sought all discipline decisions not listed on the city’s public database of police disciplinary actions as required by a consent decree with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and a city ordinance . The city took five months to respond to the request, which was filed by a citizen and shared with and authenticated by the Reformer. The Office of Police Conduct Review lists several other misconduct cases with final discipline, but no link to public information, which means there are other cases not on the website, despite the mandate.
Final police disciplinary decisions must “promptly” be made available to the public, but some cases not shown on the database were finalized as far back as May 2023.
The disciplinary actions include a suspension for an officer who drove over 60,000 miles with a city vehicle without authorization and a written reprimand for another officer asking a robbery victim out to coffee.
A spokesman for the police department said the cases are being reviewed and redacted by the city clerk’s office and will be posted on the website as soon as that is completed.
“Transparency is important to us and we are working hard to ensure that public data is updated on our dashboards as quickly as we are able to post them,” Brian Feintech wrote in an email.
Minnesota Department of Human Rights spokesman Taylor Putz said, “Right now I have no comment on the quality of the database.”
Following the police killing of George Floyd, the city of Minneapolis agreed in June 2020 to create a public database of the department’s final disciplinary actions against officers as part of a temporary court order with the state Department of Human Rights. That policy was then codified in city ordinance and a consent decree with the state agency in 2023.
The police department has a backlog of complaints, and is slow to address misconduct accusations, often taking years just to decide whether to dole out a letter of reprimand or week’s suspension. A 2020 Reformer analysis found MPD took an average of 539 days to resolve misconduct complaints that result in discipline in the decade prior.
Earlier this year, the department released disciplinary decisions dating back to the 2020 protests. At least a dozen officers were disciplined for misconduct during the tumultuous days following Floyd’s killing — many of them by Interim Chief Amelia Huffman in August 2022 — but none of the discipline outcomes were made public until a few months ago, four years after the incidents.
Here are a few of the disciplinary decisions released after a public records request — some of which weren’t on the city website when requested, but later were posted there:
Lieutenant drives 60,000 miles with take-home car
Lt. Dennis Hamilton was accused by MPD’s fleet manager of driving a city vehicle without authorization between March 2019 and September 2021, according to city discipline documents. He drove over 60,000 miles in that time period, according to the report. Sometimes he drove over 200 miles per work day and once drove 300 miles over a weekend, according to the documents, which indicate he wasn’t authorized to even have a take-home vehicle. The chief or assistant chief must approve take-home cars, which can only be used for personal use when driving to and from work, according to MPD policy.
When asked about driving 1,900 miles in May 2021 and over 2,500 miles in June 2021, he told investigators he had to attend meetings after hours.
But Workforce Director — MPD’s computer program for posting work schedules and recording work time and absences — showed he attended an average of one after-hours meeting per month.
The Police Conduct Review Panel unanimously found he violated MPD policy, writing, “Even if one were to assume this take-home usage was permitted, there is a limit to what a take-home vehicle can be used for. Hamilton offered no rational explanation for the amount of mileage that he accumulated on his vehicles. In fact, the panel has great concern over Hamilton’s lack of credibility in being able to offer any reasonable explanation for this extraordinary amount of mileage.”
Police Chief Brian O’Hara signed off on an 80-hour unpaid suspension in a heavily redacted memo. His discipline is now listed on the city’s discipline website.
Sergeant suspended 30 hours for DUI
O’Hara also suspended a sergeant for 30 hours after she pleaded guilty to driving under the influence while off duty in January 2021.
Sgt. Julie Hagen had been consuming alcohol when she said her 11-year-old son called to say he saw people in their backyard and couldn’t find the babysitter, so she drove home but had vehicle problems on the way and needed a tow.
While waiting for a tow truck, Blaine police officers noticed alcohol on Hagen’s breath and arrested her for misdemeanor DUI. Hagen notified Internal Affairs, as required by policy, pleaded guilty to the charge and was sentenced to one year of probation.
O’Hara initially suspended her for 40 hours, writing in a May 2023 memo that “Hagen failed to meet our standards when she decided to drive while intoxicated, endangering both herself and the public.”
The police union, the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, grieved the discipline and the city agreed to reduce it to a 30-hour suspension, reimbursing Hagen for 10 hours she’d already served. As of Tuesday afternoon, the discipline was not listed on the city website.
Officer asked robbery victim out for coffee
Officer Benjamin Truong received a written reprimand in July 2023 after asking a robbery victim out for coffee and telling her to communicate with him via Instagram.
After taking a robbery report at the victim’s home in October 2021, Truong called the victim four times later that night, according to city documents.
After she returned the fourth call, he said he called because he couldn’t remember how to spell her name, then invited her to coffee. The victim said she was afraid to walk to her car after the robbery and asked Truong if he knew of anyone she could call to escort her. He offered to do it, inviting her to follow him on Instagram, saying that was the best way to get in touch with him.
She followed him on Instagram, but the next day realized how “highly inappropriate” his actions were after she’d been through one of the worst traumas of her adult life, saying it felt like Truong was “preying on that vulnerability.”
O’Hara found Truong violated MPD’s ethics code, and undermined public trust. As of Tuesday afternoon, his discipline was not listed on the city website.
Officer suspended for pushing man, throwing cell phone during Floyd protest
Officer Alexandra Dubay was suspended 10 hours without pay for using excessive force on protesters in the aftermath of George Floyd’s police killing.
After six days of protests, Dubay was trying to disperse a crowd on the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River, after a semi truck had entered the highway and nearly hit dozens of protesters, who climbed on the truck and pulled the driver out.
As Dubay’s “strike team” walked in formation, Dubay turned her attention to a protester on the bridge and said, “I’m gonna go f***in’ deal with that guy in about three f***in’ seconds if he doesn’t get f***in’ moving.” As the officers stopped near a man, Dubay passed through the line, walked to the man and yelled, “Move! Move!,” pushed him backwards, and yelled “Move!” and threw his cell phone. Another officer yelled at her to “Get back in line”
In her interview with the Office of Police Conduct Review, Dubay said every time officers “stand on the line, we’re there for hours.”
“At this point, this was about, I believe, my 90th hour of work in six days,” she said, according to discipline documents. “I was running into issues at this point where I needed to go to the bathroom. There’s nowhere to go. There’s not relief for me to leave. At this point he was kind of, he was hindering my ability to get away from this area. And we were going to be there for a long time.”
O’Hara wrote that she used unnecessary and unreasonable force, but also noted that for the past week, MPD officers had worked “extraordinarily long hours with little rest and little if any time to take care of personal needs.” That was no excuse for her actions, he wrote, but said “the unusual circumstances of that week are being taken into account as mitigating factors in my discipline decision.”
Dubay was given a written reprimand for excessive force and suspended 10 hours without pay for lack of discretion. The discipline is now listed on the city website.
Correction: Due to incorrect information in the disciplinary documents, a previous version of this story misstated the unauthorized miles driven per month by Hamilton.
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