Cops found no prints on Fong Lee gun, but …
http://www.twincities.com/allheadlines/ci_12051351
Three days after Minneapolis police found no fingerprints on a gun lying next to a man shot eight times by an officer, Police Chief Timothy Dolan reportedly was saying otherwise.
Witnesses say they heard Dolan tell the victim’s family members and others that Fong Lee’s prints were on the gun and that he repeated the comment to a citizens’ panel.
The witnesses said Dolan made the statement to them and Fong Lee’s family members. They said the chief said the prints bolstered the officer’s claim that the man was carrying a gun and the officer shot in self-defense — a claim now challenged by lawyers for the dead man’s family.
“The chief said that he had a fingerprint on the gun. I heard that,” Al Flowers, a member of the Police Community Relations Council, said Wednesday. “That’s how the chief downplayed it to everybody, by putting it down there that he had a fingerprint on the gun.”
“It seemed to me that he said the kid’s fingerprints were on the gun,” said Zachary Metoyer, another council member. “He definitely said it to cool down the line of questioning that we were engaged in.”
Council member Ron Edwards said he heard Dolan make the comment in the days after Fong Lee was shot and killed by officer Jason Andersen on July 22, 2006.
Minneapolis police records show that the day after the shooting, a crime lab scientist found no fingerprints on the gun, its clip or seven live rounds in the clip.
In addition, “no ridge detail” could be found on the gun or cartridges, wrote Sgt. Rodney Timmerman in his July 23 report. He said some ridge detail was found on the magazine, but it wasn’t enough to make a match.
Police spokesman Sgt. Jesse Garcia III said Dolan was out of town Wednesday and could not be reached for comment. He also said the department would not talk about the case.
In February 2007, Fong Lee’s parents sued the city and the officer in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. In documents filed Monday, the family’s lawyers claimed the man was not carrying a gun and that the pistol found next to his body had to have been planted by police.
In a court document filed in March 2008, the city acknowledged there were no fingerprints, DNA or fiber evidence linking the gun to the 19-year-old victim.
Fong Lee was Hmong, and his shooting sparked outrage in the Hmong community. Family members claimed he would not have had a gun, and they questioned the police account almost from the start.
QUICK EXONERATION
Andersen and a state trooper he was partnered with on the day of the shooting said they chased Fong Lee on foot after seeing another youth hand something to the young man. Andersen said it was a gun; the trooper said he believed it was drugs or something drug-related.
Both said they saw a gun in Fong Lee’s hand during the chase. Andersen, who was closest to Fong Lee, said it was in his right hand. The trooper said he couldn’t tell which hand it was in.
Andersen told investigators that when he ordered Fong Lee to drop the weapon, the man turned and raised his arm as if to fire a gun. Andersen shot him three times. After he fell to the ground, Fong Lee again refused to drop the gun, Andersen said, and the officer shot him five more times.
When other officers arrived, they found Fong Lee dead on his back. His arms were outstretched and a Russian-made Baikal .380-caliber semi-automatic pistol was on the ground about 3 feet beyond his left hand, police reports and photos show.
Dolan, then interim chief of the department, was quick to say the shooting was justified. He said Andersen fired because Fong Lee was armed and had threatened the officer’s life. He called a news conference two days after the shooting and displayed the gun.
Officials also claimed Fong Lee was a gang member and had had run-ins with the law.
The same day as the news conference, Dolan returned Andersen to duty, even though the department’s homicide detectives hadn’t yet questioned him, which is routine in such cases.
A ‘CLEAN’ KILL
Members of the Hmong community were skeptical of the police version of events, and on July 26, 2006, they — along with Fong Lee’s family and others — rallied at Minneapolis City Hall.
Dolan surprised the family by showing up. He invited them and a handful of others to his office to view a surveillance video he claimed showed Fong Lee carrying a gun.
“Dolan told them that their son was involved and his fingerprints were on the gun,” said Edwards, then co-chairman of the Police Community Relations Council. “He said it to me at a meeting that took place right after the press conference at City Hall. What he said was, the department was comfortable. They used the word that it was a ‘clean’ kill, and that Fong Lee’s fingerprints were on the weapon.”
No member of Fong Lee’s family could be reached for comment Wednesday on what Dolan told them.
The council was a 30-member body set up under a 2003 federal mediation agreement addressing community concerns over the police department’s use of force, minority hiring and other issues. The council was intended to meet for five years, and its term ended in December.
Flowers said he, too, heard the chief talk about the fingerprint.
“The chief said that he had a fingerprint on the gun. I heard that,” he said. He said Dolan also told Ralph Remington, a member of the city council, because “Remington was raising questions about it.”
Asked about the comment Wednesday, Remington said the office of City Attorney James Moore had ordered him just hours before not to talk about the case.
“I’ve been specifically told that I can’t comment,” the councilman said.
Dolan discussed the shooting at some meetings of the Police Community Relations Council, according to minutes from the meetings. At a meeting two months after the shooting, he announced the department’s internal investigation had cleared Andersen of wrong-doing and said the case had been forwarded to Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman’s office to be reviewed by a grand jury.
In an affidavit filed in January in the lawsuit against the city, police Sgt. Robert Krebs said that on June 28, 2007, the grand jury ruled there was no wrongdoing.
Freeman declined through a spokeswoman to talk about the case.
David Hanners can be reached at 612-338-6516.
May 12th, 2009 at 11:45 PM
I think that these Police Officers should be fired and locked up for the rest of their lives for murder. Do these officers even know what the RULES OF ENGAGEMENT are? Did Fong Lee ever shot at them? In any way did the Police Officers ever felt that their lives was threatened? All I see in the video is a kid scared half to death and running for his life. Being in the military for 8 years I know that I can’t engage at the enemies until they engaged at me. This is why tax dollars are so high these days to pay for stupid ignorant Police Officers like these guys. Plus they even got a medal for shooting a innocent kid. What a bunch pathetic people running our city these days. A while back Chief Dolan even gave medals to those police officers that raided the wrong Hmong house up in North Side Minneapolis. Wonder how much our tax dollars paid for the settlement in that law suit. These retards needs to get their acts right or we’ll be paying for their stupid actions for the rest of our lives. Open up your eyes people.