Ramsey County Deputy Sheriffs Go Before Grand Jury
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posted by Bob at Friday, July 13, 2007
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Hi All,
This article was posted under another thread requesting I make a topic of it. So, here it is.
Fletcher says Naylon, other aide on leave
The job status of the two Ramsey County Sheriff's Office aides under investigation has been changed to administrative leave.
By Howie Padilla and Paul McEnroe, Star Tribune
Last update: July 12, 2007 – 11:48 PM
Ramsey County deputies have appeared before a federal grand jury that is investigating allegations of corruption by a top aide to Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher and one of his deputies, said a source with direct knowledge of the case.
The source said several deputies testified this month and several more were expected to testify when the jury resumes deliberating in August.
The job status of public information officer Mark Naylon, 47, and Inspector Tim Rehak, 47, has been changed to administrative leave, Fletcher said Thursday.
Fletcher said he could neither confirm nor deny whether a federal grand jury was looking into the case. Nor would he say why the men were on leave, but he said there is always a balancing act between weighing the needs of the employee, the department and the community.
The deputies' appearance before the grand jury is the latest step in an investigation rooted in a 2004 FBI sting to test Naylon's integrity.
Naylon and Rehak allegedly pocketed $6,000 in marked cash during the FBI sting in a St. Paul hotel room. Naylon also has been accused by federal and local law enforcement officers of interfering in investigations and tampering with evidence, sources have said. Those details first emerged in February when the Star Tribune reported that the FBI had confiscated Naylon's office computer files and searched his White Bear Lake home as part of the probe.
Naylon, through his attorney, has denied wrongdoing. Rehak, a former St. Paul police officer who retired from the force in February and was hired by Fletcher, has declined to comment in the past.
Before he became a Ramsey County deputy, Rehak was under internal investigation by St. Paul police for mishandling evidence, sources have said.
Naylon is not a licensed peace officer, but Fletcher had given him wide latitude to develop street sources and work with the office's special investigations unit, which focuses on organized crime cases.
Fletcher has credited Naylon with assisting in "dozens, if not hundreds of arrests" through his connections.
Naylon was Fletcher's best man when the sheriff married in 2004 and, like Rehak, was active in Fletcher's reelection campaign.
Sources say authorities grew suspicious of Naylon during a 2003 undercover case dubbed "Operation Close Cut."
Hoping to bust a large-scale fencing ring involving a motorcycle gang, law enforcement authorities opened a barbershop in St. Paul.
The shop was wired with hidden cameras and microphones designed to gather evidence from suspects who met there to cut deals. The investigation was coordinated by Ramsey County deputies, along with police officers from St. Paul and Bloomington.
A copy of the operation's guidelines was obtained by the Star Tribune. It indicates that the agencies were concerned that suspects would learn about the sting before the barbershop even opened.
Sources say that as they were planning the operation, Naylon bragged that he knew the gang's top leader and could reach him any time.
The task force was angered, sources said, when Naylon's bravado appeared at odds with the goal of the investigation. Sources say that at one point Naylon called the gang leader in front of task force members but then refused to provide them with the gang leader's phone number. The sources said Naylon's lack of cooperation only served to increase suspicions that he was interfering with suspects and even possibly tipping them off.
By spring of 2004, authorities had generated only a handful of minor gun, drug and property cases -- far less than they had hoped for. Officers involved told their superiors that they were having difficulty getting close to their main target -- the gang leader whom Naylon had boasted about knowing.
Operation Close Cut was shut down soon after, and the FBI's public corruption unit was asked to conduct the integrity test.
During that test, Naylon and Rehak were video-recorded finding $13,500 in marked bills hidden in a duffel bag in the hotel room. While a third man was in the room's bathroom, Naylon is shown pocketing $6,000.
Paul Rogosheske, Naylon's attorney, has dismissed the events recorded on tape, calling Naylon's actions an attempted joke being played on the deputy who was in the bathroom. Fletcher has said that an internal investigation conducted in February of this year showed that the $13,500 found was logged into the property room on the same day as the search.
However, sources have told the newspaper that the $6,000 did not appear in the property room until more than a week later. Fletcher has conceded that the dollar amount on the search warrant inventory list for the hotel room appears to have been altered.
Naylon's status was changed to administrative leave June 7 while Rehak's was changed June 22.
In February, Fletcher said he hoped an internal investigation would show who altered the record and when it was changed.
All the documents needed to conduct that investigation have been collected, Fletcher said Thursday. But interviews needed to complete the investigation have been suspended pending the outcome of the FBI investigation, he said.
8:53 AM
Bob, why aren't you posting the information in the Grand Jury investigation into the Sheriff's department? Bill FInney got a whole lot of coverage for something that he may have been involved with 27 years ago and the current Sheriff is hiring his friends with no law enforcement license to screw the people of the county over.
The case brought against the Sheriff's department by the FBI has made it through the grand jury. Where is the RICO case?
It seems as though Fletcher has other happenings going on as well, what about this lawsuit?
Court rules that retaliation suit against sheriff can proceed.
I know Sheriff Fletcher and he is no Bill Finney. Bill Finney was a DIRTY cop.
When this is all said and done, John Moore will have a lot of explaining to do. John Moore is lucky Sheriff Fletcher only suspended him for taking Ramsey County Property instead of firing him as he should have.
Another point, Sheriff Fletcher did not take any money. I have known Bob to be a honest person who I would trust my life with.
This case, like the RICO cases have to play out in the courts.
Sheriff Fletcher placed these two individuals on administrative leave as he should have. Sheriff Fletcher has to follow the same rules of employement just like Chief Harrington has to do with Aaron Foster who killed Barbara Winn in Maplewood some 27 years ago and is currently employed at the St. Paul Police Department. Aaron Foster was "protected" by Bill Finney.
Where is Repke in this discussion.
Finney can't protect Foster no more. It looks like the Winns have called in the big dogs. Check it out.
http://www.myspace.com/justiceforbarbara
Foster is a thug and he is going down.
As usual, Fletcher did nothing until he was painted in a corner. He took no action until the FBI had a grand jury get involved.
Why didn't he do anything when the FBI first came to him with the video in January?
After being an appointed henchman for 11 years, why hasn't that Naylon guy been able to get a Peace Officers license?
Since the idiot can't legally do police work and not trained or certified to do it, why is he involved in federal investigations and playing cop?
Typical Bob Fletcher style to do nothing until its too late. Unless you support someone else for office, then you better watch out because according to another Federal judge, he will retaliate.
Law and Order at its best.
For the record- Bill Finney was cheif from 1989 to 2001. There were four other police cheifs around that could have done something about Aaron Foster before and after Finney if there was hard evidence. Fletcher himself looked at it twice and found nothing BEFORE re-opening it last year will he was running against Finney and guess what? He found new evidence. Give me a break!
There are deputies and spouses of deputies that read this and know that Fletcher is a nice guy that surrounds himself with thugs and apparently criminals. He also has very vindictive nature.
None of that makes him a criminal ( his refusal to file his campaign finance information for six years does), but it makes him suspect on even handed application of law enforcement.
Fletcher's people are so pathetic that the moment something is blogged negative about him, they come back with something about Finney. Well Bill Finney is not elected to anything.
4:26 Do your homework and get your fact straight Finney hired Foster. Harrington is the only police chief since Finney left. And every question you ask about Naylon can be asked about Foster. You are very uninformed.
So, before Finney was Chief, Foster was not working for the city?
If that's the case, then Finney hired Foster, nine years after the incident and two investigations.
Foster oversees an impound lot, he's not running around in an official uniform with a badge arresting people. Naylon is, not to mention that Foster's gun permit was approved by Fletcher.
Harrington has been Chief long enough to make a move if there is any evidence. Last time I checked, Foster is on payroll and Nayon is facing a Federal Grand Jury.
I'm uninformed? You have no idea how close I am to this.
Since the idiot can't legally do police work and not trained or certified to do it, why is he involved in federal investigations and playing cop?
ANSWER- There is many "registered" informants. Ordinary citizens who volunteer their services under cover to assist the police. Usually with no formal training other than being very street wise.
These people are a valuable resource of law enforcement agencies. You do not need a license to investigate crime. Only a desire to make a difference.
Maybe Nylon has been serving his city as an undercover informant.
If Nylon was undercover this would explain the rumours.
Undercover informants get paid very well and take many risks, the typical way a person becomes a informant is by having legal issues that involve law enforcement and it is way to continue your illegal activities without getting arrested for them. As long as you are willing to risk your life by being a informant aka snitch the police will use you like your their best friend, run out of sources and information for them and watch out the police will go so far as to leak information out about the people you helped them catch.
6:40 and 6:55,
Can you read before opening your mouth?
Naylon is a Deputy Sheriff. Fletcher appointed him 11 years ago supposedly as a civilian employee. Yet, he wears the same uniform, has the same weapons, and the same badge as the other deputies who are licensed peace officers.
Naylon has never been to college or trade school for communications yet he earns $98,000/yr plus of our tax dollars as the Public Information Rep for the Sheriff's Office. Oh yeah, he's an Under Sheriff which ranks him right under Fletcher and over about 380 real cops.
The only thing that qualified him was that he's a former bouncer and the best friend of the guy who makes all of the decisions- the Sheriff.
Why is this guy out running with the special tactics and gang units?
Why is this guy involved in FBI investigations? Clearly they didn't trust him which is why they ran the sting on him and caught him.
His involvement alone could throw a case and allow some very dangerous people back on the street since, he's not licensed by Minnesota- or anywhere.
He's been there for 11 years- the exam and test should take about 5 or six months prep and then you pass. This idiot is running around playing cop with no license and apparently until the Feds caught him stealing money, no accountability. Oh yeah, he was busted gambling in the back room of the Myth nightclub too. I guess that's just a non-factor in his stealing six grand and then bringing it back days later after he was given a heads up.
He's not a snitch but, he may be a rat.
I posted a long off topic comment and had second thoughts and deleted it because it was distracting from this thread. Sorry if you read it and are wondering where it went.
Lets correct some things here:
4:26 P. M. said, “For the record- Bill Finney was cheif from 1989 to 2001. There were four other police cheifs around that could have done something about Aaron Foster before and after Finney if there was hard evidence.”
My response: “Aaron Foster was a Finney hire. Finney changed the civil service requirements to get Foster hired. FINNEY HIRED FOSTER not any other chief. Foster is as dumb as a fence post and this is the only way he could get hired. Just a note here, you also spelled chief wrong several times.”
4:26 P. M. said: “None of that makes him a criminal ( his refusal to file his campaign finance information for six years does), but it makes him suspect on even handed application of law enforcement.”
My Response: “Fletcher filed the required report. The Ramsey County Elections director lost the copy the Sheriff turned on time. When requested, Sheriff Fletcher supplied a copy to the Ramsey County Elections office. I have reviewed Sheriff Fletcher’s file as well as candidate Finney’s file. The entity that has failed to file for six years their reports is the St. Paul DFL. I have also reviewed the DFL St. Paul file as well and they took in over $50,000.00 some years and no reports were filed. Just for your information, last week when I checked, they still had not filed the reports for these years. Oh by the way, the Ramsey County Election manager is a life long DFLer who was fired from the Minnesota Secretary of State Office for being partisan. This has been reported on the web site, Democrats Exposed and reported in the local news media. Try some facts for a change 4:26 P. M.”
“You talk about even handed application of law enforcement. How about the ‘Get Out of Jail Free” letters Finney gave his friends when they were stopped by SPPD. Should we talk about Finney’s close friends and drug dealers, Pluff and family, Brennan/Pluff, Tucker and Plucky Duke? Finney was one of the most DIRTY cops St. Paul has ever had.”
4:26 P. M. said, “Since the idiot can't legally do police work and not trained or certified to do it, why is he involved in federal investigations and playing cop?”
My Response: “Finney gave Foster a squad car to take home. Finney issued Foster a permit to carry in light of firsthand knowledge of Foster assaulting several women. I feel real safe a women beater was carrying a gun. This has been reported in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Minneapolis Star Tribune. Foster also thought he was a cop, acted like a cop and even had a badge he flashed, all with Finney’s approval, but he was not a cop. No other police officer at SPPD was allowed to take home a squad car and have the city pay for the fuel, but Foster was allowed to do so with Finney’s approval!”
6:31 P. M. said: “Harrington has been Chief long enough to make a move if there is any evidence. Last time I checked, Foster is on payroll and Nayon is facing a Federal Grand Jury.”
My response: “How little you know. The murder of Barbara Winn happened in MAPLEWOOD not St. Paul. In talking to Mike Ryan and others on the Maplewood PD at the time, Finney did put his nose into the investigation of Aaron Foster, his close friend. Finney even attended the autopsy of Barbara Winn stating he was a close friend. Funny thing, Finney did not even attend Barbara Winn’s funeral. Finney did talk to the Ramsey County Attorney about Aaron Foster and the Barbara Winn investigation at the time. Finney covered for Foster. Also reported in the local news media.”
6:31 P. M. said, “I'm uninformed? You have no idea how close I am to this.”
My response: “You really have no idea how close I am to this 6:31 P. M. as well. Please get your facts correct next time. Finney was a very dirty cop, both before he became police chief and after he became chief. Sheriff Fletcher and Finney are like night and day. Sheriff Fletcher is an HONEST man, so unlike Finney.”
There's no cop that's honest. They all look the other way when people's civil rights are being violated and have the attitude that the problem belongs to someone else.
11:27 PM said there are no honest cops.
I disagree with you!
Foster is a SNITCH with a gun and a badge. There are pictures of him wearing a badge and carrying a gun on Winn's website. He is ILLITERATE. That is why Finney abolished the civil service exam for clerk positions at the impound lot. If Finney did not drop the civil service exam that requires an applicant to be able to read and write Foster would be unemployed. He had to move Foster to the impound lot because the REAL police officers did not want the THUG in charge of the evidence room any more. Why was this THUG in charge of evidence???
Ok so the murder was comitted in Maplewood which would of involved the Maplewood police to do the investigating and evidence collection. At that time Finney was no more than a street cop and what you are saying is; he had enough pull to convince everyone from the Maplewood PD,the Ramsey Co Sheriffs Department, the Chief of police at the time (St.Paul & Maplewood), county attorneys offices and anyone else in Ramsey Co. that could of prosecuted Foster that Foster was innocent? That would be saying that Finney had a lot of pull around town even when he was nothing more than a street cop. Don't get me wrong I am not saying he didn't use his power and make some bad choices, he did. But to say that Fletcher is Mr.Perfect is also wrong, he has shown himself to be involved in many wrong doings also. When everyone is stating its time for a change its actually time for a complete makeover in St.Paul!
Maybe Bob could find a way to show a BEFORE and AFTER picture of the city, after this extreme makeover.
I was referring to city offcials, we all know what we have now; corrupt officials, vacant buildings and empty lots.
What should take place is; a large (very large) group of people should get together and put up tents and/or cardboard boxes in every vacant lot/property to show just how many people have been made homeless due to the behavior of theses city officials that are so concerned about the homeless!
Stick to the subject.
YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT POST SHIT ABOUT FINNEY TO TURN THE SUBJECT AWAY FROM THE ELECTED OFFICIAL WHO IS UNDER FEDERAL INVESTIGATION AND WHO'S STAF IS UNDER FEDERAL INVESTIGATION- SHERIFF BOB FLETCHER.
The only way to equal the two incidents is if Finney did a few more things for Foster like Fletcher did for Naylon:
1. Hire him a deputy cheif or commander like Fletcher did y hiring Naylon as an Under Sheriff.
2. Sending Foster out on investigations and arrests like a real cop, as Fletcher allowed for Naylon.
3. Gave Foster a real uniform, badge number and service weapon, like Fletcher did for Naylon.
It doesn't add up. Also, Fletcher himself signed off on the gun permit for Foster after investigating him twice for his role in the Winn murder. Foster is not a cop or even close to one, he works in the impound lot for the city. Harrington can fire him as can several cops under him if, there is evidence against him of course.
At the time of the Winn murder, Finney was no more than a Sgt on the street. How did he have influence that went up the ranks throught he Lts and Capts and Deputy Cheifs as well as the Sheriffs Office which had jurisdiction over this?
That's one hell of a conspiracy- but that's all the Fletcher fans have to point to when the focus is on ol' Bob Fletcher and his corrupt ways.
I don't see Finney being indicted or brought before a federal court.
Hi 10:28 A. M.
Mara Gottfried of the St. Paul Pioneer Press wrote up this “shit” as you call it very nicely. I have enclosed the article for your enjoyment.
Complements of
A. Concerned Citizen
PS I have lots more where this came from.
Finney friendship under scrutiny
Past complaints, questions about former chief's actions surface in bid for Ramsey County sheriff
BY MARA H. GOTTFRIED
Pioneer Press
They knew each other growing up in St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood. Finney stood as best man in Foster's wedding. They've ridden motorcycles together to the annual rally in Sturgis, S.D.
Over the years, Finney climbed the St. Paul police ranks to become chief, while his friend worked jobs in security, construction and other trades. Finney eventually hired Foster to work as a civilian employee of the department.
Now, as the former police chief runs for Ramsey County sheriff against incumbent Bob Fletcher, Finney's relationship with Foster has become a hot political issue in an increasingly contentious race.
When Foster, 54, found himself in trouble with the law on two occasions, Finney got involved.
In 1981, after Foster's girlfriend Barbara Winn died of a gunshot wound in her Maplewood home, Finney attended the autopsy. Foster, who was arrested, told police Winn committed suicide. He was never charged. Her relatives recently questioned why Finney, who in 1981 was a St. Paul police sergeant, was at the autopsy.
Four years after Winn's death, Foster's estranged wife told police Foster pointed a gun at her head and threatened to kill her, according to a police report. Finney, then a police lieutenant who was not assigned to the case, spoke to a Ramsey County prosecutor about the matter, a police report stated. Foster was arrested but not charged.
In the police department more than a decade later, four officers complained Foster's friendship with the chief shielded him from discipline stemming from workplace incidents.
Finney, 57, who retired from the police department in 2004, said he has done nothing improper.
"We can't control what our longtime acquaintances do as adults, and we are not always proud of their actions," Finney said in a written statement. "However, I never let my personal relationships with friends, family or employees blur my professional judgment or influence my disciplinary decisions."
A Fletcher supporter said Finney's friendship with Foster raises questions about Finney's judgment.
Dave Titus, president of the St. Paul police union, which has endorsed Fletcher, said the Foster-Finney friendship shows "favoritism and questionable actions by Finney on behalf of Aaron Foster."
The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, St. Paul Area Trades and Labor Assembly and St. Paul firefighters union endorse Finney.
Finney and Foster, through his attorney, declined interview requests. They asked for written questions, which addressed specific allegations or criticisms in this article, but declined to answer the questions. Finney submitted a written statement, and Foster's attorney spoke briefly, in general terms.
Finney supporters said the candidate's friendship with Foster is a nonissue in the sheriff's race.
"There's no other person with a higher level of integrity and commitment to the community," said St. Paul police Cmdr. Todd Axtell. "It bothers me to see what's going on right now, because this man has done so much good."
A DEATH INVESTIGATION
Winn, 35, a bartender and disc jockey, died May 8, 1981. Her two sons, ages 12 and 15 at the time, told police they heard their mother and Foster arguing before the gun went off, according to a Maplewood police report. The boys told police they saw Foster running from the room where Winn was found dead, a police report said.
Foster told police that when the gun went off, he was in another room downstairs from where Winn's body was found, a police report said. Foster said he disposed of the handgun involved in Winn's death, but said she had asked him to do so after shooting herself, according to a police report.
At the Ramsey County medical examiner's office, Finney told Maplewood investigators he had witnessed Foster assault Winn in December 1980, a Maplewood police report said. He said he "told him to quit or he would have to act in the capacity of a policeman," the report said.
Finney attended a portion of Winn's autopsy. During a campaign debate at the State Fair this year, a moderator brought up the Winn matter. Fletcher questioned Finney's judgment in attending the autopsy. Fletcher said a suspect's friend who attended an autopsy could reveal information sensitive to the investigation.
Norm Green was a Maplewood police sergeant in 1981 who helped investigate Winn's death and attended her autopsy. He said he conducted investigations for the department for 18 years before retiring in 1987.
"I've never seen another agency come in like that and view an autopsy," Green said.
Finney has said he did nothing wrong during the investigation and pointed out it was another police agency, not his, investigating. He has said he attended the autopsy only because he couldn't believe Winn was dead.
Foster's attorney, Earl Gray, said Foster believes Winn killed herself. Gray said he believes Finney's political opponents have dredged up Winn's death as a political ploy.
"He's not a public figure, he never was," Gray said recently of Foster. "He's under attack in the media for something he's never been charged with, ever. In my mind, and the mind of others, that's grossly unfair."
Maplewood police submitted the case to Ramsey County prosecutors in 1981. James Konen, an assistant county attorney, declined to charge anyone in the case, citing "insufficient evidence," a police report stated.
In 2002, Maplewood police re-examined the case after a local television news station began asking questions about the matter. The department did not present the case to prosecutors because investigators did not uncover significant new evidence, said David Thomalla, Maplewood police chief.
The Ramsey County sheriff's office started investigating the case this year after a St. Paul police officer questioned Fletcher's office in March whether Foster should have a concealed-weapon permit because he had been a suspect in Winn's death.
Finney has questioned the timing of Fletcher's office reopening the investigation, saying if there is no new evidence, the case smacks of dirty politics.
In August, Fletcher wrote a letter to Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner stating two Ramsey County sheriff's investigators had reviewed the prior investigations in the case and conducted new interviews of witnesses, determining "probable cause exists to believe Aaron Walter Foster Sr. is responsible for the death of" Winn.
The investigators cited physical evidence they concluded conflicted with Foster's account of Winn's death. They noted the angle of the shot that killed Winn appeared to be in line with Foster's height. They also stated Foster said he didn't assault Winn, but an autopsy showed she had bruises, scratches and broken fingernails.
Fletcher has said his office found no evidence that Finney influenced Maplewood's original investigation or the decision not to charge Foster.
Fletcher also has said that once he learned about Finney's ties to Foster, he referred the case to the Anoka County sheriff's office for further investigation if needed.
Gaertner, who publicly backs Finney for sheriff, referred the case to the Anoka County attorney's office to avoid a possible conflict of interest.
Anoka County prosecutors are reviewing the case for possible charges.
AN ASSAULT ACCUSATION
On March 7, 1985, police arrested Foster after a disturbance at his home in St. Paul's Summit-University neighborhood.
Linda Foster, Foster's estranged wife at the time, told police she had gone with friends to the home the couple owned on Central Avenue to retrieve belongings, according to a St. Paul police report. She reported that Foster returned home, became upset, pointed a gun at her head and threatened to kill her, a report said.
Foster denied the woman's accusations, a police report stated.
Officers found three guns in Foster's home, including one Foster said he had bought from Finney, according to a police report.
A police report indicated that Finney spoke to Konen, the Ramsey County prosecutor who handled the Winn matter, while the investigating police officer presented the case to Konen for review.
Foster told police he had a court order banning his wife from the home, but it hadn't been served on her yet, a report said.
The next sentence of the report stated, "Lt. Finney explained the situation to James Konen who allowed that Aaron could be released pending further investigation."
Foster was not charged. Konen, who is still an assistant county attorney, has no recollection of Finney being "part of any discussion" in the case, said Jack Rhodes, a county attorney's office spokesman.
Konen is not friends with Finney or Foster, Rhodes said. That Konen reviewed both the 1981 and 1985 cases involving Foster was only happenstance, he said.
In 2002, as Maplewood police re-examined the Winn case, Linda Foster told an investigator Finney "would always tell her everyone had these problems and they just needed to work it out" when she talked to him about Foster's alleged abuse, according to a Maplewood police report.
COMPLAINTS ON THE JOB
In 1998, Finney hired Foster to work for the St. Paul police department. Foster has worked in the property room and is now an impound lot clerk.
A lawsuit filed in 2002 by the St. Paul Police Federation and Sgt. Ann Bebeau against the city, the police department and Finney alleged, "Finney, acting directly or through his command staff, has allowed … Foster to harass and interfere with St. Paul police officers."
The suit also claimed Foster had "been protected from the consequences of his actions because of a close personal friendship" with Finney.
Five additional police officers filed affidavits in the suit about what they considered problems with Foster at work from 1999 through 2001.
The 2002 suit centered on an argument between Bebeau and Foster in the property room. At one point, Bebeau stated in an affidavit filed as part of the suit, Foster said, "Let's take it up to the third floor, and we'll see who wins this one."
Bebeau said she interpreted the remark to mean Foster would take the matter to Finney, whose office was on the third floor. Foster later stated he was referring to his own commander, not Finney.
In the end, the police federation and Finney were dropped as parties to the suit. Bebeau prevailed against the city and the police department, but only in the accusation that the city violated the Minnesota Peace Officer Discipline Procedures Act and not in any claims against Finney. Bebeau won $1,620 in damages, and the city was ordered to pay her attorney's bill.
Three of the five officers who filed affidavits in the lawsuit detailed what they considered special treatment Foster received because of his friendship with Finney.
Sgt. Sam Caron stated that when he was Foster's supervisor, Foster would be gone for days at a time. Higher-ranking officers told Caron to "ignore the absences or mark him 'special' as he was with the chief during this time," according to an affidavit.
Caron also questioned Foster carrying a gun at work and driving a squad car to work every day, he said in the affidavit. An assistant police chief told Caron that Finney had authorized Foster to carry a gun, the affidavit said. Finney called Caron into his office and said Foster had his permission to drive the squad car, the affidavit said.
Caron stated he believed his complaining about Foster resulted in Finney "directing my immediate supervisor … to build a case to get me fired," but the affidavit did not cite evidence of Finney's involvement. In a two-month period Caron received two letters of reprimand, a two-week suspension for referring to Foster as "chief" and an unsatisfactory job evaluation after what he said was 14 years of "exemplary service," according to his affidavit.
Caron retired soon after with a disability.
Sgt. Brian Reed, who also supervised Foster, stated in an affidavit, "If Foster had a disagreement with an officer regarding any issue, his tactic was to invoke Chief Finney's name and end the discussion."
Reed asked for permission to suspend Foster after Foster cursed at him and wouldn't complete an assignment, an affidavit said. Higher-ranking officers told Reed he couldn't suspend him, the affidavit said.
A commander told Reed she investigated the dispute and passed her findings along to an assistant police chief. Reed said in the affidavit he never received an answer about what happened to the investigation. There is no record of it in Foster's personnel file.
When Reed was assigned to investigate a verbal exchange between Foster and a sergeant, he said, he sustained the complaint. The commander said she concurred with his findings and was going to pass it along to the assistant chief, the affidavit said. The complaint was later ruled unfounded, the affidavit said.
Later that year, Reed was assigned to work at the front desk, an assignment "widely known throughout the police department as being punitive," Reed said in the affidavit. "… I believe the hard stance that I took with regard to Aaron Foster led to this humiliation and punishment by the department."
In 1999, Sgt. Robert Winsor went to the property room to request extra film for patrol cars for the weekend. Foster told Winsor he couldn't have more film, which Winsor disputed, an affidavit stated.
As Winsor was walking away, according to the affidavit, Foster picked up the phone and said, "Here, I'll tell you who to call, you call the Chief, you talk to the Chief, go ahead, let's see if you're brave enough to call the Chief."
Winsor filed an internal affairs complaint, which was not sustained, according to Foster's personnel record.
Finney said in his statement to the Pioneer Press: "The St. Paul Police Department's record of integrity and public accountability was unmatched during my 12 years as chief of police. My decisions were governed by what was best for the citizens of St. Paul and the police department."
Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at mgottfried@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5262.
Hi 10:28 A. M.
Try this on for size.
Complements of
A. Concerned Citizen
February 26, 1998
Section: METRO
Page: 1C
FINNEY LETTER SMACKS OF SPECIAL TREATMENT
Katherine Lanpher, Staff Columnist
If only St. Paul Police Chief Bill Finney's letters were as well-conceived and polished as his apologies.
The chief's epistolary skills were called into question this week when news surfaced of a letter he had written for a so-called ``friend'' of the department, a police informant and convicted arsonist who liked to keep an eye on his neighborhood for the cops.
The note, addressed to ``any police officer having contact with Mr. Cornelius E. Brown Jr.,'' describes Brown as a good friend of the department and instructs officers to call Finney if any ``adverse'' police action needs to be taken against him. The letter also includes Finney's cell phone number.
Let's be clear: The letter stinks to high heaven.
Finney himself was adamant on that point.
``It's a poorly written letter,'' he said at a news conference Tuesday, shaking his head. ``I stunk up the whole church with that one.''
It's hard not to like a police chief - or any public official, for that matter - who can apologize in such colorful, candid terms. That's part of the problem. The man is so darn likable that it's easy to dismiss the letter as what he said it was - well-intentioned, but extremely dumb.
In Finney's version of events, Brown is a naive character who has made mistakes but also has assisted officers with photographs and written descriptions of trouble spots in his St. Paul neighborhood. Brown requested the letter, ostensibly to reassure officers that he was not out causing trouble.
Any trouble brewed up this time was by Finney, not Brown. Naive is a kind word to describe the judgment call made by Finney when he dispatched the requested letter to the friend of his department. You wish he would have asked the people around him for a judgment call; my bet is his subordinates would have cleared his office of stationery real fast, until the chief recovered from his impulse.
A lot of us would love a letter like that to carry around. If there was any flaw in Finney's well-delivered mea culpa, it's that he failed to acknowledge how such a letter looks to the rest of the citizenry.
It looks like a favor. It looks like special treatment. Hey chief, where's mine?
Along with his affable apology, Finney also cautioned folks to regard the letter leak as yet another attack on his tenure. He's up for re-appointment, and officials already are looking into his alleged misuse of a city cell phone.
Frankly, I could care less if the chief used his city cell phone to call home to see if he should pick up a quart of milk or to ask what movie was playing that night. The guy has a 24-hour-a-day job, and I can see where the lines between work and personal calls can get awfully thin.
The letter is a different matter. It shouldn't stop his re-appointment, but it does serve as a cautionary note.
The chief insisted that the letter was badly misinterpreted. Brown isn't a personal friend, but a friend of the department; there's a difference, Finney says. The letter wasn't designed to stop any arrests of Brown, but to ensure Finney would be notified. Brown misused the letter when he showed it to an officer who had stopped him on a traffic call.
Sorry, chief. The letter wasn't badly misinterpreted, it was poorly conceived in the first place. It's hard to have it both ways.
Katherine Lanpher's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. She can be reached at 228-5584.
Hey 10:28 A. M.
Below is an article in the City Pages and this has also has been printed in local papers about the type of people Finney protected. You see Kenn Pluff, Jr. is now Ken Brennan. He changed his name after getting out of prison for the drug stuff mentioned below. Ken Jr. now works as a security officer. Finney hired Ken Brennan to guard the police impound lot. This same RAT, Ken Pluff, Jr. AKA Ken Brennan and former police officer, copied down license plate numbers of SPPD officers and gave the information to his drug running family. Nice friends Finney surrounds himself with.
Thought you should know.
Commplemants of
A. Concerned Citizen
Vol 18 · Issue 883 · PUBLISHED 11/5/1997
URL: www.citypages.com/databank/18/883/article2168.asp
HOME: www.citypages.com
Welcome to Pine County
Some people think crack and furniture-stripping fumes made Chuck Strobel crazy. But it was the rural peace and quiet that drove him over the edge.
by Bruce Rubenstein
On February 20, 1996, the Pine County sheriff's office received a call from a man who identified himself as Chuck Strobel. He said that there were intruders on his property. "Hurry," he implored the desk officer. "They're in the house right now!"
His plea inspired no commensurate sense of urgency at the sheriff's office. Strobel had reported burglaries in progress on many other occasions, and they'd all turned out to be false alarms. Deputies had once responded to a claim that Martians had landed in his yard and were peeking in the window. The only call from the Strobel residence that turned out to have a factual basis had come earlier that year, when Strobel himself had been arrested for assault on a complaint by his girlfriend.
A former Minneapolis resident, Strobel had been living in an old house on 20 acres in a remote area south of Hinckley for the past four years. He was an antique dealer who specialized in restoring furniture. Although he'd taken great pains to isolate himself, he seemed to be spooked by being alone. He informed the officers who responded to one of his early calls that he'd set "man-traps" consisting of spring-loaded shotguns around his property, and that he was prepared to shoot anyone who tried to enter his house forcibly. Nevertheless, deputies Jared Rosati and Steven Ovick were dispatched to check out the latest invasion of Strobel's privacy.
Strobel, agitated and babbling, met them in the yard. He said that four Hell's Angels had broken into his house. Since he'd earlier claimed that these same bikers had obtained copies of his keys and were making themselves at home in his absence, the deputies were skeptical. They asked why the intruders hadn't just opened the door and walked in. Strobel couldn't answer that question, but he was sure they were robbing him blind at that very moment. He explained that they'd tunneled into the basement, then had managed to sneak up to the second floor past him and his dog before he heard them stomping around up there.
Deputy Rosati noticed a handgun tucked into Strobel's belt. "We'll go in and check it out," he said, "but give me that pistol first." Strobel handed over the weapon, then led the officers on a tour of the premises. There was nobody inside, nor was there any sign of forced entry. The last room they approached was Strobel's bedroom.
"He told our officers to stay the hell out of there," says Lt. Robert Johnson, an investigator with the Pine County Sheriff's Department until his recent retirement. "That kind of piqued their interest, but they really had no right to go in if he didn't want them to."
The officers terminated what was obviously a fruitless search for intruders. "The next time you call us, don't be carrying any weapons when we arrive," said Rosati. "Understand?"
Murder in Minneapolis may make the front page of the New York Times, but rural Minnesota is where the crime rate has really climbed in recent years. Between 1990 and 1995--the last year for which figures are available--total "Part I" (violent) crimes reported by rural sheriff's departments increased 12 percent, while Minneapolis recorded a tiny decrease. Pine County, 80 miles north of the Twin Cities, has seen more than its share of criminal activity. Too far away to function as a bedroom community and too desolate for tourism, Pine County seems to strike some metro thugs as the ideal location to avoid scrutiny.
"We're getting a different type up here now," says Johnson. He's referring to city-bred criminals who often combine a high level of sophistication about their line of endeavor with some naive expectations concerning life in rural Minnesota.
Maybe it's the "portal zones" that fool them. Dense forest borders the gravel roads of rural Pine County, but it's just that quarter mile of illusion the loggers leave after they haul the woods away to make paper. Nevertheless, driving through a gauntlet of thick forest miles from the nearest town seems to foster fantasies of total isolation among criminally inclined ex-urbanites.
Some adopt a reclusive lifestyle that has its own way of drawing the neighbors' attention. Others act as if they are on another planet when in reality their lifestyle makes them far more visible than they would ever be in a city. Either way they are armed and dangerous.
In mid-October, an outdoor marijuana-growing operation was discovered in rural Pine County. "I can't give you the suspect's name because we haven't picked him up yet," says Deputy Thomas Pitzen. "I can tell you he's a biker-gang member, and a white supremacist. He didn't have any of the kind of monitoring equipment we often run into up here, but he was certainly well armed. We discovered a shooting range and lots of expended shells on the property."
According to Pitzen, several methamphetamine factories have been busted in Pine County in the past few years, and recently two North Minneapolis-based burglars were arrested there. "They were responsible for at least 70 burglaries up here, and as far south as Owatonna," he says.
On October 24, Pitzen was part of an eight-man SWAT team that responded to a report of a disturbance in Sturgeon Lake. A woman named Marlys Koza had called the sheriff to say that her boyfriend, Greg Padden, was fighting with a man named Randy Fett in the mobile home Padden and Koza shared. Moments later a second call came, this one from Fett's son, who said his father had been shot.
The SWAT team found Fett, 38, dead in the road outside the suspect's trailer. He'd been shot in the shoulder and the head. Koza and other witnesses said an argument had broken out while Fett was discussing the purchase of a trailer from Padden.
"It was a beef between a couple of drunks, metro-area transplants," says Pitzen. "We arrested Padden in the woods about a mile away. I'd like to say that kind of thing is unheard of up here, but unfortunately it isn't. That's why we've put together the SWAT team." Padden has been charged with second-degree murder.
According to Johnson, city-transplant criminals most often use rural areas like Pine County to establish safe houses where they hide out and store drugs for major transactions. "Sometimes they conduct their business up here, but more often their activities are in the city and this is a retreat. Are they successful? Well, let's put it this way. I only hear about the unsuccessful ones."
Perhaps the most flamboyantly unsuccessful operation in Pine County history was a joint venture between a Chicago branch of the Latin Kings and members of the Pluff clan of St. Paul's East Side. Their alliance was forged in 1988, when Cindy Pluff, who'd run away from home at 16 to become a prostitute, met a Colombian cocaine dealer in Las Vegas. He introduced her to his Chicago distributor, Jose Rodriguez, a.k.a. "Cabeza," a reference to the brainy way Rodriguez organized the cocaine trade on that city's North Side.
Rodriguez lost his cabeza over Cindy Pluff. They moved in together, and his monthly trade with the Colombians increased substantially. Soon Cindy had become the major Twin Cities distributor of Colombia's biggest cash crop. By 1989 the Pluff family home on East Magnolia Street in St. Paul was headquarters for a family-owned-and-operated cocaine business.
Cindy continued to live in Chicago with Cabeza, but the stress and strain of everyday life in the cocaine trade made them yearn for some place remote to chill. With that in mind, Cindy purchased an old farmhouse on 55 wooded acres on Pine County Road 32. Her father, Kenneth Pluff Sr., was dispatched to the hinterlands as caretaker. Cindy, Cabeza, and certain upper-echelon members of the Latin Kings called the place their safe house. They began spending long weekends there.
One Saturday afternoon shortly after they began frequenting the safe house, Cabeza was delivered unconscious to the emergency room of the Sandstone, Minnesota, hospital. He died a few hours later from acute cocaine poisoning. His buddy Rudy Martinez emerged as kingpin of the operation. Soon he and Cindy were lovers, an affair Martinez would live to regret.
"We didn't know what was going on when they first started coming here," says former Sheriff Don Faulkner, "but they did get our attention. The death of Mr. Rodriguez was the first major incident, but there were many others."
Opinions vary on when local residents realized they had something extraordinary in their midst. It might have been Thanksgiving Day, 1989, when the neighbors down the road, Elmer and Shirley Ellgren, heard a terrible ruckus at the Pluff farm. "It sounded like an invasion or something," says Shirley Ellgren.
Actually, it was the ritual slaughter of the Thanksgiving bird, Latin Kings style, an event that was memorialized on videotape and would later be scrutinized by the police. Rudy Martinez dispatched the turkey, a huge tom, with a quick burst from an AK-47 assault rifle, then celebrated the kill by firing a few hundred rounds into the air. "I guess I can see why the Elmers, or whatever their names are, might have been upset," Martinez later acknowledged.
Martinez also confesses to being chagrined about another incident. It was deer-hunting season, and one sunny afternoon Elmer Ellgren headed for the blind he'd built in a tree on his property, his old lever-action 30-30 over his shoulder. When he arrived, the blind was occupied. Up in Ellgren's tree was a young man with a jet-black Zapata mustach, and an AK-47 cradled in his arms. Outgunned but undaunted, Ellgren demanded to know what was going on.
Angry words were exchanged, but not fully understood, because Ellgren spoke the rural Minnesota vernacular while the erstwhile hunter expressed himself in a mixture of Spanish and street lingo. Eventually the point was made, mostly by gesture, and the intruder trudged off toward the adjoining Pluff acreage, exactly where Ellgren thought he'd come from.
By late 1990 hundreds of complaints about the goings-on at the Pluff farm had been logged at the Pine County sheriff's office. The main sources of annoyance were noise, gunfire, and a pack of marauding dogs living on the property. But neighbors had also become suspicious of Ken Pluff's ostentatious displays of wealth. He routinely dropped hundreds of dollars on pull tabs at a bar in Duxbury, a few miles from the farm. His visitors from Chicago also patronized area bars, where they flashed weapons and made thinly-veiled allusions to their mysterious but lucrative trade.
"If I was a drug dealer I'd keep a low profile," says Shirley Ellgren, a feisty lady in her 70s, "but they were just obnoxious. You wouldn't believe the loud music, the gunfire, the cars coming and going. And boy did they party--nonstop."
What residents didn't know was that the Pine County sheriff's office had become part of a multi-agency task force that was planning a major bust at the Pluff farm and elsewhere. On January 19, 1991, simultaneous raids were carried out at the Pluff home in St. Paul, a stash house on Chicago's North Side, and the farm. Officers from the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the Treasury Department, the state Highway Patrol, and the Pine County sheriff's office--25 law-enforcement officers in all--went into the Pluff farm.
"Oh, you should have seen it," says Mrs. Ellgren. "They came with helicopters, cars with their lights flashing, men with flak jackets and big guns. It was wonderful. It was just like Miami Vice!"
More than 30 people were arrested in the three raids. The number who were willing to testify in return for plea bargains astounded DEA agents. "That family in Minnesota kind of hung together and said to hell with everybody else," says a Chicago-based agent.
In return for their cooperation, all the Pluffs but Cindy received sentences of less than three years. At last report Ken Pluff Sr. had done his relatively short stretch in prison and was back at the farm, where he was keeping a low profile. Reached in prison in Chicago, Rudy Martinez professed no ill will toward his ex-lover. "We could've been a lot cooler," he admitted. "We didn't think people would take notice. It seemed like we were all alone up there."
As the Pluff family saga built to a crescendo, Charles Strobel and his girlfriend Diane Roy were beginning to yearn for rural solitude. According to his fellow antique dealers, Strobel was a shy, gentle person, and a meticulous craftsman. He smoked marijuana constantly, but Roy claims he never used crack or other drugs when they lived in Minneapolis.
The couple bought and sold large furniture, and Strobel restored many of the pieces himself. "He was an artist," says a manager at the Cobblestone Antique co-op in Minneapolis, where Strobel and Roy had a booth. "It takes talent to restore furniture."
It also takes methylene chloride, the key ingredient in furniture stripper. Thus, in addition to copious amounts of marijuana and the usual urban cocktail of carbon monoxide, benzene fugitives, secondary formaldehyde, arsenic, chloroform, and on down the EPA list of ubiquitous air pollutants, Strobel was inhaling one of the most lethal of all industrial chemicals.
An eight-hour average of 100 parts per million of methylene chloride is the maximum exposure a human being can tolerate without sustaining severe harm. Since its odor threshold is 300 parts per million, if you smell it it's too late. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, the only ways to provide protection from the chemical are very well-ventilated workspaces or full-face breathing masks with their own air supply. The lungs, liver, kidney, and brain are the primary target organs of volatilized methylene chloride. Symptoms of acute exposure include giddiness, confusion, and delirium. Symptoms of chronic exposure are imperfectly understood, but grave.
In 1992, Diane Roy purchased an old house on 20 acres in Pine County. At first she and Strobel stayed there together, but by 1994 Strobel was a permanent resident and Roy had become an infrequent visitor.
"I stopped going up there because he went nuts," she would later tell investigators. "It just wasn't working anymore. He'd started hitting me and abusing me. He'd never done that before. He was a good man. But he was drinking a lot, and doing drugs."
During a visit she made in the autumn of 1995, Roy noticed that Strobel had installed heavy duty doors with steel frames. The windows were nailed shut. Valuable items Roy was storing in the house gradually disappeared. Strobel said they'd been stolen. "He was always talking about thieves," Roy explained. "He said people were coming around to rob him. Then he started accusing me of robbing him, and I hadn't even been up there."
Strobel had placed video cameras in several rooms, and in a pole barn he'd erected. When she inquired about two large holes in an interior wall, apparently made by shotgun blasts, he made another vague reference to thieves.
In January 1996, Strobel accused Roy of helping the Hell's Angels rob him. "He said I was the one who gave them the keys to the place," she told investigators. "I think he's gone, you know, paranoid."
Early in the morning of February 23--three days after begging deputies to rid his house of imaginary robbers--Chuck Strobel called the Pine County sheriff's department again. He was in his usual state of extreme agitation. He'd spotted several bikers prowling around his yard. They'd driven up in a large, four-door vehicle.
"Keep him on the line, and tell him not to have any weapons when we get there," Deputy Pitzen instructed the dispatcher. "Tell him everything is cool. Just wait for us, then come out in the yard unarmed." A state Highway Patrol sergeant named Thomas Ceiluch offered to join Pitzen and Deputy Jared Rosati for backup.
The moment the officers arrived it was clear that no one had preceded them to the property. Fresh snow had fallen, and there were no tire tracks or footprints. "Chuck came running out toward us," says Pitzen. "He was pointing at Tom Ceiluch, and yelling, 'Good, you finally got him! Let me see who he is!' As near as I could tell he thought that Tom was one of the Hell's Angels who were tunneling into his house, and we'd arrested him."
Rosati ordered Strobel to halt. In the dim dawn light the officers could see that Strobel had an electric cord with multiple plugs and a surge protector tied around his waist. He had a file in one hand and a knife in the other. When Pitzen told him to raise his hands, Rosati spotted a pistol tucked under the cord.
"We told you not to have any weapons," said Pitzen. "I'm going to pat you down now to make sure you don't have anything else." He found four shotgun shells and a bag of what looked like crack cocaine in Strobel's shirt pocket. "That's when we arrested him," he says. "We asked if the cocaine was his, and he just said, 'Yeah, it's mine.'"
The officers were about to drive a handcuffed Strobel off to Pine City when he asked if they would please put his dog in the house. "In other words," says Pitzen, "he invited us in." Barely inside, the officers spotted a bag of marijuana, a cooking spoon, and a homemade crack pipe. They secured the dog and headed for Pine City to process Strobel and get a search warrant.
Strobel seemed calm on the way. He volunteered that he'd had a bunch of buddies over the previous night to test his cocaine. It was a damning admission if true, but the deputies had their doubts due to the lack of tracks or footprints. When Diane Roy was later questioned she was asked whether Strobel might have had friends in to snort cocaine.
"What friends?" she replied. "He doesn't have any friends."
When the officers returned to the house with a search warrant, they discovered what Strobel had been telling them about in his own strange way for two years. His place was a veritable treasure trove of familiar controlled substances, scattered amid the less familiar paraphernalia of chemically induced paranoia. The search proceeded cautiously. "We were worried about all those spring guns and booby traps he'd been telling us about," says Pitzen.
The smell of weed permeated the house so thoroughly that a drug-sniffing dog had to be pulled away from the heat ducts and guided into more promising venues.
There were two locked safes. One contained a small bag of powder cocaine and reams of video-surveillance tape. The other held $4,200 in cash and 80 pounds of marijuana. Between that and a stash in the bedroom the cops found a total of 218 pounds of pot.
Shotgun holes were blasted through the walls and the door of a closet. The officers seized more than 20 guns, ranging in size from a .22-caliber two-shot derringer to a .375-caliber Magnum rifle suitable for hunting elephants. They also found a Safe House Wireless Security Scanner, three surveillance cameras and various viewing devices.
Investigators were able to determine that Strobel hadn't slept for more than 72 hours when he was arrested. Dozens of pills including codeine and various uppers were seized during the search. So were the untagged pelts of several animals.
Keys, door locks, and tumblers were piled on a table, and there were signs that the locks had been changed many times. "Maybe he wanted to get caught," Pitzen says. "Either that or he just lost track of who he was talking to."
Strobel was charged with nine counts of controlled-substance violations and four counts based on his possession of wild-animal pelts. In return for his plea of guilty to one count of possession of marijuana with intent to sell, all the other charges were dropped. On October 31, 1996, he received a 38-month sentence with a recommendation that he be considered for a program that would put him on the street in less than two years.
One theory that was kicked around the squad room for a while concerned the possibility that Strobel was indeed connected to the Hell's Angels, and was holding up the orderly flow of marijuana from Point A to Point B in that organization's distribution chain. Thus, it was theorized, he had come to think of prison as his best option, a kind of safe house away from the safe house.
"I don't think he was connected to anybody," says Johnson. "The Pluffs were different. They were part of a large organization. Strobel was more representative. He was a loner. That's the type we often see up here.
"Was he dangerous? Well, better than half the weapons he had were loaded, and there was some pretty high-test weaponry there. There was a high-quality night scope mounted on a 44 Desert Eagle, for example, and a pistol with a scope on it--that thing was so big and heavy, I don't see how a person could aim it unless you set it on something. He could have definitely shot through our vests.
"When we first locked him up, he told the jailer that he'd had our officers in his sights as they drove up his driveway. But he decided not to shoot for whatever reason. I guess he just drifted off into some other hallucination."
Johnson expects to see more cases like Strobel in the future. "We have individuals we're suspicious of right now," he says. "What's happening is they're getting hassled in the seven-county metro area, so they're moving up here where there's more space and less law enforcement. They buy a place like Strobel had where they can do their own counter-surveillance. They have better equipment than we do. We've gone to places where they have video cameras set up in the driveway 200 or 300 yards from the home. By the time we get to the yard they're out and running. You wonder what valuables someone who lives in a mobile home or a broken-down farmstead has to protect."
City Pages: Vol 18 · Issue 883 · PUBLISHED 11/5/1997
URL: www.citypages.com/databank/18/883/article2168.asp
HOME: www.citypages.com
Hey 10:28 A. M.
Here is the article in the pioneer press about Ken Pluff, Jr. AKA Ken Brennan who Chief Bill Finney hired to watch the police impound lot.
Complements of
A. Concerned Citizen
January 24, 1991
Section: Metro
Edition: AM METRO FINAL
Page: 1D
6 IN FAMILY HELD ON DRUG RING CHARGES
BYLINE: Mike Sweeney Staff Writer
A mother, a father, two sons and two daughters appeared Wednesday in federal court on charges they operated a Twin Cities cocaine ring that was supplied through Miami and Chicago.
Judge Magistrate Floyd Boline in Minneapolis ordered the members of the St. Paul family jailed until a detention hearing on Monday.
The family includes the father, Kenneth Rolland Pluff Sr., 52, of rural Markville in Pine County, Minn.; the mother, Catherine Ellen Pluff, 50, of 1075 E. Magnolia Ave.; daughters Cheryl Lynn Shelafoe, 31, of 283 Clarence St., and Karen Marie Pluff, 23, of 715 Sims Ave.; and sons Kenneth Rolland Pluff Jr., 29, of 933 Beech St., and James Michael Pluff, 27, 1260 E. Seventh St.
Two family acquaintances also appeared in court on the same charges and were ordered held. They are Murray Maurice Kemp, 25, of 715 Sims Ave., and Anthony Thomas Hernandez, 23, of 78 W. King St.
The eight were accused in a lengthy criminal complaint alleging they each conspired to distribute at least 5 kilograms of cocaine. A kilogram is 2.2 pounds.
A police affidavit accompanying the complaint outlines a yearlong undercover operation in which investigators used aerial surveillance, wiretaps and numerous informants to build a case against the Pluffs and others, who were arrested Friday and Saturday in Minnesota and Chicago.
The affidavit alleges that another Pluff daughter, Cindy Pluff, who lives in Chicago, coordinated shipments of cocaine and money between Minnesota, Chicago and Miami.
Cindy Pluff allegedly worked with several people in Chicago to procure cocaine supplied by ``some Colombians'' in Miami, the affidavit said. She and several others were arrested in Chicago on Friday and are in custody there.
During the arrests in Chicago, according to the affidavit, police seized 20 kilograms of cocaine from the apartment of one of Cindy Pluff's alleged partners. The affidavit indicates that at least some of that cocaine was to be taken to the Twin Cities.
The day Cindy Pluff was arrested, the affidavit said, investigators recorded a telephone call from Rudy Martinez, a Chicago resident who allegedly worked with the family, to Catherine Ellen Pluff. Martinez is in custody.
During the call, the affidavit states, Martinez said ``things are not good over here at all ... they got Cindy ... ''
Martinez also allegedly said ``they got 20 of those things,'' meaning kilograms of cocaine.
The next day, the Pluffs and their acquaintances in Minnesota were arrested.
At one point during the investigation, which was coordinated by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and involved police from seven other Twin Cities-area agencies, the Pluffs began a countersurveillance program because they suspected they were being watched.
The affidavit alleges that Kenneth Pluff Jr., a licensed police officer in Minnesota, checked license plate numbers provided by other members of his family doing countersurveillance and gave them information about the owners of the vehicles. Kenneth Pluff Jr. was a Ramsey County Reserve deputy for almost four years, worked part-time as a police officer in White Bear Township and was working as a part-time private investigator when arrested.
The affidavit also alleges that the family maintained a ``safe house'' in Pine County where drugs and stolen property were kept. The ``safe house'' apparently is a farm where Kenneth Rolland Pluff Sr. lived.
During a search of the farm, according to the affidavit, police found two semiautomatic assault rifles, an AR-15 and AK-47; a crossbow with a scope; several pistols and rifles; a police scanner; and a list of police frequencies.
During raids in Chicago, police found a videotape showing Martinez, Kenneth Rolland Pluff Sr. and others firing the weapons at the farm.
The affidavit implicates all the Pluffs, Kemp and Hernandez in drug dealing in one way or another, either transporting it to the Twin Cities to be sold, arranging for payments or actually selling it. For example, the document alleges the family sold cocaine from motels where they would go after a shipment was driven here from Chicago.
Hey 10:28 A. M.
Another post from SPIF
Complements of
A. Concerned Citizen
Posted 19 Dec 2005 08:42 by JANE ALSHOUSE
In response to comments regarding honorable candidates in the Sheriff's race,
the word I hear from members of the St. Paul Police Department is that the
officer's think Finney has no integrity and that they believe he has very
questionable character. There are a lot of stories floating around the law
enforcement community - most of which I don't know if they are true or not so I
won't mention them - but one concern is that he surrounds himself with very
questionable people. I guess that the cops refer to his close campaign workers
as the "three stooges".
#1 His campaign manager is a man named Ken Pluff who was fired from law
enforcement after he was arrested helping his family members sell drugs in
St. Paul. The Pluff family was one of the biggest drug operations the city
ever saw. Ken Pluff would run license checks on undercover narcotics
officers cars and give the information to his narcotics trafficking family.
After they all got busted he changed his name to Ken Brennan to avoid the
connection. Finney then hired him to guard the police impound lot!
#2 Finney's best friend, Aaron Foster, is still the prime supsect in the death
of this wife. According to news reports he called Finney before he called
the police! The case is still an open investigation. Finney hired Foster to
work in the property room of the police department. All of the cops thought
that was a joke. Foster is a part of Finney's motorcycle 'posse'.
#3 Finney's campaign co-chair is John Moore who ran against Fletcher last
time. Moore has been suspended twice for improper conduct. Once for harassing
a female paramedic and once for illegally taking squad car parts from the
Sheriff's Department and displaying them in bars owned by his friends.
Anyway, I guess there is lots more according to the cops on the street. They
also claim that Finney was good friends with Pluky Duke who is doing life for
narcotics sales. Cops say it is all verifiable.
J. Alshouse
St. Paul
Hey 10:28 A. M.
Here is another article from the St. Paul Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL OFFICER PUNISHED FOR DATA RELEASE//DOCUMENTS SENT TO JAILED NEPHEW
“An acting sergeant for the St. Paul Police Department was handed a 30-day suspension and reassigned after sending confidential police and sheriff's documents to an imprisoned nephew. St. Paul Police Chief William Finney suspended Benny L. Williams, despite the police-civilian review panel's recommendation to fire the nine-year veteran, according to police documents.”
This imprisoned nephew is John Clark who is currently servicing a 20-year sentence in federal prison for narcotics trafficking. You see John Clark and his friend Ken Pluff, Jr., AKA Ken Brennan and the Pluff family were one of the largest drug enterprises in St. Paul until the January 19, 1991 police raid. Chief Bill Finney disregarded the civilian review board to terminate Sgt. Williams and only gave him a 30-day suspension instead; Bill was just looking out for a friend. By Sgt. Williams sending this confidential police information to his nephew, he put police and sheriff officers at risk. Sort of like a spy within the ranks. It sure looks like Bill Finney let his friendship with Ken Pluff, Jr. get in the way of his professional judgement as Chief of Police. It really makes you wonder just whom Chief Finney was really protecting, you or his friends?
Ok concerned citizen explain this;
The murder was comitted in Maplewood which would of involved the Maplewood police to do the investigating and evidence collection. At that time Finney was no more than a street cop and what you are saying is; he had enough pull to convince everyone from the Maplewood PD,the Ramsey Co Sheriffs Department, the Chief of police at the time (St.Paul & Maplewood), county attorneys offices and anyone else in Ramsey Co. that could of prosecuted Foster that Foster was innocent? That would be saying that Finney had a lot of pull around town even when he was nothing more than a street cop.
Hi 12:48 P. M.,
I will again answer your question. Bill Finney was more than a street cop. Bill Finney was a Sargent with very powerful connections both in city hall and on the street level. Please see my other posts on Ken Pluff, Jr. AKA Ken Brennan and the Pluff family, Sgt. Williams, John Clark, Pluky Duke to frame a picture for you.
1. Finney attended Winn’s autopsy.
As explained in my 11:22 A. M. post in the Pioneer Press article; Finney friendship under scrutiny Past complaints, questions about former chief's actions surface in bid for Ramsey County sheriff BY MARA H. GOTTFRIED, Pioneer Press
Now referred to as: SPPP 2006.
“At the Ramsey County medical examiner's office, Finney told Maplewood investigators he had witnessed Foster assault Winn in December 1980, a Maplewood police report said. He said he "told him to quit or he would have to act in the capacity of a policeman," the report said. (SPPP 2006)
“Finney attended a portion of Winn's autopsy. During a campaign debate at the State Fair this year, a moderator brought up the Winn matter. Fletcher questioned Finney's judgment in attending the autopsy. Fletcher said a suspect's friend who attended an autopsy could reveal information sensitive to the investigation.
Norm Green was a Maplewood police sergeant in 1981 who helped investigate Winn's death and attended her autopsy. He said he conducted investigations for the department for 18 years before retiring in 1987.” (SPPP 2006)
"I've never seen another agency come in like that and view an autopsy," Green said. (SPPP 2006)
2. In talking to Mike Ryan who was a Maplewood Police officer and later Police Chief of MPD, processed the scene personally. Ryan stated that the it was a murder scene and not a suicide.
3. Also in the 11:22 A. M. post from the St. Paul Pioneer Press it was also reported
A. A DEATH INVESTIGATION
” Maplewood police submitted the case to Ramsey County prosecutors in 1981. James Konen, an assistant county attorney, declined to charge anyone in the case, citing "insufficient evidence," a police report stated.” (SPPP 2006)
B. 1985 using a gun Finney sold Foster:
“Four years after Winn's death, Foster's estranged wife told police Foster pointed a gun at her head and threatened to kill her, according to a police report. Finney, then a police lieutenant who was not assigned to the case, spoke to a Ramsey County prosecutor about the matter, a police report stated. Foster was arrested but not charged.” (SPPP 2006)
“A police report indicated that Finney spoke to Konen, the Ramsey County prosecutor who handled the Winn matter, while the investigating police officer presented the case to Konen for review.” (SPPP 2006)
“The next sentence of the report stated, "Lt. Finney explained the situation to James Konen who allowed that Aaron could be released pending further investigation." (SPPP 2006)
It is interesting to note that Aaron Foster can afford Earl Gray as his attorney on what he makes as manager of the Police impound lot. It just so happens Earl Grey is also Bill Finney’s attorney. Interesting!
It is also interesting the statement by Bill Finney in this article, "However, I never let my personal relationships with friends, family or employees blur my professional judgment or influence my disciplinary decisions." (SPPP 2006)
What I find more interesting is a statement by Commander Todd Axtell, the current commander of the SPPD Vice Unit. You know the unit that is supposed to be keeping drugs off the street. Axtell stated, "There's no other person with a higher level of integrity and commitment to the community," said St. Paul police Cmdr. Todd Axtell. "It bothers me to see what's going on right now, because this man has done so much good." (SPPP 2006)
Axtell was also campaign co-chair with Ken Brennan of Finney’s Sheriff election committee. Ken Brennan and Todd Axtell were also seen by numerous people putting up campaign signs for Finney. You know what they say, “Birds of a feather stick together.” Ken Brenna, AKA Ken Pluff, Jr. a convicted drug dealer and former cop who copied down police license numbers for his drug dealing family and the Commander of the Vice running around town putting up campaign signs for Bill Finney. Interesting!
Some more information as reported by Tom Lyden, Channel 9
Detectives Closer to Solving Cold Case
Created: Tuesday, 27 Feb 2007, 9:40 PM CST
Last Edited: Tuesday, 27 Feb 2007, 10:05 PM CST
Barbara Winn's children still remember that night in Maplewood, 26 years ago. That night, they heard their mother fighting with her boyfriend Aaron Foster, then heard a gunshot.
It became a bit of a political football. That sheriff's race is over, but the Barbara Winn case is still active.
Maplewood police lost the evidence, years ago. The medical examiner also misplaced the autopsy photos, until recently. The Winn family gave FOX 9 those photos and the lead detective believes the photos may break the case wide open.
Barbara Winn's children still remember that night in Maplewood, 26 years ago. That night, they heard their mother fighting with her boyfriend Aaron Foster, then heard a gunshot.
Foster, now a civilian in the St. Paul Police Department, has maintained through the years that Winn killed herself.
Ramsey County Detective Bill Snyder re-opened the cold case and discovered lost autopsy photos that raise new questions. Beginning with the bullet wound, at a 40 degree downward angle, he says it's inconsistent with the mechanics of a suicide.
"I believe Aaron Foster's responsible for the death of Barbara Winn,” Snyder said. “I can't pull that trigger because of the angle, and I'm supposed to believe a woman did that? I'm sorry, I can't buy that."
There are also mysterious marks next to the entrance wound. Snyder believes that's from the site on the 38-special as it was jammed into her chest. Then, there are these pinch bruises on her hand.
Snyder believes Winn's hand got caught in the firing pin as she was defending herself. That also explains how she got powder burns on her hand. Foster fled the scene that night, and Snyder says he had plenty of chances to wash his hands of gunpowder.
Foster's best friend at the time was Sgt. Bill Finney, the former St. Paul Police Chief. Snyder says Finney now refuses to do an interview.
"He is Aaron's closest friend,” Snyder said. “He was at the autopsy, and I believe if anyone knows what happened it's probably him."
Barbara Winn's children thought they were getting close to finally seeing Aaron Foster in court, but they now believe Anoka county prosecutors are dragging their feet, hoping this cold case will simply vanish, like most of the physical evidence already has.
Anoka County prosecutors have had the case since November. They say it will still be several weeks before they make a decision to charge the case. Aaron Foster's attorney refuses to comment and Bill Finney said he believes this is still a witch hunt, without any new evidence.
End of Article from Channel 9.
So I hope this answers your question.
A. Concerned Citizen
6:31
I know EXACTLY who you are. and you don't know nothing. you should be ashamed of yourself--- being a law enforcement officer and all.
This is no better than the e-democracy list Bob.
The subject is on the Sheriff's Deputy going before a grand jury- yet it devolves into a 'Finney is a Crook' thread.
Just like the subject on Bob Fletcher now facing a grand jury turned to a 'Finney is a crook' thread.
Just like the Winn thread which was focused on Aaron Foster turned into a 'Finney is a Crook' thread.
Bob FLetcher's supporters got nothing but FInney is a Crook. So what? He'll get his as he's no longer in office but, Fletcher is looking at two investigations and possible indictments at the same time in his office at the highest level and we have to get more than 'Finney is a crook' from them.
Bob, make these kiss ass deputies stick to subject and start a Finney is a crook post- but this aint the place as Bill Finney has nothig to do with any of this except he promoted Fletcher through the ranks when he was a city cop.
Finney doesn't matter in this case and all posts focused on Bill Finney should be removed as they are off-topic.
Unless the sheriff runs this board too.
By the way, Snyder was a st paul cop until he got suspended for something that should have barred him from wearing a badge again. But noooo, ol' Fletcher took him in.
Its only a matter of time before the Pioneer Press is writing about him. I'd say about two more months.
Hi 12:23 A. M.
Here is the correct story about Bill Snyder as reported in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Minneapolis Star Tribune, (Asian-gang expert returns to streets; When Police Chief Finney moved the sergeant out of gang work, Hmong parents protested. Sheriff Fletcher hired him to work with kids in trouble and their parents, February 18, 1999.
In short it states the following:
St. Paul Police Officer Bill Snyder, was one of the premier Asian gang experts in the state, who for over six years had worked hard to develop ties to the Asian community. Officer Snyder was assigned to the Minnesota Gang Strike Force. After word that Officer Snyder was working closely with Bob Fletcher, Chief Finney had Officer Snyder transferred to the northwest investigations unit of the St. Paul Police Department.
When Officer Snyder went to Chief Finney to ask for an explanation for the move, Chief Finney responded in a raised voice, “Get out of my office, I have nothing to say to you.” No explanation as to why the transfer, and a big lose of a very valuable person to the Minnesota Gang Strike Force. This is just another example Chief Finney putting citizens at risk just for political reasons.
The transfer of Officer Snyder also upset members of the Asian community. Over 100 members of the Asian community protested in front of City Hall. They had signs that stated, “Bill Snyder symbolizes hope in our community.” The Start Tribune reported, the following, Michelle Yang stated, “We don’t understand why Chief Finney would take him (Officer Snyder) away from our community.”
Bob Fletcher seeing what a loss to the law enforcement community this was offered Officer Snyder a job at the Sheriff’s office. This was not an easy decision for Officer Snyder, as he was very proud to be a member of the St. Paul Police Department. Officer Snyder left the St. Paul Police Department and took the job Sheriff Fletcher had offered him. This cost Officer Snyder an $8,000.00 cut in pay and the loss of three weeks of paid vacation. Officer Snyder wanted to serve his community and he took the job with the Ramsey County. Officer Snyder had expert gang knowledge and Sheriff Fletcher was proactive and hired this very talented individual who Chief Finney threw to the side because of petty politics.
Thanks Deputy Snyder for your service!
12:23 A. M. your slander of Bill Snyder is really telling as to the extent you will go to protect Bill Finney. Bill Snyder did NOTHING to dishonor the badge in St. Paul or Ramsey County. Bill Finney was playing petty politics and Bill Snyder put the public first instead. Bill Finney is the one who has stained the badge.
I look up to Bill Snyder. Well I have to, Bill Snyder is a really big guy, not only physically, but he has a big heart.
Sincerely,
A. Concerned Citizen
PS 12:23 A. M., here are some more links to the impressive work Bill Snyder does (I only put a few here as there many more).
http://www.asianweek.com/2001_02_09/news5_gang_decline_minn.html
http://www.hmongtoday.com/displaynews.asp?ID=1849
http://www.stpaul.gov/depts/police/reports/98annual_4.pdf
http://www.oralhistorian.org/part3.pdf
2:47-"This is just another example Chief Finney putting citizens at risk just for political reasons."
------
You mean like punishing deputies who supported another deputy for Sheriff and replacing their experience with guys who have no law enforcement background but, stood up at your wedding?
Hmmmm, the FBI have no horse in this race yet, they have two case against Fletcher and ZERO against Finney. The title of this post is about Fletcher. In the Federal Court system we see that Fletchers Deputies do have a case against him for retaliation of them excercising their First Amendment Rights.
We are all safe under that kind of logic.
I'll ask what's been asked.
This post is about Fletcher.
Why is every post that mentions Fletchers, bombarded with anti-Finney language?
Is Finney the bar to what is a good cop and bad cop? If not, then why is it so important that Fletcher's people prove he's better than Finney?
Fletcher should be more worried about proving himself in the court and to the People who elected him. Not if he's a better cop than Finney. He was chosen over Finney to be the Sheriff by the People. Now, the People (represented by the government) are asking him some questions about his actions and his staff.
Can we get an answer to that? He already won the political contest.
12:21, I have been fishing and wasn't aware what was going on in this thread. Although, from past experience I haven't been able to post a story for either Finney or Fletcher without this happening.
You have asked me to delete the Finney comments. That is a reasonable request since the comments are off topic. On the other hand I have been asked to put all this information here off topic under a new post with a new title. I do that this stuff will go right to the top of the page.
I also have an email from someone who claims they feel important information comes from these exchanges and they want me to leave the thread as is.
On the front page under links is "Letters to the Host". I'd appreciate input on this subject there.
Late this summer this will no longer be a problem for me. A Democracy will be moving to a full fledged public forum and posters will be able to post their own topics.
To 12:21 A. M.
The answer is simple in all of these cases, Finney is a crook. In the Winn case, Finney covered for Foster, when Foster assaulted his wife; Finney covered for Foster with the Ramsey County Attorney as documented in official police reports.
As for 10:03 A. M. the feds do have a horse in this race and the only one who will do well will be Earl Grey.
Bob,
This information about Bill Finney is very important. It shows the level of corruption going on in our city.
The issues with code compliance and the issues with Bill Finney being a dirty cop are very telling as to the state of affairs currently in this city.
What I liked most about some of these posts is they actually cited news articles that have been reported in the local news media. It is easy to sate something, but backing it up with real proof really counts. Some issues may be small why back then, but by putting them together they tell a much bigger story.
Bob you are a good man, keep up the good fight.
By the way did you catch any fish?
So the FBI investigations into Fletchers office on his senior staff and himself are not relevant because Bill Finney is a crook?
Great logic.
Why should we hold a corrupt public official responsible when we have a former public official who is more corrupt?
Maybe we can hold Bob Fletcher and the Sheriff's Offie accountable after we send Finney to a Grand Jury.
That's fighting corruption the Saint Paul way.
To 3:43 P. M.
Two Ramsey County employees from the sheriffs office are being investigated and they have appeared before a federal grand jury that is investigating the allegations. That is a good thing. That is why we have a court system. These men are not guilty until a jury or their peers say so.
Take the Barbara Winn case, Aaron Foster should have faced a grand jury. Every investigator who has reviewed this case has seen enough evidence to have probable cause to charge Aaron Foster with her death. Because of Bill Finney's actions, the Winn case has never had the opportunity to be presented to a grand jury as he has run cover for his childhood friend Aaron Foster.
Many others and I would like to see the Barbara Winn case brought before a grand jury and hopefully someday that will happen.
You are correct there is a lot of corruption in St. Paul. Are you willing to work to see that the thugs like Finney, Foster and many others are held accountable?
Hmmm how much of ths has to do with Finney being one of the first educated (and Black) leaders within a Police Dept that was very close knit parochial?
To the above poster, I can buy Finney running interference with local cops, maybe with Maplewood cops and SOME Ramsey county deputies but, to be able to also influence Attorneys (who are not tied to St Paul) and administrative judges AND even juries to protect Foster is a stretch at the least. Especially when he couldn't pull the same things for his own kids.
There are some cops that didn't like their boss, that clear from the responses on here but, to paint Finney as the most powerful figure in Ramsey County since well, Alexander Ramsey.
That's hard to beleive.
Did he also influence Bob Fletcher's two investigations in this case? Wow, that's some power.
Did he influence Bob Fletcher to approve the conceal and carry permit that Foster had?
If you look back through the archives you'll see that Bob Fletcher defended Naylon and made crazy statements against the FBI. Now, he suspends them after obvious evidence became public.
Fletcher is also under scrutiny in the courts for retaliation which is bigger than any of this.
5:16
YES. Finney DID influence the Sheriffs dept. to issue Fosters gun permit by deception. last time I checked the Winn case never made it to a jury. Stop twisting the facts.
To 5:16 P. M.
Finney influenced the investigations done by Maplewood at the county level. He attended the autopsy of Barbara Will when it was not a St. Paul investigation. Finney stated he was so broke up be Barbara’s death he did not even go to her funeral. The Ramsey County
was James Konen. Konen reviewed both the 1981 and 1985 cases involving Foster and both times Finney had a “conversation” with Konen and Foster was not charged. This is also in official police reports as well as in the 11:22 A. M. post above (St. Paul Pioneer Press article).
Sheriff Fletcher has only looked into the Winn Death once and when he did he found significant evidence to charge Foster. Barbara’s family brought this case to his attention. Sheriff Fletcher turned the case over to the Ramsey County Attorney Susan Getner (sp) and she in turn turned it over to Anoka County and that is where is sits now.
So yes, Finney did influence two investigations in Maplewood and one in St. Paul involving Foster. The Maplewood PD also felt there was enough to charge Foster, but it was stopped by Ramsey County James Konen. Wow. Bob Fletcher did revoke Foster’s permit to carry.
You say it is hard to believe, but the same was said in the 1930s. Why St. Paul was not a haven for gangsters, it is just your imagination I guess. The times are different, the vices have changed as the vice of choice is not alcohol, but drugs and gangs. Finney’s close personal friends (Pluff family, Ken Brennan AKA Ken Pluff, Jr., and Pluky Duke) ran some of the biggest drug operations in St. Paul. How does a clerk like Foster, who works in the impound lot, can afford an attorney like Earl Grey to defend him? I do not think Earl Grey does this defense work for Finney or Foster pro bono. It is also comforting to know Finney was also at two different times on the St. Paul School Board making decisions about out children. Talk about a dangerous situation.
Grey does a lot of pro bono work for cases he finds interesting not just the indigent.
You answer yes Finney did influence all of those levels of government but, offered no proof. Nothing.
For instance, the County Attorney works in case with dozens of other Assistant County Attorneys who are career people. Why didn't one of them speak up in the 1980's? The 1990's? 2000's? Many of these prosecutors go on to become- and have become judges and private law firm partners with nothing to fear from a bureaucrat who has no power over them since most are not even in the County anymore.
He was at the autopsy. Was he accused of changing evidence? No. Was he accused or charged with intimidation? No. What is the relevance of him being there? Was the County Medical Examiner charged with malfeasance? I mean, he would have to had information he was withholding. What about the assistant county attorney? Finney was close to a suspect and there during the autopsy, I'm sure they wanted to speak to him.
Having a conversation means nothing especially when a County Attorney can have the FBI and US Attorney's Office investigating with one phone call. It still doesn't make sense that this 27 year old street cop who was clearly climbing the ranks could have influence over these higher ranking people and these other professionals that had nothing to do with him. Why risk their careers from top to bottom over a guy that was just a city cop. Don't tell me that they knew he was going to be Chief. There was never a black Chief in the city's history and this 27 year old Sgt wasn't so influential.
*Oh wait, the FBI did investigate and found gun powder residue on the victims hands not on the accused.
http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=133510
So, during the election of his career, Bob Fletcher creates a Cold Case Unit (while case are currently not being solved), and the first and only order of business is the Winn Case.
Hi, 9:58 P. M.
I would be happy to respond to your post.
The reason Barbara Winn had gun power residue on her hand was she was trying to defend herself from a murder, Aaron Foster. As a former law enforcement officer you should know that when a person is shot at this close range and proximity, both the shooter and the victim will have gun power residue on them when the weapon as discharged. What you overlooked from the autopsy are the defensive wounds on Barbara Winn and the 40-degree angle of bullet direction. All very important facts you just happened to leave out.
The following is taken from: http://www.crimesceneblog.com/?cat=71
The case was investigated by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department. An autopsy was done, but 26 years ago, technology was not as advanced as today. It did not help matters that the autopsy photos were lost at one point, which hampered the investigation.
Late in 2006 the autopsy photos turned up and the investigation was re-opened. The autopsy photos revealed a great deal about the wounds suffered by Barbara Winn on the night she died.
For one, the gunshot would was at a 40 degree downward angle, indicating that whoever fired the weapon was shooting from a position taller than her.
Current Ramsey County Detective Bill Snyder believes that Barbara Winn died not by suicide but murder, and he thinks Aaron Foster did it. “I believe Aaron Foster’s responsible for the death of Barbara Winn,” Snyder said. “I can’t pull that trigger because of the angle, and I’m supposed to believe a woman did that? I’m sorry, I can’t buy that.”
There were also marks on the victim’s hand, consistent with the idea that her finger was jammed in front of the firing pin as she tried to stop the gun from going off. There were also powder burns on her hands, indicating she was close the weapon at the time it was discharged.
Another strange bruise was found next to the entrance wound. Investigators believe these marks came from the sight on the end of the barrel of the 38-Special that killed her.
The following was taken from KMSP Ch 9 reported by Tom Lyden, Channel 9
Detectives Closer to Solving Cold Case
Created: Tuesday, 27 Feb 2007, 9:40 PM CST
http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/myfox/pages/ContentDetail?contentId=2519551
Ramsey County Detective Bill Snyder re-opened the cold case and discovered lost autopsy photos that raise new questions. Beginning with the bullet wound, at a 40 degree downward angle, he says it's inconsistent with the mechanics of a suicide.
"I believe Aaron Foster's responsible for the death of Barbara Winn,” Snyder said. “I can't pull that trigger because of the angle, and I'm supposed to believe a woman did that? I'm sorry, I can't buy that."
There are also mysterious marks next to the entrance wound. Snyder believes that's from the site on the 38-special as it was jammed into her chest. Then, there are these pinch bruises on her hand.
Snyder believes Winn's hand got caught in the firing pin as she was defending herself. That also explains how she got powder burns on her hand. Foster fled the scene that night, and Snyder says he had plenty of chances to wash his hands of gunpowder.
Foster's best friend at the time was Sgt. Bill Finney, the former St. Paul Police Chief. Snyder says Finney now refuses to do an interview.
I hope this helps
Sincerely,
A. Concerned Citizen
9:58 You said:
"*Oh wait, the FBI did investigate and found gun powder residue on the victims hands not on the accused.
http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=133510"
Heres a document posted on Winns website. Make sure that you read the entire document and don't forget to read the part where it talks about the gunpowder tests that they took. and I want to hear your response. I bet the author of the doc knows more about what the reports say than anybody.
http://www.justiceforbarbara.com/uploads/Justice_For_Barbara_May_8__2007.pdf
I think everyone here should read it. It really makes you think.
the last link doesn't work. Go here then hit the link to the vigil presentation.
www.justiceforbarbara.com
go to new developments page
click on the link
10:58, I'm not a 'former' cop.
I do like what you posted-mostly. At least you listed the evidence against Foster. Which is where this focus should be when talking about the Winn case.
Though you did it at a minimum, you still somehow brought this to Finney's doorstep when, to this point it looks like he stood by what his friend said. The 'new' evidence doesn't show Finney trying to cover-up, influence or threaten the entire law enforcement community over this.
It only shows technology has improved to the point of being able to find holes in previous cases.
There are many in Isanti County who are complicit helping people like Wtchuck Strobel. He was caught on Facebook crime watch page yet quietly dealt with. They may not care that God is watching but NOW AI is watching. Elons new buzzword "ANTIHUMAN" may help with justice.
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