Minnesota Police Investigation of Officers Providing Drugs to Occupy Protesters

Minnesota Police Investigation of Officers Providing Drugs to Occupy Protesters
November 15, 2012 in Minnesota

The following document contains files related to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s investigation into allegations that law enforcement officers participating in Drug Recognition Evaluator (DRE) courses provided drugs to sober people they had picked up from Peavey Plaza in downtown Minneapolis where protesters connected with Occupy Minnesota had been located since April 2012.

The officers then used the intoxicated subjects for their training course, sometimes providing them with rewards like food or cigarettes, and then returned them to the Plaza. Though the investigation confirms many aspects of the story and a Sheriff’s Deputy admitted to the DRE course instructor that he had witnessed his partner in the course providing marijuana to subjects, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension found that there was insufficient evidence to sustain charges and obtain convictions against any of the officers involved.

This was partly due to the fact that 29 former officers and employees associated with the program refused to testify, blocking the investigation. For more information on the file, see Dan Feidt’s article on the documents and watch the video report he helped produced in May 2012 which played a significant role in raising public awareness of the issue and spurring the investigation.

http://publicintelligence.net/mn-occupy-dre-investigation/