In Minnesota police shootings, ACLU attorney seeks transparency

Jan. 24—POLK COUNTY, Minn. — Four of 14 deadly force incidents investigated in Minnesota last year involved undercover officers, according to data collected from Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension press releases.

In one of the four shootings, there was no body camera footage.

The state's second deadly force incident of 2024

checks both of those boxes, a fact that an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota finds troubling. She believes that, as a result, relatively little information will be released to the public.

"I think there are a lot of ways that this hurts the community, this lack of transparency," Alicia Granse told the Grand Forks Herald. "People should want to trust law enforcement, but we don't have a way to verify that they're doing things correctly. We just don't know enough about what happened here."

The incident, which occurred on Jan. 9, involved an East Grand Forks police officer operating undercover for the Pine to Prairie Drug Task Force.

Officers were at a Rhinehart Township residence to serve an arrest warrant on Lucas Paul Gilbertson. According to the BCA, the undercover officer entered the residence, tased Gilbertson, and shot him multiple times. Gilbertson died.

Although uniformed officers on site were wearing body cameras, it appears no video evidence of the shooting exists because they were not inside when it occurred,

according to a BCA press release.

"There's no reason for them to be not wearing a body-worn camera while they're going to execute a warrant," Granse said.

EGFPD Chief Michael Hedlund said it's typical for undercover officers not to wear body cameras, mainly because the devices are so conspicuous.

"(They're) very obvious. They're right in the middle of (an officer's) chest," Hedlund said, adding that he is unaware of any covert cameras that have the necessary features, such as long-lasting battery capabilities and high-quality video.

Granse questioned, though, how a warrant could be served while undercover in the first place.

"I feel like that would probably make you less likely to get through safely," she said. "If you're not identifying yourself as a law enforcement agent, and you're just breaking into someone's home, that could result in someone exercising their right to defend themselves."

When asked how an undercover officer could execute an arrest warrant without identifying themselves as law enforcement, Hedlund declined to comment.

Concealing their law enforcement affiliation from suspects is a major reason undercover law enforcement may not wear body cameras, but it's not the only factor. Another is that, because their identities — as well as the identities of the confidential informants with whom they may work — are legally protected, it's difficult to obtain useful video footage, Hedlund said.

"You have to redact it to such a degree that — in many cases — it's just not even valuable," he said. "In many cases, it's literally easier to not have a video than (to put the work in) to properly redact it and protect the identities of everybody involved."

Minnesota law allows data that identifies undercover officers to be withheld from the public. Their identities are protected for their entire undercover careers and can only be released afterward if there's no perceived threat to their safety or any active investigation.

Officers who work in task forces are often undercover and, as a result, much of their work remains unclear to the public, Granse said.

"We don't get to know (what their work entails)," she said. "I think that lack of transparency is a real problem, particularly when it comes to holding people accountable when they're going out and doing things in our name, in the names of citizens of Minnesota and in the name of public safety."

The Pine to Prairie Drug Task Force covers eight counties: Norman, Roseau, Red Lake, Marshall, Pennington, Kittson, Polk and Lake of the Woods. The task force primarily focuses on its namesake: drugs.

In 2023, 286 cases were pursued, resulting in 171 arrests.

Seizures included 32 weapons, 218 grams of cocaine, 40 grams of heroin, 1.6 pounds of marijuana, 3.05 pounds of methamphetamine, 184 prescription pills, 14 grams of fentanyl powder and 1,519 fentanyl pills.

"In this area, a lot of (undercover work) is narcotics related," Hedlund said. "So you're using confidential informants, or doing what they call 'controlled buys.' Things like that."

Undercover officers and confidential informants are commonly used to set up suspected drug dealers. Task force work often revolves around developing informants and cases, rather than reacting to crimes, as patrol officers regularly do, Hedlund said.

Asked if it's common for undercover officers to be involved in serving warrants, he said it depends on the situation.

"Right now, I'm not comfortable going into any more details than that," Hedlund said.

The officer who killed Gilbertson was part of a group of officers executing an arrest warrant,

which was issued when Gilbertson allegedly violated his release conditions and failed to appear in court.

"Is that something that we want these task forces doing?" Granse said. "We don't have a way to evaluate that if we don't have the information as a public."

Transparency between civilians and law enforcement is especially important in Minnesota, where a number of high-profile shootings in recent years have resulted in trauma within communities, she said.

"Law enforcement doesn't seem to be respecting that," Granse said. "We don't have the trust that we want to have."

An example Granse referenced was that the day after George Floyd was murdered by then Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis Police Department issued a press release saying that Floyd — unnamed at the time — "appeared to be suffering medical distress" while being arrested.

"So often, we hear one thing at the beginning, and then it's something else," Granse said. "We find out later what actually happened."

It eventually was revealed that Chauvin used unreasonable force, restricting Floyd's breathing and ultimately causing his death.

"We see what happens when law enforcement breaks our trust," Granse said. "Nobody wants that to happen. We really want to be sure that we are able to hold law enforcement accountable — just like any other person."

Unless the East Grand Forks undercover officer faces criminal charges, his identity as the shooter will be protected at least until his undercover career ends, if not longer.

Hedlund said he is not concerned about officers taking advantage of their anonymity.

"We know who they are, and BCA knows who they are," he said.

People who work with each other, though, often want to help each other, Granse said. This is not inherently a bad thing, but there are risks of bias when all the facts surrounding a deadly incident lie solely with law enforcement, she said.

"I'm not saying that the BCA is necessarily biased — that's not at all what I'm saying — but it is a law enforcement agency," Granse said. "That's why we want the information. We want transparency. What the ACLU is looking for is always going to be transparency in law enforcement."