Minneapolis PD officer fired after tipping off brother wanted in shooting

And Paul Bloom rolling in here now, joining us with something that you're working on today. And this is something that, well, I guess I'll let you explain sort of the timeline of this. But this involves a Minneapolis police officer relieved of their job after an investigation about doing something that may involve a family member. Yeah, so there's some lag time here. So the officer, female officer, Northside officer fired back in April by then Minneapolis police chief, Brian O'Hara, and the allegations. There's a public disciplinary portal where the city updates when discipline is finalized and there must be a lag time. Because when we got word of this over the weekend, it was in there, but it's dated April, but she's fired. Her name is Chanika Hall, Northside Minneapolis police officer, been on the force, it looks like a couple of years. the allegations that were substantiated and O'Hara let her go based on five egregious violations he found. But the heart of this is a case where she has a brother, that one she never told the department about when she was hired, you're supposed to fill in all family members. He has a checkered past, it looks like from my reporting that perhaps it's not a full blood brother, but perhaps a half, what have you, stepbrother, whatever it may be. But she doesn't report the brother's existence. She has a bit of a history. And then in September of last year, so this goes back about a year, she's sitting in the roll call room, 4th Precinct, North Side, and there's a crime bulletin, an internal crime bulletin that has some surveillance footage, photographs of a recent shooting. Okay. So it captures a suspect, and my understanding is the suspect's mask is down. And the Minneapolis Police Department and its internal bulletin is saying, anybody know this guy? Let the investigators know, we're trying to track this down, active shooter, not active meaning current, but an active investigation to identify this shooter in a shooting up on the, at least my understanding is the northeast side of Minneapolis, identify him. Okay. Evidence would turn up that she would take a photograph of this internal document and share it with the brother. Now from there, the story diverges. I have the report here. She claims that she's nudging her brother. She's not sure if it's him or not. Okay. But she's nudging him like, hey, it seems like you might be, what are you up to, dude? Maybe you turn yourself in. That's her sort of story that she would tell the department during an internal investigation. But Chief Chief O'Hara at the time just did not buy it. He perceived it as a tipping off. She never told investigators in-house that this could be her brother, that she recognized this photo. There's plain language on this bulletin that says internal use only, not for public consumption or circulation. And there's this at least a back and forth, and Chief O'Hara would have to make an ultimate call on this. And he found that she did this to tip him off. The suspect, the brother, would not then be captured by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, another agency, for another six or seven weeks. Okay. So in the totality of the case, Chief O'Hara, who mind you, a month later would be fired for thwarting his own investigation. Subject of his own internal investigation, would fire her for egregious behavior, basically thwarting an investigation, not reporting the brother, distributing an internal police document. So just a really fascinating case, and MPD doesn't fire a ton of officers. Like I looked down in this portal of terminations over the last couple of years, it's not a huge list. There's reprimands, there's punishments, but the department went so far as to terminate this officer's employment with the department. And yeah, we reported it, we have a web story up online. I'm just trying to more do some connecting the dots today. Again, interesting because they put this out for internal use only. As she sees somebody that she never divulged to the department, it tips them off in a way that she says is trying to nudge him to turn him in. But either way, she didn't say, I recognize this person that we're asking the public to identify. She absolutely did not. I mean, there's some messaging going back and forth that they have with her and her brother. But obviously they have to rest on sort of just connecting the dots themselves. But the ultimate call was firing her. Okay, all right, Paul, appreciate it. Thanks so much for working on that today. We gotta take another break.