(C) Minnesota Reformer
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A month after assassinations, questions linger about law enforcement response • Minnesota Reformer [1]
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Date: 2025-07-11
Forty-three hours after a man dressed as a police officer shot DFL state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife at their home in Champlin, state patrol officers handcuffed the suspect in a field outside the rural community of Green Isle.
Elected officials and law enforcement leaders commended police for the investigation that led to the the capture of the suspected shooter — alive — following the largest manhunt in state history.
“To the law enforcement who stand here, and the hundreds who were involved in this, the state of Minnesota owes you a deep debt of gratitude. Thank you,” Gov. Tim Walz said at a press conference announcing the apprehension of the suspect. “You ran towards the danger, and you served the state of Minnesota.”
But law enforcement didn’t capture the suspect, Vance Boelter, in time to prevent the murders of Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark, and their dog Gilbert.
And, while the suspect was on the loose, some elected officials wondered whether they were potential targets, left exposed without any protection.
In the weeks since the Hortmans’ deaths, law enforcement leaders, elected officials and the Minnesotans they represent have questioned how the investigation and pursuit could have gone differently.
“It’s just unprecedented,” said Bob Jacobson, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. “It’s just one of those things that, you know…wasn’t necessarily in the playbook.”
Boelter is facing federal and state murder charges for the killings of the Hortmans, plus charges related to the attempted murder of the Hoffmans. Federal charges allege that after Boelter shot the Hoffmans, he went to two other Democratic state lawmakers’ homes before killing the Hortmans.
One of those homes was empty — state Rep. Kristin Bahner of Maple Grove was on vacation with her family. Down the street from the home of Sen. Ann Rest in New Hope, a police officer going to check on the senator encountered Boelter, who was dressed like a police officer and sitting in a Ford Explorer decked out like a police vehicle. He fled after the officer unsuccessfully sought his attention before moving on to check on Rest.
Boelter was a Christian, according to his roommate and videos of his sermons posted online. He seems to have been motivated by an opposition to abortion and voted in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. His apparent targets were Democratic elected officials, abortion providers and abortion rights activists.
Some lawmakers wonder why they didn’t learn until hours after the shooting of the Hortmans that they were on the suspect’s “hit list” — while he was armed and on the loose. Others who lived close to the sites of the attacks want to know why they weren’t offered any protection.
Residents of north Minneapolis have questioned why they weren’t warned that the shooter had a home in their neighborhood and that he had traveled through the neighborhood in the hours after the attacks.
And law enforcement leaders are asking themselves, and each other, how they could have communicated better in the midst of the chaos.
Why did it take so long for police to check on the Hortmans?
At 2:06 a.m., the Hoffmans’ daughter called 911 to report that her parents had been shot at their home in Champlin. Brooklyn Park police assisted Champlin officers in responding to the shooting.
As one Brooklyn Park police officer prepared to go home at the end of his shift, he suggested to his colleagues that they drive over to the Hortmans’ home to make sure they were safe.
The officers arrived at around 3:30 a.m. — about an hour after a New Hope police officer went to check on Rest, and an hour and a half after the attack on the Hoffmans. Brooklyn Park police were unaware that New Hope police had gone to check on Rest, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said.
Around 10 seconds after Brooklyn Park officers arrived at the Hortmans’, Bruley said, they witnessed a man dressed as a police officer shoot Mark Hortman in the entryway. One Brooklyn Park officer fired at the shooter, who entered the home and later escaped.
Bruley said officers were busy providing aid to the Hoffmans and assisting with the shooting crime scene, which is why they didn’t get to the Hortmans sooner.
“Do I wish they were there three minutes earlier and potentially save Melissa and Mark’s life?” Bruley said. “Of course I do. But the truth was, it just wasn’t in the cards.”
Brooklyn Park police sent teletypes — text-based messages transmitted directly to local law enforcement dispatch centers — at approximately 4:20 a.m. and 4:40 a.m., warning other police departments of potential targeted shootings at lawmakers’ homes by a man possibly impersonating a police officer.
State leaders have credited Brooklyn Park police with interrupting Boelter and forcing him to flee on foot, abandoning his imitation police car at the scene. According to the federal charges, police found five guns in the vehicle, including semi-automatic, assault-style rifles; loaded magazines; a storage unit bill with Boelter’s name on it; and several notebooks.
The notebooks were full of handwritten notes, including the names of more than four dozen Democratic Minnesota elected officials, some with home addresses listed next to the names.
Bruley said he scanned the list for other lawmakers in his jurisdiction, then his staff emailed the list to Jacobson at approximately 6 a.m.
“I need everything you’ve got to try to get to these people on this list, because the suspect is not in custody,” Bruley recalled telling Jacobson.
Why were some lawmakers uninformed and unprotected for hours while the suspect was armed and on the loose?
The law enforcement effort to protect legislators, which was directed by a patchwork of state and local agencies, appears to have been inconsistent. Some lawmakers received immediate protection, while others waited nearly a full day to hear anything.
Anoka police were outside the home of Republican Sen. Jim Abeler by 3 a.m., he said. Rep. Danny Nadeau, R-Rogers, said he learned police had been protecting his home for hours by the time he woke up at 6 a.m.
Rep. Mike Freiberg, DFL-Golden Valley, and Sen. Bonnie Westlin, DFL-Plymouth, both praised their police departments.
“I don’t believe every legislator felt that they got the same level of support I did from the Golden Valley police, which is unfortunate,” Freiberg said. “I do think we need to make sure everyone feels secure.”
After Jacobson received the list of Boelter’s potential targets around 6 a.m., he sent it to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s Fusion Center with instructions to reach out to the people on the list. The Department of Public Safety also provided the list to local law enforcement agencies, Jacobson said.
Meanwhile, lawmakers had learned about the shootings via word-of-mouth and feared for their own safety, not knowing about the list or whether they were on it. Some local law enforcement agencies started sending patrol cars out to local lawmakers’ houses in the early hours of the morning, regardless of their status on the list.
Rep. Huldah Momanyi-Hiltsley represents Brooklyn Park and lives within a few miles of the Hortmans’ home. She woke up early that Saturday morning and learned from colleagues that the Hortmans had been shot — and shortly after, that the suspect hadn’t been caught.
“Immediately I started freaking out, because I’m the closest to Speaker Hortman’s house, four minutes away,” Momanyi-Hiltsley said. “We don’t know if this monster was working alone. We didn’t know anything.”
She reached out to Bruley, but he was busy. With no information or directions from law enforcement, Momanyi-Hiltsley and her family fled their house as a precaution.
Bruley called Momanyi-Hiltsley back that evening to let her know she wasn’t on the list of names in the suspect’s notebooks. Momanyi-Hiltsley said she’s grateful for Brooklyn Park Police Department’s work, and that lawmakers should find a way to clarify who is responsible for their safety.
“I think that both realities can exist, where they did great, but also there were gaps that we are addressing right now as legislators and as a community,” Momanyi-Hiltsley said. “And unfortunately, I was just one of those legislators that fell through the cracks.”
During an interview nearly two weeks after the killings, Bruley said he wished he had contacted lawmakers who live in close proximity to the Hortmans, rather than only the ones he saw on the suspect’s list. But his department simply didn’t have the extra resources to stand watch outside lawmakers’ homes, he said.
In nearby Spring Lake Park, DFL Rep. Erin Koegel said she woke up around 7 a.m. Saturday to multiple voicemails, including some from law enforcement. Koegel was home alone for the weekend with her 13-year-old lab, Spud, while her husband, 6-year-old kid and their other dog were spending time at their cabin.
After talking with her local police chief, who offered to send extra patrols by her house, Koegel instead decided to hit the road. Her haste meant she left behind her medicine, which she later had to coordinate with police to collect from her house.
“I immediately knew I was going to leave,” Koegel said. “I didn’t want to be by myself, and dude (Boelter) was still on the loose. Melissa lives — lived — just across the river from me. I was worried that I was in too close of a proximity.”
Koegel didn’t learn that she was on Boelter’s list until around 9 p.m. Saturday, when the FBI called, she said.
Police in Apple Valley were not made aware that DFL Sen. Erin Maye Quade was on the list until around 9 a.m., about three hours after DPS received the list.
Some local law enforcement agencies, including the Minneapolis Police Department and the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, didn’t have ready access to elected officials’ addresses. In Minneapolis, officers scrambled to compile lawmakers’ addresses, then sent patrols out to the homes, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told the Reformer.
By the time officers started knocking on elected officials’ doors, some had already fled, O’Hara said.
Complicating the situation: Boelter had been impersonating a police officer. Some elected officials called their local police departments when a patrol car arrived, or when an officer knocked at their door, fearing it could be the assassin.
Who is in charge of lawmaker safety?
As elected officials sought information and protection, it wasn’t always clear who was responsible for their safety.
The Minnesota State Patrol, under the DPS umbrella, is responsible for protecting lawmakers on the Capitol grounds, Jacobson said. The state patrol has a division responsible for protecting the governor and lieutenant governor at their residences — but not legislators.
Jacobson said the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms are responsible for communicating with lawmakers about their safety. State Patrol leadership were in communication with the House and Senate Sergeants-at-arms before 4 a.m., a department spokesperson said.
In a message to DFL senators via a DFL senate staffer at 6:42 a.m. on June 14, Jacobson told the elected officials to check in with their local law enforcement agencies and to “alert them that there may have been threats made against you and please take precautions to stay safe.”
Lawmakers should reach out to their sergeant-at-arms for more information about the threats, Jacobson wrote.
The sergeants-at-arms did not respond to the Reformer’s interview requests.
O’Hara, the Minneapolis police chief, said when someone makes a threat against a lawmaker, it’s generally the responsibility of the local police in the area where the threat originated to address the crime.
But there’s no consensus about this, apparently. A spokesperson for the St. Paul Police Department deferred the Reformer’s questions to the Minnesota State Patrol, “as they are ultimately responsible for the safety of our lawmakers.”
Throughout that Saturday’s chaos, Bruley said he didn’t know if there was a clear communications stream from the top down because he was overwhelmed with the manhunt. Lawmakers were frustrated with the lack of information provided, and by a midday check-in with the state’s chiefs and sheriffs, Bruley said local police departments were implementing their own protection strategy.
In a July 7 letter to the Chief Sergeant-at-arms for the House and captain of the State Patrol’s Capitol Security Division, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher wrote that “many of the targeted legislators were left uninformed for several hours that danger lurked.”
He posed the following questions:
“Who, or which agency, is responsible to notify legislators quickly that they are potential victims of a violent criminal stalking them?
“Who, or which agency, is responsible to notify law enforcement agencies in a timely fashion that legislators in their jurisdiction are in potential immediate danger?”
Why wasn’t north Minneapolis warned that the suspect had been in the area?
In the late morning of June 14, dozens of police officers from local, state and federal agencies descended on the Lind-Bohanon neighborhood in north Minneapolis, preparing to execute a search warrant at a house on Fremont Ave. where Boelter lived part-time.
Lind-Bohanon and north Minneapolis are home to a large Black community. When the U.S. Department of Justice investigated the Minneapolis Police Department in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, investigators found that the department routinely discriminated against Black and Native American residents and violated their constitutional rights.
When Minneapolis police joined the other agencies in executing the search warrant, officers knew that Boelter had been at the house earlier in the day — his roommate had called 911 that morning. While police believed that Boelter had left the house, they did not have confirmation that he had left the area, O’Hara said.
Children were playing outside that day, unaware that an armed suspect had been nearby, the Star Tribune reported.
Some neighbors questioned why Minneapolis police did not issue a shelter-in-place warning, when Brooklyn Park police had done so earlier in the day.
“What happened on June 14 is a symptom of much deeper issues in how north Minneapolis is treated. We need transparency, accountability and community-centered response, not silence when our lives are on the line,” said Marvina Haynes, a candidate for the Minneapolis City Council ward representing Lind-Bohanon and other parts of north Minneapolis.
O’Hara said the reason for not issuing a shelter-in-place order was that the department “did not have the information to define where he might be at that point.”
Law enforcement officers entered a woman’s home across the street from Boelter’s house as they prepared to execute the search warrant.
“(An officer) said, ‘We need to get in your house now’ and I’m just like, ‘Huh? You need to get in my house?'” the woman told KARE 11. “They go in my room and they have big bags with them. They lay every gun out on the bed.”
Her four children were home, and scared, she said.
“On occasion, if we’re trying to monitor a particular residence, whether the person is possibly inside or possibly might come back, it is certainly common to try and have every vantage point as possible,” O’Hara said.
Why did police walk back their story of a shootout with the suspect?
In initial news reports and press conferences regarding the attacks, Bruley said that a Brooklyn Park police officer exchanged gunfire with the suspect at the Hortmans’ house. That’s no longer part of the official narrative of events.
Bruley attributed the change to uncertainty about Boelter’s actions — he may not have been shooting at the Brooklyn Park officers, but a member of the Hortman family instead.
The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating the use-of-force incident, as is standard practice. Bruley said he doesn’t know how many rounds the officer fired, but it is “extremely unlikely” that a Brooklyn Park officer accidentally shot the Hortmans.
Bruley said his department and other law enforcement officials will find a third-party investigator to compile an after-action report to learn what could have been done better.
Though limited in what he could say by the ongoing investigation, Bruley recounted the body camera footage of the incident and said the officers did not enter the Hortmans’ house, as doing so would have gone against their deescalation training, he said. He also noted the scrutiny behind officer-involved shootings in Minnesota.
“There’s no way you can do something of this magnitude for the first time and think you’re gonna get it right,” Bruley said.
If you have other questions about the political assassinations in Minnesota and the law enforcement response, send them to [email protected].
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