Feeding Our Future trial now getting into the involvement of a nonprofit formed by Minneapolis Council Member Jamal Osman. Incorporated in August 2019, an investigator testifies that it appeared to be a shell company, with no employees, office or financial activity. 🧵 Jury is being shown an email from Council Member Jamal Osman to Abdi Nur Salah (former senior policy adviser to Mayor Frey) with all documents related to the incorporation and structure of the nonprofit Stigma-Free.

A recent NYU study of Minneapolis violence prevention programs was spun as fairly positive by city folks, but if you actually read it, it paints a pretty stark picture of the situation. 🧵 The report said Minneapolis needs to better manage the programs, that there is “too much informality in the management of city programs and contracted services.” The city has no centralized contract management system, no process for sharing basic activity or performance data...

BREAKING: FBI searching autism center in downtown Minneapolis: Federal search warrant says they're investigating autism centers, including several created by people involved in the Feeding Our Future federal fraud case.

BREAKING: A juror in Feeding Our Future case was contacted last night and the prosecutor has just asked that jurors be sequestered when they begin deliberations after closings today and that their phones all be confiscated immediately. The juror has been excused and now lawyers are talking about how they should each be questioned about whether they've been contacted by anyone during this trial.

Minnesota lawmakers showered nonprofits with over $1.1 billion last year, with some receiving more money from the Legislature than they normally raise in an entire year. Several were "violence interrupter" groups, including A Mother’s Love. 🧵minnesotareformer.com/2024/02/28/min… In the rush to support favored nonprofit groups, lawmakers may not have looked too closely at A Mother’s Love’s operations, despite earmarking $3 million to the group in the two-year DEED budget — eclipsing the $1.13 million the nonprofit raised from all sources in 2022.

OK so I read the 89-page DOJ report on the Minneapolis Police Department, and here are some of the most jarring things I found in it: 🧵 For years, MPD used dangerous techniques and weapons against people who committed at most petty offenses and sometimes no offense at all.

Four months after Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into George Floyd’s neck, killing him outside Cup Foods, Jacqueline Bilek called MPD about a man who was putting fliers on car windshields condemning Black Lives Matter. Sgt. Scot Kaiser answered the phone that day.🧵 After hearing her story, Kaiser launched into his own diatribe about the activist group, Bilek said, calling Black Lives Matter a terrorist group that “we will wipe off the face of the Earth.”
“Excuse me?” Bilek replied.
He repeated himself.
She asked to speak to his supervisor

U.S. attorney Andrew Lugar is charging another 10 people in connection with the federal child nutrition fraud commonly referred to as Feeding Our Future. Background: minnesotareformer.com/2022/09/20/fed… The new defendants are Kawsar Jama of Eagan; Abdikadir Kadiye of MSP, Abdulkadir Awale of Bloomington; Khadra Abdi of MSP; Ayan Abukar of Savage; Sade Hashi of MSP, Sharon Ross of Big Lake & Mohamed Ali Hussein & Lul Bashir Ali of Faribault Mulata Yusuf Ali of MSP.

When Amara Strande was just 16, a 15-pound tumor was found embedded in her liver. Nearly the size of a volleyball. She was one of many students at Tartan High School in Oakdale who got cancer. Students joked about the water fountains, saying, “Don’t drink the 3M cancer water.” 🧵 It was the darkest of jokes: In 2005, state officials announced 3M had contaminated Oakdale’s water with chemicals. People living east of the Twin Cities had elevated perfluorocarbons in their blood. By 2017, a 100-square-mile underground plume was contaminated w/ chemicals.

Open Arms adult day care first hit our radar during the state Senate ethics investigation into Sen. Omar Fateh, when his rent-free campaign office became an issue. Fateh ran his 2020 campaign from the day care, and that campaign was part of a federal ballot fraud investigation 🧵 Fateh became the subject of the ethics investigation after his brother-in-law was convicted of perjury in connection with the FBI/grand jury investigation. We began looking at the campaign office as part of our reporting Fateh's story.

Yesterday, I took a drive. Not just to see the fall colors, but to check out some food distribution sites mentioned in my story today about how a prominent Bloomington woman’s nonprofit claimed it was feeding 6,400 children per day. 🧵 Ayan Abukar — who was named an “outstanding refugee” by the state Department of Human Services last year — founded Action for East African People, which had 8 meal distribution sites in 2020 and 2021. I could tell by looking online some of the food sites were apartment buildings.

U.S. Attorney Andy Luger announces indictments in the Feeding our Future investigation, saying over $250 million from the federal child nutrition program was misused. 🧵 “They were running a scheme, not a child nutrition program" and at break-neck speed began the scheme, he says, with more than $125 million fake meals, claiming up to 6,000 meals per day, all in about 20 months.

This story began, as many do, with people raising questions on Twitter. Why, Minneapolis residents asked, are MPD officers guarding work sites for a company called Michels? Especially when that company is owned by Trump-endorsed Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels?🧵 Why, they wondered, is the city putting cops at work sites when there’s a staffing shortage? Contrary to some reports, it’s not as though the city is posting cops at work sites rather than putting them on patrol — they’re doing off-duty work for a private company.

Kim Crockett, the Republican candidate for Minnesota secretary of state, has made a litany of erroneous statements about election administration during her campaign to be the state’s top election official. 🧵 Chief among them: She called the 2020 election “rigged” and is a proud believer in the false assertion that Trump won the 2020 election, even though thousands of GOP election judges oversaw the election, & precincts were randomly hand-counted in every county to ensure accuracy.

Even after Dustin Dupre was arrested in 2003 for assaulting his ex-wife, he kept his job as a Minneapolis police officer. Even after he was charged with puncturing a woman’s tire in Cottage Grove in 2017 in a fit of road rage, he kept his job. 🧵minnesotareformer.com/2022/06/08/som… He persisted through at least 6 misconduct complaints — 3 sustained. After being fired by former Chief Arradondo in 2019, Dupre got his job back. None of that ended his career, until last year, when he left after 23 years with a $175,000 workers’ compensation settlement.

I have read the 72-page state report on MPD, and compiled some of the most jaw-dropping portions. Here are some of them. 🧵 A high-level MPD leader explained that officers often arrest and cite individuals with obstruction or disorderly conduct “for things that could fall under the category, arguably, of pissing off the police."

“This time it needs to be different.” Mayor @Jacob_Frey says in response to the state Human Rights report released this morning. "We have a hell of a lot of work to do as a city. We have a hell of a lot of work to do as a nation."🧵 Mayor Frey said the report was "repugnant" and "at times horrific." "They made me sick to my stomach and outraged and I think our community feels the same way."

Waiting on the Minnesota Department of Human Rights to talk about the results of its two-year investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department. From the report: MPD officers used covert, or fake, social media accounts to surveil and engage Black
individuals, Black organizations, and elected officials unrelated to criminal activity, without a public
safety objective.

Police shooting in Minneapolis:

https://twitter.com/MnDPS_BCA/status/1488905480923721737

Nekima Levy Armstrong says the interim police chief told her an MPD swat team was executing a search warrant for the St. Paul Police in a homicide case, and the person — a Black man — was shot and killed.

Some readers have been asking if we any of the MPD officers involved in the Jaleel Stallings case have gotten workers' compensation or disability retirement. I assumed that wouldn't be public information due to HIPPA. I was wrong. We checked: minnesotareformer.com/2021/10/14/cop… Two of the officers under scrutiny for their handling of protesters in the days after George Floyd’s killing have taken “duty disability retirements” of $62,000 and $84,000 per year with health insurance. A third took regular retirement and $118,000 per year.

I have a few minutes before the Chauvin trial resumes, so a few observations from inside the courtroom today. Dr. Martin Tobin seemed to have the jury's full attention from start to finish today. When he talked, they listened. When the prosecution played a video, they watched.🧵 And when he made a major point, they took notes. A few samples: When Tobin said Floyd died from a low level of oxygen, or asphyxia, nearly every juror was taking notes.