Mar 31, 2009 6:06 pm US/Central
Lawsuit Alleges MPD Officer Planted Gun
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ―
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Days after the shooting, police officials held a news conference to show the gun that was found a few feet from Fong Lee's body. The gun was traced by its serial number to a break-in two years earlier at a home in North Minneapolis.
CBS
A lawsuit has been filed against the Minneapolis Police Department, accusing an officer of planting a gun near a man who was shot to death by an officer almost three years ago.
MPD sources strongly deny the allegations contained in the suit filed by the family of 19-year-old Fong Lee.
Lee was shot during a chase in a playground on the city's northside. The officer involved in the incident, Jason Andersen, said Lee was armed with a gun.
Days after the shooting, police officials held a news conference to show the gun that was found a few feet from Lee's body. The gun was traced by its serial number to a break-in two years earlier at a home in North Minneapolis.
When homicide investigators met with that homeowner about the gun, after the Lee shooting, he was surprised. That's because he told them another detective had called him two years earlier saying that police had found his gun.
The thrust of the lawsuit by Lee's family against the MPD suggests Lee was unarmed and that an officer took that gun from the police property and evidence room and planted it at the shooting scene.
Police sources insist the gun from the 2004 break-in never left the MPD property room. They say there was a mix-up involving the first gun and that police made a mistake identifying it as the one stolen in that break-in two years before the Lee shooting.
To be clear: Police say the man's stolen gun was never in police hands until the 2006 shooting of Lee.
Police officials spent the day pulling together reports, documenting the different cases involving the two guns. They are expected to release a timeline in the near future they say will help clear things up.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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