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CUAPB Data Practices Lawsuit: Officer Blayne Lehner

Emma Pederson

Another summary of a completed MPD disciplinary file, resulting from Communities United Against Police Brutality's lawsuit against Minneapolis. My volunteer says she still has bad dreams about Officer Blayne Lehner. I've cut her narrative down, but left her words; there is an outrage in her tone that is a very normal reaction to the facts.


The victim, named Luis, was an 18 year old male passenger in a vehicle driven by his sister’s boyfriend, along with his older sister, and another female friend. ... The car in which Luis was riding was pulled over, the driver removed from the vehicle at gunpoint by Officer Kelley, handcuffed, and put into his squad car. A second squad arrived on the scene, with Officers Wuorinen and Lehner. Officer Kelly removed Luis from the back seat of the car and asked him for identification; Luis tells them he does not have a MN issued identification but gives them his name and utters a few swear words. At this point Officer Kelly handcuffs the victim behind his back “so things don’t get out of control” and hands him to Officers Lehner and Wuorinen to deal with. Officer Wuorinen takes the items out of Luis’s pockets, places him in the back seat, and starts to sort through the items on the trunk of the squad.


Image description: Minneapolis Police Officer Blayne Lehner is photographed in a blue Minneapolis Police uniform.


According to Officer Lehner, Luis started to thrash and kick in the back seat of the squad, so [Officer Lehner] opened up the door to ask Luis to stop, felt threatened, and gave the him a “push kick” – a move Lehner supposedly learned as part of his police training – to get him to stop. He then shut the squad door. FOR SOME REASON Lehner decided to open the door a second time even though Luis had stopped kicking, removed Luis from the squad and laid him face down in the street. It was at this point he noticed that Luis was injured – bleeding through the mouth – and decided to take the victim to HCMC – not because he saw the injury as particularly serious, but because he knew, based on experience, that you could not bring a bleeding person to Juvenile Detention.


Upon arrival at HCMC, Officer Wuorinen escorted the victim into the hospital, told the person on duty that Luis had fallen, and left him there. The officers returned to their precinct and filled out the necessary paperwork. Officer Lehner made two addendums to his original report to somehow explain away the sequence of events and condition of the victim as a result of their encounter.


Every other officer that was in any way involved in this case – Officers Misgen, Kelley and Mallory, and Officer Wuorinen, testified under oath that they did not see any of this incident, and did not notice the severe injuries sustained by Luis. Not one of the three squads at the scene had their video equipment turned on. All of the officers involved expressed surprise at the severity of Luis’s injuries when interviewed. ...


Luis, who is 5’ 4” tall and weighs 125 lbs., sustained a broken jaw, a broken nose, and a severely lacerated lip. The file for this case includes more than 100 pages of redacted medical records, presumably provided by HCMC and other medical practitioners involved in his care. ....

Luis also stated in his interview in January of 2017 that he may have been injured after he was taken out of the squad car and placed face down on the ground. His inability to remember the details of the event is understandable...; both he and Officer Lehner stated that he was knocked unconscious from being kicked in the face for an unknown period of time.

The lack of evidence and video footage makes it impossible to determine if Luis sustained his injuries from one kick inflicted by Officer Lehner, or if he was assaulted a second time after he was removed from the squad. When officers were asked during the interview process why their squad videos were not activated, one of them replied that it was a “code 4 incident” (i.e., no further assistance needed). Officers Lehner and Wuorinen did not turn on their video equipment during the drive to HCMC.


A gruesome detail discussed during the interview process is that Luis’s teeth were not found inside the squad car while it was being serviced. .... Between October 2003 and March 2015, Officer Blayne Lehner had 25 complaints filed against him. The details of 18 of those are not public due to no discipline being sustained. Of the complaints that were sustained, 5 of them were for use of force, 1 for discretion, 1 for illegal search, and 1 unspecified. For these infractions he received 6 suspensions and 2 letters of reprimand. During the period that both this case and case #14-17538 were being investigated, Officer Lehner was on paid administrative leave for 4 years.


(Officer Lehner was fired twice. The first time he won his job back in arbitration. The second time stuck.)


Luis is awarded $360,000, to be paid by the City of Minneapolis, and $3,000, to be paid by Officer Lehner, in an out of court settlement of his Federal Civil Rights lawsuit.

If you want the complete summary, or access to this complete file, or to the other Lehner file that resulted in his first firing, feel free to message me. Thanks again to the CUAPB volunteers; you are a hard-rocking group of scientists.

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