MN ACLU calls for transparency in officer-involved fatal shooting in St. Paul (AUDIO)

The Minnesota ACLU is calling on the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the St. Paul Police to be more forthcoming and transparent with information about an officer-involved shooting in St. Paul over the weekend. John Gordon is Executive Director of the ACLU Minnesota and says “it is enormously important for the community, for all communities to know how they’re being policed, who’s doing the policing and who’s affected by it. This is a primary area of interaction between the government and the citizenry and people have got a right to know how they are being treated by their government.” And Gordon adds, “the longer that these things go on with people guessing and rumors flying around and people feeling frightened and threatened by the situations, the harder it is for the police department to establish its credibility and its relationship with the community so we think they are doing the community a disservice and we think they are doing themselves a disservice.” Gordon says the BCA should provide details such as the victim’s name, the name of the officers who shot and killed the suspect and a timeline for the release of the body camera footage along with other details of the shooting. Police say a 9-1-1 call reporting shots fired led them to a home in the Summit-University neighborhood of St. Paul early Sunday morning. Officers reportedly encountered a man with a gun and at some point two officers fired their weapons and shot the suspect who died at the scene.