George Floyd Protests: Troopers Deleted Texts and Emails, Major Testifies (original) (raw)

U.S.|Minnesota Troopers Deleted Texts and Emails After Floyd Protests, Major Testifies

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/06/us/mn-state-patrol-texts-emails-lawsuit.html

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According to a transcript released Friday, a member of the Minnesota State Patrol said there was “a purge of emails and text messages” after troopers responded to protests in Minneapolis last year.

Members of the Minnesota State Patrol outside the Third Precinct police building in Minneapolis last year. Protesters set the building on fire days after George Floyd was killed in police custody.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Published Sept. 6, 2021Updated Sept. 28, 2021

Minnesota State Patrol troopers deleted text messages and emails shortly after responding to protests that erupted over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, according to a major who testified in federal court in July.

The testimony was included in court documents that were released on Friday as part of a lawsuit that the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota filed last year on behalf of journalists who said they had been assaulted by law enforcement officers while covering the protests.

“The purge was neither accidental, automated nor routine,” lawyers with the A.C.L.U. said in a court memo on Friday, adding that no one had been able to review the deleted communications to see if they might have been relevant to the case.

“The absence of both contemporaneous communications and documentation makes it nearly impossible to track the State Patrol’s behavior, apparently by design,” the memo added.

During a hearing on July 28, Maj. Joseph J. Dwyer testified that he and other state troopers deleted their emails and texts shortly after responding to the unrest, and that he believed that “a vast majority” of troopers had done so.

Kevin C. Riach, a lawyer working with the A.C.L.U. on the case, questioned Major Dwyer during the hearing. “There was a purge of records at the State Patrol immediately after the George Floyd protests,” he said. “Is that correct?”

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