The St. Paul police sergeant who fatally shot a person just over a 12 months ago didn’t have a touch camera in his squad automobile and members of the family and their attorney said Thursday which means they’re missing crucial information.

While Sgt. Cody Blanshan’s body camera was recording, it doesn’t capture the view above the steering wheel when Blanshan struck Howard Peter Holliday Johnson with the squad automobile he was driving, said attorney Paul Bosman.

“Considered one of the critical questions is what was Howard doing when the police officer selected to run him down along with his police automobile,” Bosman said. “… We will’t tell what was occurring, what he saw when he made that call and I’m very concerned about that. … I feel all of us must be concerned about that.”

The Ramsey County attorney’s office announced in July that Blanshan wouldn’t be charged because his use of deadly force was justified under Minnesota law. He shot Johnson, 24, after striking him along with his squad automobile. Johnson fired three shots at Blanshan and his police partner, who weren’t injured, prosecutors said of their review of the investigation.

When the St. Paul police department originally installed dash cameras, “there have been only so many purchased resulting from budget constraints on the time,” said St. Paul police Sgt. Mike Ernster, a department spokesman. “The choice was made to concentrate on vehicles used for patrol and install them in those vehicles. Sergeants don’t typically actively patrol and subsequently the cameras weren’t installed of their cars.”

Monique Johnson, Howard’s mother, said officers of all ranks must have each body cameras and dash cameras, in the event that they’re “out in the neighborhood and coping with people.” She said she desires to push for laws requiring it.

Reinvestigation workgroup will comb through file

Communities United Against Police Brutality works “for police transparency, to get government agencies to comply with the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, and surrender the investigative data into the deaths of community members,” Bosman said.

In November, Bosman filed a lawsuit against the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension on behalf of 5 other families who had a relative killed by a law enforcement officer, saying the state agency hasn’t given them full investigation data despite the cases being closed.

The BCA, in a legal response, denied it “unreasonably delayed the discharge of any data.” An agency spokesperson said in November that the BCA has to review every report, image, audio and video in a file to make sure that information that isn’t public is removed as required under state law.

Johnson’s family has been capable of view videos from quite a lot of body and dash cameras from St. Paul police. They’ve received a lot of the case file from the BCA, the investigating agency, and so they’re beginning to comb through it, “but we’re still missing video a 12 months later,” Bosman said, adding that Johnson’s family deserves answers.

Bosman said they won’t have the opportunity to find out whether they’ll file a wrongful death lawsuit until Communities United Against Police Brutality’s reinvestigation workgroup reviews all of the case material “before we are able to determine what the reality is.”

At a Thursday news conference, Monique Johnson introduced Howard’s 5-year-old twin sons and a 9-year-old boy he’d been helping to boost.

“They are going to must live the remaining of their lives without him,” she said.

She said she would sum up how Howard Johnson’s family is doing one 12 months later as “heartbroken.”

Prosecutors’ summary of the case

The Ramsey County attorney’s memo about prosecutors’ review of the investigation gave the next information:

Officers responded on the evening of Dec. 5, 2022, on a girl’s report that Johnson assaulted her in the world of Earl Street and Hudson Road. She said it happened within the presence of their twin sons, and Johnson had a handgun.

Police were searching the world when officers saw Johnson walking while carrying a firearm. Officers told Johnson to drop his gun, but he ran away.

A couple of minute later, Blanshan was driving on Hudson Road with one other sergeant within the passenger seat of a marked St. Paul police vehicle.

Johnson walked toward one other vehicle, pointed his gun at the motive force and yelled something. The driving force reported she feared he may be carjacking her, so she temporarily froze and stopped her vehicle in the midst of the road.

The sergeants said they saw Johnson raise his gun toward the lady’s vehicle, and so they thought he was going to carjack it. Blanshan believed “he needed to right away intervene” to avoid wasting the lady’s life, the memo said of what the sergeant reported. Blanshan accelerated forward in his squad with the intention of striking Johnson with the front of his vehicle, which he did.

Each sergeants said they saw Johnson turn toward their moving squad and believed he fired a shot at them. Audio from a security system from a close-by business captured the sound of a gunshot as Blanshan drove toward Johnson, and a muzzle flash from Johnson’s gun could possibly be seen in one other video.

As Blanshan began to open his squad door, Johnson got up from the bottom and pointed his gun toward the squad. One other muzzle flash could possibly be seen coming from his gun. Blanshan said he saw Johnson pointing his gun at his face.

Video from Blanshan’s body camera showed Johnson pointing a gun toward the sergeant, and a 3rd muzzle flash coming from Johnson’s gun. Blanshan shot Johnson, striking him eight times.