Freeman calls for review of 2013 MPD killing of Terrance Franklin
Eight years after Terrance Franklin was shot to death in a confrontation with Minneapolis police, his case — and the conduct of the officers involved — is under review again.
Franklin, who was 22 years old and also known by the nickname "Mookie," was a burglary suspect who was killed following a police pursuit on May 10, 2013. Officers found him in the basement of an Uptown home, where he was fatally shot by police in an incident that saw two other officers shot.
Police at the time said that Franklin had grabbed an officer's submachine gun and fired at the officers, resulting in deadly use of force against him.
The officers involved — who were cleared of wrongdoing by a grand jury — were later honored for their heroics during the incident, though Franklin's family disputed the official police version of events. A year later, they filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit, saying that the investigation failed to look at video evidence that painted a different picture of what happened in the basement.
Though that lawsuit was settled in 2020 for $795,000, the case may be far from over.
New evidence has come to light in the form of a passerby's video that the Hennepin County Attorney's Office says "was not available to us at the time we took the case to the grand jury."
The video in question was taken by a citizen near the scene of the shooting, and formed the basis of an article by Time Magazine this week, which calls into question the official timeline of the case:
The video, shot by a passerby, begins after Franklin is supposed to be dead. It runs 62 seconds and, in visual terms, reveals nothing of note: cops running up and down a tree-lined street outside a house. The audio, however, captured voices from the basement of that house, whose side door had been opened to retrieve the wounded. Shouts carried up the stairs and onto a soundtrack that seems—on first listening, and even second and third—to be merely a murky cacophony: sirens, voices, radio traffic and, toward the end, the roar of a descending airliner.
But with "careful listening" and "an assist from noise-filtering software," Time says, troubling words can be made out, including the use of the n-word by officers, as well as a voice believed to be Franklin's pleading to be let go.
You can read more about the video and the Franklin case by clicking right here.
In a statement to Bring Me The News, the Hennepin County Attorney's Office says it "sent a letter in early May to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) suggesting they should consider doing a new investigation."
"The BCA was not the original investigating agency so they would be taking an outside, independent look," the attorney's office added.
For its part, the BCA confirmed to the Star Tribune that it has "received and is evaluating" the request from the attorney's office.
