State police obtain phone video showing 2021 shooting of Winston Smith
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Minnesota state police said Tuesday that they’ve retrieved video from a phone that belonged to a man killed in a confrontation with sheriff’s deputies more than three years ago.
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension did not release the video or describe it in detail, but the agency said in a statement that the footage shows the fatal shooting of Winston Smith in Minneapolis on June 3, 2021. The BCA’s announcement comes more than a year after independent forensics experts discovered the video.
The Hennepin and Ramsey County deputies, who were part of a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force, tried to arrest the 32-year-old on a warrant for missing a sentencing hearing in a gun case. They tracked Smith to the the top level of a parking garage in the city’s Uptown area and boxed his vehicle between theirs.
The BCA said soon after the incident that it was not captured on body-worn cameras. While most law enforcement agencies were using body cameras in 2021, a federal policy in place at the time prohibited officers on the Marshals Service task force from wearing them. After Smith’s killing, the Marshals Service changed its policy.
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Because staff from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office were involved in the incident, then County Attorney Mike Freeman sent the case to Crow Wing County Attorney Donald Ryan for a charging decision. In October 2021, Ryan determined that the deputies’ use of force was justified and they would not face criminal charges. Because the deputies were working undercover, the BCA never released their names.
The BCA says that after trying more than 780,000 password combinations, investigators were able to unlock Smith’s phone. In the same statement, the BCA acknowledged that it redoubled its efforts to retrieve data from the device after learning that “another entity” had retrieved the video previously.
In October 2023, reports emerged that independent forensics experts had recovered the video when the BCA’s initial attempts at cracking the device’s encryption were unsuccessful.
“The BCA works to provide the most complete picture of an incident that we can for prosecutorial review, even if new evidence is obtained after the prosecutor has made a determination about the incident,” said BCA spokesperson Jill Oliveira. “We were able to verify the existence of and view the video for the first time on Nov. 21, 2024.”
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office confirmed in a brief statement that it is reviewing the video.
According to sources who spoke with MPR News in 2023 on the condition that they not be named, Smith had tried to livestream the confrontation. Those who have viewed the 35-second clip say that it shows Smith pointing a gun at deputies before he and law enforcement exchanged gunfire.
The incident happened at a tense time in Minneapolis. Less than two months earlier, a Hennepin County jury convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin for George Floyd’s murder and Kim Potter, a Brooklyn Center police officer, fatally shot Daunte Wright, 20. Like Smith, both men were Black and their deaths led to extensive protests.
Smith’s killing drew demonstrators to the parking garage and the nearby intersection of Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue, where some protesters blocked traffic. A drunk driver who tried to get around a makeshift barricade struck and killed protester Deona Marie Erickson, 31.
