No Charges for Police Officers Who Shot, Killed Dolal Idd

Racial Reckoning: The Arc of Justice

Idd was a 23-year-old Somali man and the first person killed by Minneapolis police since George Floyd. His death late last year sparked a fresh wave of protests from an already grieving community. The Dakota County Attorney has concluded that the officers’ actions were “legally
justified.”

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Tiffany Bui reports:

The Dakota County Attorney will not press charges against the Minneapolis police officers who shot and killed Dolal Idd at a gas station in December.

Idd was a 23-year-old Somali man and the first person killed by Minneapolis police since George Floyd. His death sparked a fresh wave of protests from an already grieving community.

Idd was under investigation for illegally selling firearms. Through a confidential informant, police set up a sting operation and arranged to buy a gun from Idd at a Holiday Gas Station. The county attorney Kathy Keena wrote in a memo released Thursday that Idd shot out of the driver’s side window and three officers returned fire. Keena concluded that the officers’ actions were “legally justified.”

Activists pushed back against Keena’s decision outside of Governor Tim Walz’s mansion last week. They called on Walz to assign the case to Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office – as the governor did in the prosecution against Derek Chauvin.

Jaylani Hussein, who is the executive director of the Council on American- Islamic Relations in Minnesota, demanded that Idd’s family be given access to all available video footage of his death.

“What the public needs to know is that the family reached out to the interim county prosecutor asking for information in the nearly 100 days that passed in the killing of Dolal Idd, and we came up with nothing,” said Hussein.

Dolal Idd’s father Bayle Gelle questioned why police didn’t try to apprehend him in a different way, or why police initially said it was a traffic stop.

“The decision they [made] today – it is injustice. We don't believe what they were saying,” said Gelle.

Immediately after the sting operation, police raided the home of Idd’s parents in Eden Prairie. It was only after the officers finished their search that they informed Gelle his son had been killed.