A man in Minneapolis hit a neighbor with a stick and threatened others with a knife and a gun, according to court records, and though warrants were issued, the police never arrested him. Then he shot a neighbor.
The Minneapolis Police Department, which was criticized for not moving more swiftly to arrest the man, took him into custody on Monday.
The man, John Herbert Sawchak, 54, surrendered to the police around 1:20 a.m. after an hourslong standoff.
Mr. Sawchak was accused of shooting his neighbor, Davis Moturi, in the neck on Oct. 23. Prosecutors the next day charged Mr. Sawchak with attempted murder, felony assault and felony harassment.
But in the days between the shooting and his arrest, some City Council members criticized the police for not immediately taking Mr. Sawchak into custody. The police repeatedly said they were unable to act quickly because of the suspect’s history of mental illness and the likelihood that the situation could escalate and require the use of deadly force.
According to court records, Mr. Sawchak had at least three active arrest warrants before the shooting. One of them involved “threats of violence” against Mr. Moturi, who survived the shooting.
Mr. Moturi was hospitalized for injuries that included a fractured spine, two broken ribs and a concussion, the news station KARE 11 reported. He could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.
At a news conference on Sunday night before the arrest, the police chief, Brian O’Hara, apologized to Mr. Moturi.
“In this particular instance, we failed this victim 100 percent because that should not have happened to him,” Chief O’Hara said.
He also defended his department and said that the criticism was a product of “over-politicization” of the police department, which he said had become smaller since 2020, the year that George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a Minneapolis police officer. A Justice Department investigation in the aftermath of the murder accused the department of rampant discrimination and systemic mismanagement.
Chief O’Hara added: “The other thing that is incredibly frustrating is we cannot, as a community, on one hand say, ‘Hey we want cops to use less force. We want less SWAT teams. We want more de-escalation,’ and then when we do that, say, ‘How come the cops didn’t use the SWAT team right away?’”
Five of the 13 members of the Minneapolis City Council on Friday sent a letter to the chief, and the mayor, Jacob Frey, describing their “utter horror at M.P.D.’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat.” At least one other City Council member said she backed the letter and another made similar criticisms on social media.
The letter said that Mr. Sawchak, who is white, had screamed racial slurs at Mr. Moturi, who is Black.
Mr. Sawchak had a history of violent and threatening behavior, with allegations dating back to at least January 2016, according to court documents.
He was accused of striking a neighbor with a wooden stick, threatening to harm and kill his neighbors — sometimes while brandishing a knife — and striking a neighbor by throwing something out his window, court records show.
Ten days before the shooting, Mr. Sawchak stood outside Mr. Moturi’s window and pointed a gun at him, according to court documents. Mr. Moturi had previously emailed local officials and the police about his concerns, according to emails shared with The New York Times.
At a news conference on Friday, Chief O’Hara said that it had been too dangerous to send officers inside Mr. Sawchak’s home to arrest him because he likely had firearms. He said that the police had been trying to arrest Mr. Sawchak since at least April, but were waiting for him to leave his house because they believed that approach would be safer.
Mr. Moturi was shot while he was cutting a tree, which Chief O’Hara said Mr. Sawchak “had planted with his mother, whom he apparently had a very deep attachment to, and that’s ultimately what prompted the shooting, we believe.”
Dennis Kenney, a former police officer and a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, said that handling a person experiencing a mental health crisis is “particularly difficult” for the police because they often do not have adequate tools or training to assess the risks or have many options about how to respond.
“Oftentimes what we’re dealing with is less a failure of policing than a failure of the mental health system,” he said.
A City Council member who had been critical of the delayed response by the police, Emily Koski, said on social media on Monday that “public safety must never hinge on outcries from elected leaders” and that the events needed to be reviewed “to ensure that no resident’s plea for safety goes unanswered again.”
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