The St. Paul police sergeant who fatally shot a man just over a year ago didn’t have a dash camera in his squad car and family members and their attorney said Thursday that 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 car he was driving, said attorney Paul Bosman.

“One of the critical questions is what was Howard doing when the police officer chose to run him down with his police car,” Bosman said. “… We can’t tell what was going on, what he saw when he made that decision and I’m very concerned about that. … I think we all should be concerned about that.”

Howard Johnson, right, is pictured in a family photo with his mother, Monique Johnson. (Courtesy of Juanita Lingwall)

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

When the St. Paul police department originally installed dash cameras, “there were only so many purchased due to budget constraints at the time,” said St. Paul police Sgt. Mike Ernster, a department spokesman. “The decision was made to focus on vehicles used for patrol and install them in those vehicles. Sergeants do not typically actively patrol and therefore the cameras were not installed in their cars.”

Monique Johnson, Howard’s mother, said officers of all ranks should have both body cameras and dash cameras, if they’re “out in the community and dealing with people.” She said she wants to push for legislation 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 give up 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 five 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 release 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 ensure that information that isn’t public is removed as required under state law.

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

Bosman said they won’t be able to determine whether they will file a wrongful death lawsuit until Communities United Against Police Brutality’s reinvestigation workgroup reviews all the case material “before we can determine what the truth 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 raise.

“They will have to live the rest of their lives without him,” she said.

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

Prosecutors’ summary of the case

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

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

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

About a minute later, Blanshan was driving on Hudson Road with another sergeant in the passenger seat of a marked St. Paul police vehicle.

Johnson walked toward another vehicle, pointed his gun at the driver and yelled something. The driver reported she feared he might be carjacking her, so she temporarily froze and stopped her vehicle in the middle of the road.

The sergeants said they saw Johnson raise his gun toward the woman’s vehicle, and they thought he was going to carjack it. Blanshan believed “he needed to immediately intervene” to save the woman’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.

Both 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 nearby business captured the sound of a gunshot as Blanshan drove toward Johnson, and a muzzle flash from Johnson’s gun could be seen in another video.

As Blanshan began to open his squad door, Johnson got up from the ground and pointed his gun toward the squad. Another muzzle flash could 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 third muzzle flash coming from Johnson’s gun. Blanshan shot Johnson, striking him eight times.

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