A jury has found an ex-Oakdale police officer guilty of misconduct stemming from repeated calls he made to a man who had known mental health issues and was being surveilled because of a felony arrest warrant.

Charles Anthony Nelson, 44, of Minneapolis, was convicted Wednesday in Washington County District Court of misconduct of a public officer by making false documents, a gross misdemeanor, for omitting the calls in his report of the 2022 incident.

Nelson was acquitted of misdemeanor harassing phone calls.

Nelson’s defense attorneys argued that he called the man, who had a history of mental health issues and was armed, to get him out of his house.

Prosecutors contended Nelson acted with intent to harass the man through the more than 30 calls — noting how the officer didn’t say anything when the man answered — and that they caused him to exit the home with a shotgun, potentially putting himself and others at risk.

“(Nelson) never had intent to harass anybody in this case, and the jury clearly agreed,” his attorney Pete Johnson said Thursday. “He was trying to help out this person in a mental health crisis, based on his own experience with mental health. And he had prior experience with this particular person.”

Nelson was put on paid leave after the Sept. 22, 2022, incident and resigned the following March, according to the city. He’d been an Oakdale officer since Dec. 20, 2006.

Jurors reached the verdict after less than two hours of deliberations following a two-day trial before Judge Gregory Galler. Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 13.

Disguised phone number

According to the criminal complaint, Nelson and his partner Andrew Dickman were dispatched to Greystone Avenue to look for the man, who had a felony arrest warrant for allegedly making threats.

The officers were told by command staff “not to engage with the individual, specifically due to his reported mental health issues and potential diagnosis of schizophrenia,” the complaint stated. “His recent actions were escalating, and it was known that he possessed firearms and had recently made threats of violence.”

Shortly after arriving at the home just after midnight, Nelson downloaded a phone app that disguises the phone number of incoming calls. He began making calls over the next three hours.

The man answered several of the calls, but Nelson did not say anything. When the man called Nelson back at 1:25 a.m., the officer denied making the calls.

The man reported the calls to Washington County dispatch, and also called the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and asked who was calling him.

At one point, he came out with a shotgun, before retreating back into the house. Washington County SWAT was called and eventually arrested him.

Nelson worked the remainder of the weekend and, “despite knowing that his phone calls and actions exacerbated the situation” with the man, he did not disclose that he made them, the complaint said.

He omitted the calls in his incident report related to the man’s arrest, “despite the knowledge that the Oakdale Police Department was attempting to determine the veracity of the claims by Victim that he had been getting repeated calls,” the complaint continued.

Five days after the incident, Dickman reported to a sergeant that Nelson was the source of the calls.

BCA investigation

Oakdale Police Chief Nick Newton contacted the BCA, who began an investigation.

The surveillance subject’s wife told a BCA agent that he called her that night and told her about the calls, which she said made him “paranoid,” the complaint said.

In an interview with BCA agents, Nelson admitted to making the calls and “claimed it was to ‘build rapport’ and incredulously stated he did not identify himself because he did not want to scare [the man],” the complaint stated.

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Johnson, Nelson’s attorney, when asked Thursday why the officer did not divulge that he made the calls, said that he believed it was known to others within the police department.

“And he thought, like the normal procedure is, if somebody wanted that to be in there, and thought that was important to this, somebody would talk to him and say, ‘Why don’t you add that to your report before we finalize this?’ That happens routinely,” Johnson said.

During Nelson’s trial, Johnson said, Dickman testified that “he believed everybody knew who made the calls. … So their understanding was that the supervisors knew and this was no secret, there was no scandal.”