Yesterday in St. Louis Park the police came into altercation with a man sleeping in his car in a Byerly’s parking lot. Apparently one of the employees of the store went to scope the man out, noted a gun on the front seat, and call the cops. As usual the situation escalated for a man sleeping in his car to a gunfight. Somehow the man escaped the parking lot and the mother of all manhunts (for Minnesota anyways) began:
Police soon converged on a home in the 700 block of 8th Avenue S. in Hopkins where the suspect used to live, and ordered anyone inside to come out.
Resident Ryan Coplan said his girlfriend was there alone when officers “came on bullhorns with, ‘Whoever’s inside, come out with your hands up!’ ”
Coplan, who said he moved in less than a year ago, said his girlfriend later called him and said the officers had “guns drawn, searched the house and went on their way.”
With all of the fancy license plate scanners, Stringray cell phone interceptors, and other surveillance gear the police have proven wholly incompetent at finding this single man. This just goes to show that pervasive surveillance networks are worthless when it comes to actually finding a suspect.
As an aside you almost have to feel bad for the police in this case. They ended up raiding the wrong address. If only there was some way to verify when somebody has moved out of a dwelling. Something like a Post Office notice of change of address, a lease or title to the property, or a billing account with the new address. But since none of that exists the police ended up having to harass an innocent women because she made the mistaken of living where a future criminal lived.