It’s been over two months since that afternoon in June when – depending on who you believe – either:

• an irresponsible citizen who should never have been given a carry permit (under a law that should never have passed!) freaked out and shot a mild-mannered undercover cop who may have been acting a bit aggressively, or
• a citizen, thrust into a situation no man should have to face when a stranger who’d been behaving in a threatening manner pulled up beside him when he was boxed in at a light, and pointed a gun at his wife, pulled his legally-permitted handgun and shot the aggressor – who turned out to be an undercover cop who was stretching the prerogatives of his badge all out of shape.

You recall the situation (and if you don’t, here’s a partial list of my coverage); the citizen, Martin Treptow, an out-of-work security guard with a legal carry permit, was taken into custody (absolutely normal in these situations, even if there’s not a cop involved) – and then promptly released without charge, and without his carry permit even being suspended (absolutely abnormal in these situations).

And since then…silence.  Nothing.  Zilch.  Indeed, as Joel Rosenberg and Andrew Rothman noted in Joel’s blog and in a couple of appearances on the NARN, less than nothing; the official silence has the appearance of a coverup, amid allegations (from sources with knowlege of the case and of the officer involved) that the cop behaved very improperly. 

Joel has the latest – and while it doesn’t read like a lot is happening, read closely:

[Anoka County Attorney] Robert M. A. Johnson…has empaneled a grand jury in the Treptow case.

What will be a secret — and is unlikely to leak directly — is what exactly will happen inside the grand jury room; by law, such proceedings are secret, and leak only sometimes.

That said, there are some things that are clear at this point:

1. There’s no legal need for a grand jury. If Johnson wanted to indict somebody in this, he could do it without a grand jury.

2. There may be a political use for a grand jury. Prosecutors can use grand juries to investigate complex cases — and this one isn’t that. The investigation was complete within days of the incident; all the witnesses that the Coon Rapids/Anoka authorities wanted to interview, and who were cooperative, had talked to the cops within hours, or a very few days, of the attack.

But a prosecutor can use a grand jury to indict a politically-difficult-to-indict defendant, or as an excuse for not indicting anybody. There’s an old saying: a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.

As Joel points out, Johnson is not politically vulnerable.  So the question is, which potential indictment is the political hot-potato?  Treptow, or “Officer Friendly”?

I am not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect that if Treptow were remotely vulnerable to being charged under the circumstances, he’d have been charged long ago.  Self-defense shooting is a tricky legal tightrope, with more legal pitfalls than dating LaToya Jackson; if someone’s going to screw up, it’s probably (I suspect) going to be obvious enough that a “hereditary” (see Joel’s explanation) county attorney isn’t going to worry about losing political capital.

But indicting a cop? 

Hm.

Joel continues (and I add emphasis):

A prosecutor can also carefully not present enough evidence to persuade a grand jury to indict anybody, and use that as an excuse — say, if the defendant is a public employee whose indictment would be politically embarrassing. “Hey; it wasn’t my fault. The grand jury refused to do anything.”

Finally:  

It’s not quite a guarantee, but it’s a very safe bet that Martin Treptow won’t be indicted. I wouldn’t be utterly surprised, though, if Rebecca Treptow was called in front of the grand jury — that would be, as far as I know, the first time that anybody involved in law enforcement would have so much as made any effort whatsoever to interview her since June 7.

(Yup, you read that right: the highly professional law enforcement professionals of the Coon Rapids PD, the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office, and the Anoka County Attorney’s office made, as far as I know, no attempt whatsoever to interview the key witness in more than two months of their “investigation.”  They certainly made no attempt to talk to her within the first month.  Gee, I wonder why . . . .)

Read the whole thing. 

CORRECTION:  Afternoon, not evening.