Metro Gang Strike Force Railroaded Philip Vance

The role the Metro Gang Strike Force played in Vance’s wrongful conviction and incarceration was unethical and a civil rights violation. So was coercing (RH) and (MC) and threatening (RH) to place her husband in jail and promising (MC) to speak on his behalf at sentencing. As well as using (IH), (JN), (TC), (EG), and (DR) to lie with the incentive to get closer to freedom. (TC) lied because he wanted to help his best friend, (MC). (MS) needed money to relocate because she was facing criminal charges and wanted a reset and a second chance at life. (DR) wanted to get home to his family and did what he felt he had to do to get there - lie. (EG) wanted to get out of jail badly. Before New Year’s Eve to be exact, and so he lied.

Most significantly, the MGSF “rogue” culture is what created this injustice. Investigators told Vance that they would locate his cell phone records that would give his exact location at the time of the murder. They say the 90 days they had to get them elapsed and they were not able to retrieve them, yet they retrieved Vance’s phone calls in the 90-day span. They were unable to present the audio tape of Vance making the statements they and (MS) testified to at trial. (MS) says they had her lie, and so did (MC) and (RH). Why didn’t the police bring forth the recording they worked so hard to obtain to get the conviction they wanted?

Vance’s jury pool was asked if they thought the police could/would lie to get a conviction. It’s clear from all the lies that were uncovered that they would, and they did. A federal investigation discovered that MGSF officers did whatever they chose, right or wrong. They lived by their own rules and despite the law, they did things that were illegal and harmed others. They broke ethics and they broke codes – criminals pretending to be good guys. The State of Minnesota has a consistent tendency of using jailhouse informants and confidential informants’ testimony as

GOLD against defendants when their testimony favors the state’s case and goals. Now they are labeling these same informants as “untrustworthy” when they admit that the original statements they made to investigators and jurors were false and led to the wrongful conviction of innocent people, as in Vance’s case.