A former Minneapolis cop who cost city $411,000 in legal fees is poised to get worker comp

The city of Minneapolis is poised to settle another batch of workers' compensation cases with police officers, including one who cost the city over $400,000 in legal fees after he was sued for beating people up while off duty.

A Minneapolis City Council committee approved four workers' comp settlements with city employees on Monday, including one for former police officer Michael Griffin, who cost the city nearly $411,000 in legal fees for police brutality lawsuits in 2010-2011. He was terminated by Interim Police Chief Amelia Huffman in 2022 for carrying a rifle without authorization or training and lying about it, but misconduct is not legally relevant to whether the city has to pay workers’ comp benefits.

The Administration and Enterprise Oversight Committee voted 4-2 to approve a $100,000 settlement with Griffin and three similar settlements with officers Ricardo Muro, Jonathan Petron and Luis Porras. The settlements still must be approved by the full council.

Since the 2020 police murder of George Floyd, hundreds of Minneapolis police officers have left the city, with most retiring early and getting disability pensions and workers’ compensation settlements due to post-traumatic stress disorder. In the first two years after Floyd’s murder, the Minneapolis City Council approved over $22 million in workers’ compensation settlements for 144 Minneapolis police officers.

The settlements are paid out of the city’s self-insurance fund, rather than an insurance company.

Workers’ compensation is insurance for people who get injured while working. The city’s attorneys have said settling the workers’ comp cases with lump sum payouts is cheaper than going to trial because there’s no guarantee the city would win, and it could wind up paying more.

Griffin joined the police department in 2007 and was working as a patrol officer in north Minneapolis when he was sued for beatings that resulted in three people being hospitalized, including one man who was unconscious and bleeding for more than five minutes, according to court documents.

Griffin was indicted by the feds in 2015 on nine criminal counts alleging he assaulted four men in separate incidents and lied about it. He was acquitted of most of the charges, and a mistrial was declared on the remaining three counts when the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict. The Minneapolis City Council later denied his request that he be reimbursed $75,000 in legal fees in connection with the federal case.

By 2015, 22 misconduct complaints had been filed against Griffin, with most of the cases closed without discipline, although he did receive a letter of reprimand for the 2011 incident and was suspended for ethics and conduct violations in 2015, according to a Star Tribune report.

Lindsey Rowland, a partner at Meuser, Yackley and Rowland, a law firm that represents first responders who apply for workers’ compensation and disability pensions said the number of Minneapolis officers leaving due to PTSD has slowly come down and “sort of returned to a new normal.”

“There will always be work comp claims because there will always be people who get injured,” Rowland said.