Pretending to be a police officer has never been easier in Minnesota

It’s a scene that has played out hundreds of times in movies and real life: Someone pretending to be a police officer gains the trust of a stranger and then commits terrible crimes.

That was apparently the method used by the assailant who knocked on the doors of two state legislators early Saturday, then killed House DFL Leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and seriously injured Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.

Police said the suspect, 57-year-old Vance Boelter, was wearing a convincing police disguise, including a Taser, badge and black body armor. He was driving a dark SUV outfitted with emergency lights and opened fire on police officers when they found him at Hortman’s home about 3 a.m. Saturday.

Mary Dodge, a University of Colorado professor who has studied the criminal justice system for decades, said easy access to badges, gear and police-style lights has made it possible for anyone to pretend to be a law enforcement agent.

“It is probably easier at this point of our history to impersonate a police officer than ever before,” Dodge said Sunday. " I am surprised it hasn’t happened more often."

In Minnesota, impersonating a police officer is a misdemeanor; the crime is a felony only if someone repeats the offense within five years. And while it is against the law to misuse some police equipment, such as colored vehicle lights, it is not illegal to purchase most police gear.

It’s also easy to buy that gear, said Rick Hodsdon, chair of the Board of Private Detectives and Protective Agents, which regulates Minnesota security companies. Police and military surplus stores may offer the chance to buy equipment with cash, leaving no electronic trail.

“It is not hard to pretend to be a police officer,” Hodsdon said, “especially at 2 o’clock in the morning, when someone’s at your door and you’re just waking up.”

Dodge, who co-wrote a paper on crimes linked to police impersonations in 2023, said she fears the Minnesota shootings will inspire copycats.

“There are a lot of angry people out there right now,” she said. “It scares the hell out of me.”

Dodge said there is no national data on such incidents and most police departments declined to cooperate when she tried to document crimes related to impersonations.

In her survey, Dodge showed how criminals have misappropriated police gear for decades.

One of the first and most notorious cases involved the so-called Red Light Bandit, who was sentenced to death after robbing and sometimes sexually assaulting women in Los Angeles while posing as a police officer in a car with a red spotlight in the 1940s.

In the 1970s, serial killer Ted Bundy dressed up as a cop and a firefighter to gain the trust of some of his victims.

Dodge said some states have responded by beefing up penalties. In Colorado, for instance, legislators made the crime of impersonating an officer a felony following the 2003 murder of Lacy Miller by a man who pulled over her car while pretending to be a patrolman.

Some police advocates predicted this weekend’s shootings will spur debate in Minnesota on the penalties for impersonation as well as restricting public access to police equipment.

“I don’t remember the last time we tried to address those laws,” said Jeff Potts, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association.

“I think this will be a discussion that our legislative committee will have before the next legislative session. ... It is obviously top of mind for a lot of people right now.”

Dodge said the recent use of balaclavas by federal immigration agents has further eroded the line, making it increasingly difficult for the public to distinguish between real and pretend law enforcement agents.

“When we see federal officers who are not identifying themselves, who are grabbing people off the streets, it sets the stage for more incidents like this,“ she said. “It makes this an easy crime to commit.“

In a review of 271 police impersonation incidents in 2016-2020, Dodge found men were by far the most common perpetrators and most events involved repeat offenders. In some cases, the impersonators repeatedly made traffic stops and demanded money from different people.

Less than 10 percent of the cases involved violent crimes, including homicide, kidnapping, assault, sexual assault or threatening the victim with a weapon.

Experts fear such tactics will eventually result in a mass casualty event in the United States, such as those experienced in other countries, including Norway, where a gunman posing as a police officer killed 69 people at a youth summer camp in 2011. Similarly, 22 people were killed in Canada in 2020 when a man pretended to be a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has long considered the potential for extremists — particularly terrorists — to disguise themselves as police officers or other first responders to attempt political assassinations, said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst with the agency and an expert in violent extremism.

In 2008, the department released a security bulletin to law enforcement about the use of emergency services to disguise a vehicle bomb or assassination. The alert, however, mainly focused on violent international extremists.

“As far as conducting a political assassination or something like that, I think this is the very first time that I can recall, at least in recent memory, where we’ve had somebody impersonate a police officer and end up killing people,” Johnson said.

“It’s important to know that we’re living in this polarized political climate that’s gotten worse and worse over the past 10 years,” he added. “And political assassinations, like we saw back in the ’60s, (are) something that’s on the table as a likely scenario.”