In 1994, Fletcher was elected sheriff. He continued to focus on gang issues, helping start the Joint Asian Task Force in 1995 with the SPPD. Then in the summer of 1996, four-year-old Davisha Brantley-Gillum was killed when she got caught in gang crossfire while sitting in a car at the intersection of University and Hamline avenues. Fletcher says he was attending a vigil for the girl when he saw Ramsey County Lt. Art Blakey out in the street conducting traffic on his own time. "I said, What's wrong with this picture?" Fletcher recalls. "We've got people being shot and I've got an African American lieutenant working as an administrator inside a jail. That's when I decided I needed to make better use of Art."
That was the genesis for the creation of the East Metro Gang Task Force. Nicholas O'Hara, who was then superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, heard about the program and helped jumpstart talks about making it a statewide initiative. In 1997 the Minnesota Legislature passed a bill establishing the Minnesota Gang Strike Force. O'Hara says that it never would have happened without Fletcher leading the way. "My best friend as I tried to push this forward was Bob," O'Hara recalls. "He was the guy that kept this alive. I know why it survived. It's purely because Bob wouldn't let it die."
Adam Turman
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Fletcher is also widely praised for the prevention efforts that he continued in the Asian community while serving as sheriff. He started the Sheriff's Literacy Program aimed primarily at Asian kids living in the housing projects. Fletcher and his allies also helped organize hockey, baseball, and softball programs for Hmong kids. "I think through his efforts, not only intervention but prevention work, we were able at that time to stem gang violence within the Hmong community," says Xiong.
Bill Snyder is no longer angry. The 31-year law-enforcement veteran laughs easily as he recalls his nearly decade-old run-in with Bill Finney. At the time, Snyder was considered among the premier Asian gang experts in the state. He worked for the St. Paul Police Department but was detailed to the fledgling Minnesota Gang Strike Force. Over the prior six years Snyder and a handful of other officers had worked hard to develop expertise and credibility in the Asian community.
But then, on April Fool's Day 1998, Snyder learned that he was being transferred to the northwest investigations unit of the SPPD. He was flabbergasted and went to Finney's office to get an explanation for the move. The welcome Snyder received wasn't pleasant. "'Get out of my office,'" he recalls the chief telling him. "'I have nothing to say to you.' That's the only conversation I ever had with him about the transfer. I was very, very angry about the whole thing. After all the work I had done, I felt I at least deserved an explanation for why I was being transferred."
Members of St. Paul's Hmong community were equally upset by the move. They held a protest outside City Hall that attracted roughly 100 people. "Bill Snyder symbolizes hope in our community," Michelle Yang, one of the protesters, told the Star Tribune at the time. "We don't understand why Chief Finney would take him away from our community."
Snyder filed a grievance through the St. Paul Police Federation claiming that he was being retaliated against for working too closely with Fletcher and the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office. To this day, Snyder says he can think of no other explanation for why he was removed from the gang strike force. "It was the best theory I knew," he notes. "I couldn't come up with anything else."
After four months, Snyder was transferred again, this time to the traffic accident division. At this point Fletcher offered him a job with the sheriff's office, promising to put him back on the gang beat. Snyder says he agonized over the decision. "I had grown up to be a St. Paul cop," he explains. "The proudest day of my life was when I became a St. Paul cop." Ultimately, though, he took an $8,000 pay cut and lost three weeks of annual paid vacation to make the job change. "When I came over here I was beat up bad," he recalls. "This department brought me in like I was a brother."
Today Snyder heads up the sexual-predator-tracking unit for the sheriff's office, working jointly with the SPPD to keep tabs on such offenders. He says such a partnership between the law enforcement agencies would have been impossible during Finney's tenure as chief. Snyder also says that he'll retire if his former boss becomes sheriff. "I would say his leadership style is abusive," Snyder explains.
Snyder is not the only person who believes that Finney's ego sometimes took precedence over effective police work. Inspector Nicholas O'Hara says that it was widely known that Ramsey County deputies weren't welcome at crime scenes in St. Paul, even if they had information or expertise relevant to an investigation. "That's a policy that came right down from the top," O'Hara notes. "It was so obvious that the word had come down that we were not to show up at those St. Paul crime scenes." He says that the belief among rank-and-file St. Paul cops was, "If the chief finds out you're here, I'll be in trouble."
