Police knew John Sawchak was terrorizing his neighborhood and did not arrest him, court records show. Then he shot a neighbor, police say

CNN
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The White man accused of shooting his Black neighbor in the neck last week has an “extensive history of threats, harassment and property damage against numerous neighbors” over a two-year period and evaded arrest by holing up in his home, court records show.

John Sawchak, 54, had two outstanding warrants against him for an alleged yearlong campaign of harassment targeting the shooting victim as well as a third warrant charging him with assaulting another neighbor in 2022, according to court documents.

Now, the Minneapolis Police Department once again finds itself at the center of controversy over race and policing, after failing to arrest Sawchak on the active warrants before he allegedly shot Davis Moturi on October 23, and then waiting several days before taking the alleged shooter into custody.

Sawchak’s defense attorneys said their client denies the allegations, and he did not enter a plea at arraignment.

John Miller, CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, said there are many factors complicating how police responded to the ongoing neighborhood dispute, including that the city’s police force has significantly been reduced since 2020.

The department “went from 900 to 500 officers,” which would “make any department less efficient in any response that requires follow-up,” Miller said.

“On the face of it, given the results, this is clearly a failure on the part of police,” he said. “A more nuanced look at the big picture may reveal the symptoms of a city that has been through a trauma in the time after the George Floyd killing, where the city and its police are struggling to find the proper balance.”

In video captured on a home surveillance camera, Moturi can be seen pruning a tree when he is shot and immediately crumples to the ground. The bullet went through his neck and fractured his spine, broke ribs, and left him with a concussion.

“It’s very sad that it’s had to come to this,” Moturi told reporters during a brief interview outside his home Tuesday evening. “But I’m looking forward to recovering safely and securely in the comfort of my home. I’m just glad my lovely wife is here and I’m still alive.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said his department will conduct a “full post-incident review” into the shooting and has insisted police had repeatedly tried “to lawfully and safely” arrest Sawchuk before the shooting “with the utmost priority on the sanctity of human life.”

O’Hara, who became chief two years after Floyd’s murder, cited the challenges of dealing with Sawchak’s history of mental illness, his gun ownership, and his refusal to engage with police who showed up at his home as reasons for the department’s failure to arrest him.

“We failed this victim 100% because that should not have happened to him,” O’Hara would later acknowledge at a news conference on Sunday, hours before Sawchak’s arrest. “The Minneapolis police somehow did not act urgently enough to prevent that individual from being shot.”

Before arresting Sawchak, however, O’Hara said the controversy, “is the result of the over politicization of policing in Minneapolis where instantly there is a knee-jerk reaction to say the cops don’t care and they don’t do anything.”

On Thursday, the Minneapolis City Council unanimously approved a motion for an independent review of all incidents between Sawchak and Moturi, and the shooting.

In a statement to CNN, a spokesman for Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s office said Friday the mayor “fully supports an independent review of this incident.”

“The mayor and City are committed to always doing better, and this means closely examining past actions and finding where there may be ways to improve and grow,” the spokesman said.

Some in the community – including Moturi’s wife – see the circumstances around the shooting as another example of how law enforcement continues to fail Black men, despite calls for reform after Floyd’s death at the hands of police in 2020.

Still others, including multiple policing experts, tell CNN the situation is the inevitable conclusion of asking law enforcement to balance less aggressive tactics while maintaining effective policing.

Sawchak was committed in 2016 after a judge declared him to be “mentally ill and dangerous,” and unable to stand trial for felony assault and three misdemeanors. A psychological evaluation cited his “increasingly aggressive behavior and beliefs” as one of the reasons he could not be tried.

In September 2023, Davis and Caroline Moturi moved into their first home next door to Sawchak. The arguments between the neighbors began over a tree planted between their homes, but quickly escalated, according to court documents.

“What should have been the start of a wonderful chapter with my husband became a living nightmare,” Caroline Moturi wrote in the days after her husband was shot.

Police were first dispatched to the home in October 2023 after Sawchak allegedly made threats involving “disparaging racial comments” at Moturi. Officers have been called at least 19 times by the Moturi family, court records show: after Sawchak allegedly swung a metal garden tool at Davis, who was standing on a ladder; after he hurled threats at Moturi’s wife, and yet again after Sawchak allegedly shoved human feces through the mail slot of their front door.

“I don’t call the police for fun. I call because I want my family to be safe,” Davis Moturi told CNN affiliate, KARE.

Through it all, Sawchak “constantly evaded law enforcement by retreating into his home and refusing to answer the door,” court records state.

Sawchak, who had been charged with multiple felonies from his interactions with the Moturis, had three open arrest warrants against him in the days leading up to the alleged shooting.

Last Friday, O’Hara said that the situation escalated in part due to the actions of the victim, but he did not elaborate on what Moturi allegedly did.

Then, a week before the shooting, Sawchak allegedly stood outside the Moturis’ home with a firearm and pointed the gun at Davis through the window, according to prosecutors. On October 23, Sawchak allegedly shot Moturi in the neck from his second-floor window.

Sawchak was charged with attempted murder, felony assault, stalking and harassment and days later a judge granted an emergency extreme risk protection order, citing Sawchak’s mental illness and possession of a firearm, court records show. The order requires Sawchak to surrender all firearms.

But he remained in his home for days while Moturi was hospitalized from the gunshot wound, and criticism grew over the Minneapolis Police Department’s delay in making an arrest.

After an hours long standoff, Sawchak surrendered to police early Monday morning. Yet his arrest has done little to quell renewed tensions between the Minneapolis officers and the community they have sworn to protect and serve.

“Minneapolis is like ground zero in the world of policing right now,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, who has trained officers in the department after Floyd’s killing.

Caroline Moturi has been direct in her criticism of the city’s police department, writing in a post to the couple’s verified Go Fund Me page that the fact her husband was shot at all “is one of many instances of a lack of justice for Black men.”

At a news conference last Friday, O’Hara told reporters his officers wanted to wait to arrest Sawchak until he was outside his home in order to limit his access to firearms. A lieutenant tried to contact Sawchak at his residence “over 20 times” before the shooting, O’Hara said, and had asked Moturi to contact the department when Sawchak left his home.

“Unfortunately, in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not often come out of the house,” O’Hara said.

He also placed some of the blame for the delay on the anti-police “rhetoric” in the city and a desire to keep his officers safe.

“The reality we are in is, you are damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” O’Hara said. “If we did go in with a SWAT team and wound up in a deadly force situation the headlines would read ‘MPD shoots mentally ill person.’

“Because we have not and have been trying to safely take this person into custody without further injecting violence into this situation, the headlines might read, ‘MPD refuses to arrest suspect.’

Missed opportunities and lessons from George Floyd

Last year, Minneapolis police agreed to an overhaul of the department to address what a state investigation described as a pattern of “discriminatory, race-based policing.”

In April 2022, Wexler and a team from the Police Executive Research Forum were hired by the department to train Minneapolis officers on a tactic called ICAT, which he said mirrors how SWAT teams work to de-escalate high-risk situations.

“One of the lessons coming out of the George Floyd murder is how police have to respond to use of force situations differently, especially in the city of Minneapolis,” Wexler said.

But Philip Solomon, co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity, said he feels Moturi and the community’s outrage is justified – especially in a city like Minneapolis – because police hesitation led to Moturi being injured, and the police have not historically adopted the same measured, methodical approach to apprehending someone when the suspect is Black.

“De-escalation and the ‘duty to retreat’ are in the interest of everyone’s public safety,” Solomon said. “And the way we know that, is that when a White person shoots their neighbor in the neck, that’s exactly what (the police) do.”

O’Hara said his department “exhausted all of our efforts” to peacefully arrest Sawchak after the shooting without escalating the use of force, including contacting his family to learn more about his mental health history and consulting a psychiatrist on the best way to “peacefully resolve this situation.”

“I’m thankful to report that after a series of steps that were taken, very methodically very systematically … ultimately the individual safely emerged from the house,” O’Hara said.

“This is an example of what de-escalation looks like and how we strive for every day – peacefully resolving situations.”

Wexler told CNN that while some may be frustrated the police didn’t make an immediate arrest, when the Minneapolis Police Department ultimately launched an operation to detain Sawchak late Sunday, “the police did exactly what they were trained to do.”

“They slowed things down, they contained it, and they did exactly what we taught them to, which was to not rush in and confront the person, because that would escalate the situation,” Wexler said.

“The way police used to act is they would go in there with guns blazing and wind up shooting the person,” he added. “I know the chief is facing criticism because they didn’t arrest him immediately, but the other side of this is one person is going to jail, and the cops are going home.”

Solomon acknowledged that Minneapolis officers have been caught in a dilemma that is the inevitable result of using police to respond to every emergency, including mental health concerns.

“We saw what happened when law enforcement was like, ‘You will obey,’ and it was the knee to the neck,” he said, referring to Floyd’s death. “2020 gave widespread moral clarity on what we should be doing around race and policing and public safety. But unfortunately, it was not accompanied by the same widespread moral courage. And the result is, we know this is wrong, but we have not done nearly enough to do something about it.”

Miller said the incident – which could have ended far more tragically for Moturi – has the potential to bring about a reckoning in cities like Minneapolis where residents have long called for police reform.

“A city gets the police it demands,” Miller said. “Maybe what Minneapolis faces now is the question, ‘Have we dialed it back too far?’”