Minneapolis says police didn't plant gun in Fong Lee case, but erred in report.

As Minneapolis police claimed Wednesday that their error in identifying a handgun led to false accusations of a planted-gun conspiracy in the fatal shooting of Fong Lee, lawyers for the dead man's family filed papers alleging a new inaccuracy in a key police report in the case.

Lee's family claimed in a lawsuit last week that surveillance video, witness statements and conflicting police reports suggest that Lee, 19, was unarmed when Officer Jason Andersen shot him eight times during a foot chase in July 2006.

Police say a Russian-made Baikal pistol was found next to Lee's body. But in their suit, Lee's family cited a police report from 2004, which says the same Baikal had been stolen in a north Minneapolis burglary that year, recovered by police and held in their custody ever since.

Their lawyers, Richard Hechter and Michael Padden, argue that police planted the gun to make the shooting near Cityview Elementary School look justified.

In court filings Wednesday, Minneapolis assistant city attorney James Moore said police committed nothing more than a simple error. He wrote that police Lt. Mike Fossum mistakenly believed a gun children found in a north Minneapolis snowbank in 2004 was the Baikal, when it actually was an FNH pistol manufactured in Czechoslovakia.

Moore wrote that a mix-up over which gun was recovered from the snowbank makes a lot more sense than a conspiracy to plant a weapon. He noted that Fossum called Dang Her, the victim in the 2004 burglary, and erroneously told him his stolen gun had been recovered.

"Plaintiff would have this court believe that police officers would find a gun, call the owner and say, 'we have it,' and then plant it at the scene of an officer-involved shooting," Moore wrote. "The theory strains plausibility beyond the breaking point."

Police Chief Tim Dolan on Monday denied that officers planted a gun. A grand jury deemed the killing justified, and Andersen later received his department's Medal of Valor.

Another error?

As the city responded, Padden and Hechter filed new documents, including one suggesting that police also misidentified the owner of the Czechoslovakian FNH.

A February 25, 2004, police report says kids playing near 2700 Russell Avenue North found the loaded 7.65-caliber pistol in the snow. The report lists a man named Tong Vue as the owner of the "recovered property."

But Lee family lawyers filed an affidavit this week in which Tong Vue, a security guard, said he never owned an FNH and never talked to police about such a gun.

Police spokesman Jesse Garcia responded Wednesday that Vue is also listed throughout the police report as the "reporting party" -- the person who called police to come retrieve the found weapon.

Garcia said that was Vue's only role in the matter and that the report erroneously listed him as the gun's "owner" because the computer program in use at the time required that the "owner" blank be filled in on the form.

If Vue had not been involved in reporting the found property, "how else would we have gotten his name and information?" Garcia asked.

Attorney Hechter also filed an affidavit Wednesday questioning why the city's Civil Rights department failed to conduct an investigation of the Fong Lee shooting, even though a formal complaint was filed in July 2006.

Hechter expressed "extreme disappointment and bewilderment" over the department's inaction.

City spokesman Matt Laible said the complaint was filed by a third party and eventually withdrawn. The city began an investigation, but the filing party needed the cooperation of the family for it to continue and didn't get it. The complaint was withdrawn in March 2009, Laible said.

Rochelle Olson • 612-673-1747