Minneapolis Council Member Koski gets restraining order against stalker

On Tuesday afternoon, Minneapolis City Council Member Emily Koski told the world something she’s been keeping mostly to herself for over two years: She has been dealing with a stalker.

In an email to her constituents, Koski said she’s been the target of escalating harassment by a man who has caused her and her family stress, anxiety, and an “unshakeable sense of being unsafe.”

“It was a deliberate, relentless, escalating pattern of behavior,” Koski wrote.

It started with with “interruptions, disruptions that were unsettling but still felt manageable,” she said.

“Then the yelling grew louder, the outbursts more aggressive, the messages more hostile.”

Over time, she said, it became “waiting and watching,” invading her personal space, following her and her staff to their cars. Then it escalated to vandalism, physical intimidating and threatening behavior.

“Each incident chipped away at the sense of safety I once felt,” Koski wrote.

“We even tried to simply endure it, to tolerate the harassment and intimidation and keep doing our jobs,” she wrote.

When that didn’t work, they turned to security, police, park police, crisis response.

“And still, we were left to manage it on our own. Again and again, the answer was the same: there’s nothing we can do - call 911 when it escalates.”

The verbal assaults and physical intimidation turned violent, but they were on their own, she said.

“I was reduced from an elected official to a target, and my staff were reduced from public servants to security,” Koski wrote.

“If it was this hard for me, as someone serving inside City Hall, I cannot fathom how impossible it must feel for residents without that access,” she said. “That thought weighs so heavy on my heart.”

Finally, after a “particularly traumatizing incident,” she filed for a harassment restraining order.

She isn’t the only one: Other local and state elected officials who represent south Minneapolis have also been similarly harassed by the man. City Council members do not have security details; only the mayor has a security guard who doubles as his driver.

After Koski abandoned a run for mayor and decided not to run for re-election to the council earlier this year, Jamison Whiting began campaigning for her seat, and the man began targeting him, too.

In an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune, Whiting said the man physically touched him at the Ward 11 caucuses earlier this year. After Whiting got a temporary restraining order, the man threatened to “protest” at Washburn High School, where Whiting coaches.

Whiting said the man is angry about losing custody of his daughter. Whiting got a temporary restraining order, but was denied a permanent one. Whiting is a lawyer who works for the city attorney’s office, but he said he thinks he needs to hire a lawyer to help him.

After the murders of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and shootings of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Whiting paused his campaign for about a week to really think about whether he wanted to go forward.

Koski said the process of getting a restraining order, she and her staff found themselves “withdrawing from the public.” That’s why she decided to go public about it, to let her constituents know why she became less visible this year.

Being visible in public was a cornerstone of her campaign, but she stopped holding ward meetings, and public meetings turned into private conversations.

“I stopped showing up in the way I once had, not because I wanted to, but because it became the only way to keep residents, my staff, and myself safe,” she wrote.

“It is a sobering reminder that harassment, intimidation, and threats are being normalized in our politics. And unless we confront this reality, good people will continue to be driven out of public service, silenced, or harmed,” she said.