Carver County Attorney Mark Metz and Chaska Police Chief Scott Knight have expunged 40 traffic convictions and removed them from court records, saying that the ex-officer who wrote the tickets was likely profiling Latinos.
The tickets date back over the 14-year career of Joshua Lawrenz, a Chaska police officer who was fired in 2015 after an investigation found he had targeted Latino residents.
Lawrenz appealed his firing to an arbitrator, who ruled against him saying that he relied on "racial and ethnic stereotypes" in deciding whom to pull over and where to patrol.
In each of the 40 expunged cases Lawrenz was the only witness to the alleged violation, Knight said.
"We can't believe him," Knight said. "Because of his conduct in the case that got him terminated, justice required that we go back and review the cases where he was the officer issuing a citation."
The county attorney's office reviewed Lawrenz's cases, paying close attention to those where the defendant had a Hispanic last name, Knight said.
Prosecutors focused on traffic tickets rather than criminal or more serious charges, because Lawrenz would have issued the tickets by himself, Knight said.
"On major cases or anything beyond a citation, he would not have been there alone," he said. "But to say he didn't carry his biases into those cases is a question we'll never know."
