July 31, 2023

Contact: leanduluth@gmail.com

On June 12th 2023, The Kirks, a West Duluth interracial family, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the City of Duluth, multiple Duluth Police Department employees, and a private citizen who committed a hate crime against the family in 2020. The twenty eight page complaint, which spans events occurring over the course of nearly two decades, lays out the city’s failure to protect the family’s civil rights through detailing over 100 interactions with police, and a wrongful arrest that ultimately led to the imprisonment of Aaron Kirk for four days. Considering the complaint’s length and complexity, the LEAN team has spent the last few months working and communicating with the Kirk family, their attorney and local police accountability advocates who have worked closely with the case. This document will provide a more accessible timeline of the case, break down the complaint by the defendant, discuss some of the legal arguments, and provide access to the documents and footage of the nightmare that the Kirk family has experienced over the last decade due to the color of their skin.

To put it briefly, this case is huge. Our team has spent many late nights with documents laid out all over the floor, had countless conversations with community members, and internal debates on how to best present decades worth of information. Thus, we encourage you to use the following table of contents to navigate this document.

Below is a condensed, chronological sequence of events ranging from McGee’s first false 911 call on March 23rd, 2007 to Aaron’s arrest on July 10th, 2020. A more complete timeline can be accessed here. However, it is worth noting that this timeline consists of documents provided to LEAN by the Kirk family and does not account for every incident that occurred.

Robert Grytdahl was the former Human Rights Officer of Duluth’s Human Rights Commission from 2008 to 2016. Carl Crawford has now held that position since 2017. The Human Rights officer directs, coordinates, and oversees discrimination complaints, and is responsible for responding to discrimination complaints per Chapter 29C-4 of the Duluth Human Rights Ordinance. This includes litigating to mitigate the discrimination pending a final determination of the complaint, and ordering the restraint of further discrimination.


Grytdahl and Gordon Ramsay, former Chief of Police, held mediation meetings that the Kirks agreed to attend, but McGee and Panger refused. Grytdahl and Ramsay took no further action following the neighbors’ absence, and instead pursued the unfounded allegations of “attacks” from the Kirks’ dog.


Amy Kirk emailed Carl Crawford directly, detailing false police reports from Mcgee and Panger, the inadequacy of the police response, and the Kirks’ resulting fear. The email concluded that McGee and Panger “targeted” the Kirks “because my husband is African American.” No action to stop the false reports followed.


The complaint claims that Grytdahl and Crawford failed to perform their duty as human rights officers, enabling the intimidation from McGee and Panger against the Kirk family.

Ramsay, Ceynowa, and Kazel had direct knowledge of the longstanding series of false police reports and racially discriminatory activities. These supervisors oversaw the written formal police reports by Panger and McGee. These officers did not initiate any investigation, arrests or prosecution of McGee and Panger for racial discrimination, nor for violating Minnesota criminal statutes in making threats and false reports. These officers also failed to train or supervise staff officers Schulte, Tinsley, Rodman, Pruse, Schutte to protect the Kirks’ civil and constitutional rights throughout the neighbor incidents and the 2020 false arrest.

Ronald Tinsley responded to one of McGee’s 911 calls that claimed Kirk was training his dog to be aggressive. McGee told Tinsley directly that she “was going to buy a gun and shoot the neighbor’s dog to solve the problem.” Tinsley noted in the report that he “advised against it” but did not inform Kirks of the threat and did not investigate McGee. No charges were brought against McGee.
During another police visit in response to the claim that the Kirks’ dog was barking loudly, McGee informed responding officer Kristina Schulte that because “no one is doing anything“ about the dog, “maybe I will take care of it myself with a 44 [handgun].” Officer Schulte also did not inform the Kirks of the threat and did not investigate McGee for threatening violence.


Officers James Rodman and Steven Pruse also responded to one of the several complaints about the Kirks’ dog. During this police visit, Kirk informed the officers of an incident where McGee used a racial slur against Kirk, while also threatening to call the Ku Klux Klan. Officer Pruse contacted his supervisor, Sergeant Kazel, for input on the situation. Kazel convened the aforementioned mediation meeting with Grydahl, Ramsay, the Kirks, McGee, and Panger, which McGee and Panger did not attend. No further action was taken by subordinate officers Rodman and Pruse or their supervisors.


Sara Schutte was the responding officer to the hate crime committed against Aaron Kirk on July 10th, 2020. Defendant Dustin James Turcotte used his vehicle to cut off Aaron Kirk’s vehicle in West Duluth, then gave him the middle finger and called him a “nigger” while Kirk was stopped at an intersection. Turcotte followed him into a parking lot, boxing Kirk’s vehicle in, again calling him a “nigger” and threatened to use of brass knuckles against Kirk. Turcotte continued to follow Kirk to the Members Cooperative Credit Union on N 40th Ave W and threatened him again with brass knuckles while repetitively saying, “I’m going to kill you nigger.” Upon the arrival of Duluth Police Officer Sara Schutte, Turcotte left the scene. Schutte was informed of Turcotte’s violent threats and racial slurs both by Kirk and a third-party witness. When Turcotte later spoke with police, he admitted to calling Kirk a “nigger” multiple times.


Police cited Turcotte with disorderly conduct and allowed him to proceed home, but Schutte arrested Kirk for leaving the scene, despite not having committed a crime, been detained, or been told to stay. Schutte transported Kirk to jail. Kirk remained there for four days, during which his charges were enhanced to multiple felonies, and then suddenly dropped.

The Legal Argument: Underrepresentation of an Interracial Family’s Interests

Multiple attorneys have worked with the Kirk family to create a legal framework that would in effect hold the City of Duluth and other bad actors accountable for the injustices that have occurred over the last 15 years.

An Interview With Minneapolis Civil Rights Attorney Phillip Fishman

Phillip Fishman, a Minneapolis attorney with over thirty years of experience prosecuting civil rights complaints, originally learned about the racial disparities occurring in Duluth through media coverage and the LEAN Duluth website. Upon reaching out to the Duluth NAACP with interest to help, he was connected with the Kirk family who had been looking for council for over ten years. Immediately, he and his colleagues from a variety of firms around the Twin Cities were intrigued by the case. Fishman and his colleagues have traveled multiple times up the I-35 corridor to meet with the Kirks and ultimately craft a complaint. As civil rights lawyers work on contingency, meaning that the attorney does not charge for labor unless the case is successful, it is important to understand that Fishman and his colleagues have not received reimbursement for time, travel, or their expertise at this time. Fishman passionately believes in the legal validity of the claims and explains that underrepresentation is at the heart of the Kirk’s complaint:

When you have underrepresented someone and don’t provide them with municipal services, such as police services, you are not treating people under the law equally. That runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause which seeks to ensure that people aren’t being driven out of their neighborhoods because of their race. There are some cases that I have found recently on that topic which can call into question The Fair Housing Act. In essence, what happened to the Kirks with respect to most of the litigation is that the police didn’t do anything to represent their interests.

Fishman continues by connecting the 2020 road rage incident with the 15 years of hate crimes that preceded it:

The road rage incident and the wrongful arrest of Aaron, was an example of an equal protection violation when they didn’t protect his interests. It is an extension of what happened before. He was treated differently throughout all of the incidents, concluding ultimately with the road rage incident. A normal white person goes to the police, you expect them to do something about it. In this case, a Black man reached out for help, the police officers notified their supervisors, and the supervisors did nothing. And on top of that, the human rights commissioner did nothing. It was a total failure of people in authority to protect the interests of those they are responsible for. If the police know about something and they just don’t act, that’s not their job.

Fishman adds that in addition to failing to protect the Kirk’s constitutional rights, the police failed to enforce Section 40-1 of the city’s legislative code which states, “No person shall report or cause to be reported to the police division of the city, by telephone, in writing or by any other means of communication, any felony, gross misdemeanor or misdemeanor, knowing that no such felony, gross misdemeanor or misdemeanor has, in fact, been committed”:

Point and fact, there’s a plain old ordinance dealing with false complaints to the police and how they can be fined under Duluth code. In the Duluth Police Department’s manual, their first goal is to maintain the laws of the City of Duluth. Had they done that and admonished these two women from the get go, this case would not have gone anywhere.

According to Court Listener, the case was filed in US District Court on June 23rd, 2023. The case was assigned to Judge Patrick Joseph Schiltz and referred to Judge Leo Brisbois, who notably was only the second Native American judge to hold his position in the nation at the time of his 2010 addition to the court. As of June 12th, all summons had been issued to defendants. On June 23rd, Assistant City Attorney Elizabeth Tabor, under the supervision of City Attorney Rebecca St. George, filed a motion to dismiss all charges against the city. When asked about the city’s dismissal of the charges filed by the Kirk family, Fishman concludes by emphasizing the serious consequences that the claims presented in this lawsuit can have on the City of Duluth’s pocketbook:

If ultimately the case goes forward and the counts against the misuse of federal funds stay, that would have major repercussions. The city could stand to lose millions of dollars per year because they are running a program that discriminates against people by the basis of race.

The Impact on the Family and the Community: “Two Sets of Rules”

While the timeline of the case and the legal arguments are imperative for understanding the framework that the complaint relies on, the impact that this case has had on the Kirks and the surrounding community cannot be understated. In an exclusive interview with the LEAN team, Aaron explains the impact that the city’s racially discriminatory response has had:

It's been very frustrating and painful to deal with the unprofessionalism that comes from this police department - especially when you know that policing is not supposed to be like that. You can’t believe that it's 2023 and stuff like this is happening.

Aaron adds that the intimate nature of the police department’s continued presence in his home ties to larger, historic tactics that the City of Duluth has employed against Black people:

It's made me very insecure at home with all of the police calls, with people coming at all times of the day. I’m guarded when I'm at home. A lot of times I feel my distrust for the police is for a good reason because of how they have been dealing with issues in this city historically. When you look at Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie or Steven Cooper; they literally have run people of color clean out of the city with their tactics. A lot of people just give up and leave.

Aaron references Clayton, Jackson, & McGhie, the three Black young men who were lynched on 1st Street on June 15, 1920. The police’s inaction -- or underrepresentation of the three Black men -- played a vital role in the racially motivated violence, as the police were ordered not to use their guns or provide resistance to the violent mob. Aaron also references Steven Cooper, a Black man who is currently facing trial after turning in a found handgun to police. These cases of injustice for Black men in Duluth lead Aaron to describe a double standard that exists in the criminal justice system:

If this was a white person, or the mayor or the police chief’s family, this would have been handled differently. They would have put an end to it. The big fact of the matter is that in this city, there are two sets of rules. There’s a set of rules for Black people and a set of rules for White people.

On July 10th, 2020 we had two examples with Conrad Sunde and Aaron Kirk. It took 3 months to charge him. Alternatively, they wanted to ruin me. They called my job, towed my car. This guy beat up an elderly woman that day, drawing blood, and they covered it up, they didn’t even charge the man.

Aaron references Conrad Sunde, the Duluth firefighter who brutally beat and robbed an older woman on a West Duluth bike trail. Notably, the Sunde incident occurred the same day that Aaron was arrested. Some of the same Duluth Police Department officers responded to both incidents. While Aaron was arrested and held in the jail for four days following the violent hate crime that was enacted against him by Dustin Turcotte, Conrad Sunde was kept out of custody for the four months between admitting to the crime and his court appearance. To this day, Sunde has not served time for his crime. Aaron concludes the interview by addressing the clear systemic hypocrisies that were clearly on display the day of his 2020 arrest:

The disconnect is that this is a system that has been set up to discriminate against people of color. It is a practice - white supremacy - when you don’t want to do the right thing when you know you’ve done the wrong thing. That is why they can’t do what’s right because they are working within a violent system.