St. Paul police officer nearly falls victim to the revolving door of justice
It is by the grace of God that St. Paul Police Officer Abdirahman Dahir was not killed Monday night, and that our region isn’t mourning the loss of yet another peace officer this week.
The troubling part is that the entire episode was preventable, but our criminal justice system just can’t seem to commit itself to imprisoning violent offenders. Rather it continues to obsess over narratives of “mass incarceration” and “racial disparities.”
Monday Night
This past Monday evening, St. Paul police officers attempted to stop a car believed to be operated by an impaired driver. The driver, later identified as Samuel Flowers, 26, initially evaded officers’ attempts to stop him. Then Officer Dahir found Flowers parked in the Summit-University area. Flowers again drove off and Officer Dahir followed. It was then that Flowers fired 17 rounds at Officer Dahir from a high-powered rifle, blowing out Flowers’ rear window and striking Dahir’s squad and other citizen vehicles.
Flowers crashed a short distance away, yet remained uncooperative during the felony stop other St. Paul Police conducted. They called Flowers out of the vehicle with his hands up, but he continued to reach into the vehicle where the gun was. They ordered Flowers to walk backward towards them, but he refused and then just began walking towards his home, requiring officers to pursue him on foot and make the arrest before he could get inside.
St. Paul Police located an AR-15 style rifle with no stock (just a pistol grip) and 14 spent casings inside Flowers’ car. The rifle still had unfired rounds remaining in the magazine and some were armored piercing, meaning they would penetrate through a squad car and through an officer’s ballistic vest. Police also recovered suspected cocaine and fentanyl from Flowers upon arrest. Officers learned the rifle that Flowers shot at them with was stolen out of Minneapolis in 2018.
On Wednesday, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office (RCAO) charged Flowers with multiple felony counts including attempted murder of Officer Dahir, 1st-degree assault, possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, drive-by shooting, drug possession, fleeing police, and refusing to submit to a chem test pursuant to a search warrant. Flowers is expected to make his first appearance in court today, and the RCAO has indicated it will ask for a $10 million dollar bail.
These are serious charges, and comments made by Ramsey County Attorney John Choi about Flowers’ actions and his intent to hold Flowers’ “accountable” sound resolute. But the whole scenario belies the fact that the Ramsey County Attorney, the Ramsey County District Court, and the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) have each dropped the ball when it comes to Flowers’ violent past, and those fumbles nearly cost an officer his life.
Flowers’ Past
There is zero reason why Samuel Flowers should have been free on the streets of St. Paul Monday night. A properly focused and consequential criminal justice system would have ensured he was in prison and not free to attempt to kill police officers with a stolen rifle.
In 2015, when Flowers was 17 years old, he was arrested after he and a group of fellow gang members conducted a drive-by shooting outside Cora’s Chicken restaurant in St. Paul. They were firing at rival gang members but couldn’t have cared less that several other uninvolved patrons and employees of Cora’s had to dive for cover as bullets rang out.
Flowers was subsequently charged with seven counts of aggravated assault, drive-by shooting, crime for the benefit of a gang, and aiding and abetting others in these crimes.
It is unclear from court records why Flowers was back on the street in 2016 before his sentencing in the drive-by shooting, but in October of that year, just over a year after the drive-by shooting, Flowers set up a drug deal in St. Paul and went to rob the dealer with another man. When they met with the dealer to buy marijuana, Flowers and the other man pulled guns and demanded the dealer give them everything he had. When he resisted, Flowers and the other man began shooting the dealer right outside his house. Flowers admitted to police that he was carrying a six-shot revolver and that he shot at the man until his gun stopped firing and just clicked. The victim was struck four times in the back as he fled into his house. He would have died — but for luck.
Flowers was arrested and charged with attempted 2nd-degree murder and 1st-degree assault causing great bodily harm. He remained in custody and in March 2017 he was allowed to plead guilty to a fraction of the crimes he had been charged with. The court agreed to dismiss the attempted murder charge from the 2016 robbery/shooting and six of the seven charges stemming from the 2015 drive-by shooting. The judge then sentenced Flowers for the two crimes concurrently, meaning he served each sentence at the same time rather than facing the consequence of serving the two sentences consecutively.
The prosecutor shared these comments with the sentencing judge during the sentencing hearing:
“If you recall from his plea, he (Flowers) put in a bare minimum factual basis. That clearly continued at the pre-sentence investigation when he basically refused to speak at all about it. He has taken almost no responsibility, shows absolutely no remorse, is a significant public safety threat, active gang member. Stuff he did indicate is contradicted, you know, his claim of not using controlled substance. Here he was purchasing marijuana. Your Honor, I ask that you do impose the agreed-upon sentence in this case, recognizing what a danger Mr. Flowers is to the community, even at a young age.”
A review of the Sentencing Guidelines indicates Flowers realistically could have faced upwards of 20-plus years in prison if convicted of all of the crimes originally charged. But given the plea deal, Flowers received a total of 11 years minus the 146 days he had been held in jail for the two crimes. Of the remaining 10.5 years, Flowers would only have to serve 2/3rds of that sentence in prison, and the remaining 1/3 under DOC supervised release. What that is supposed to mean is that as long as Flowers remained law-abiding, he could serve that time in the community.
Flowers was released in March 2024, after spending about seven years in prison for shooting at multiple people and almost killing one during a drug deal robbery. Within a week, Flowers had failed to remain law-abiding. Police arrested him in possession of a firearm while riding in a car in which two other firearms were also recovered. Flowers was charged with possessing a firearm while being a prohibited person — which carries an intended mandatory minimum prison sentence. But Flowers was able to secure a $100,000 bond and walked out of jail a free man. There is no indication in the available court records that the DOC made an effort to revoke Flowers’ conditional release from his prison sentence. This is not unusual, as the court and the DOC usually will only consider a new conviction as evidence of failing to remain law-abiding.
Records do indicate that the DOC placed Flowers on Intensive Supervised Release (ISR) in June of 2024. ISR is reserved for those the DOC deems to be the “highest-risk individuals.” Those on ISR are supposed to have four face-to-face contacts with their supervised release agent per week. They are also mandated to remain employed or in school, be on electronic home monitoring, abide by daily curfews, and submit to random drug testing. Records of Flowers’ conduct on ISR are not public, but it’s difficult to believe Flowers was abiding by the stringent conditions of ISR. Could more have been done to bring Flowers back into custody? It would seem so.
Possessing a firearm by a prohibited person is a relatively simple prosecution, yet 10 months later Flowers remained on the streets of St. Paul pending trial. It was under these circumstances that our peace officers were left to rely on God’s grace when they encountered Flowers Monday night.
The takeaway
The criminal justice system knows who the threats to public safety are. When the system has the opportunity to remove those threats from society for significant periods of time, it needs to act on those opportunities.
Enough of the revolving door of justice, and the handwringing over how the system is negatively impacting the likes of Samuel Flowers. The integrity of the criminal justice system has been damaged, and those who have the opportunity to shore up the system must do so and do so quickly.
Our collective safety, and that of our brave peace officers, depends on it.