Charges say Minnesota sheriff’s deputy was drunk when he crashed his squad while on duty

A Kandiyohi County sheriff’s deputy has been charged with being drunk when he crashed his squad vehicle while on duty.

Christopher Todd Flatten, 39, of Atwater, Minn., was charged last week in District Court with third- and fourth-degree drunken driving in connection with the wreck on July 18 east of Willmar in Gennessee Township.

Flatten was charged by summons. A message was left with him seeking a response to the allegations. Flatten is due in court on Sept. 4.

The deputy has been on “critical incident leave” since the crash, a statement from Sheriff Eric Tollefson read, “which will continue until the outcome of the internal investigation and the criminal proceedings.”

Tollefson added in his statement that “I am deeply concerned by the allegations made against Deputy Flatten in the charging documents. They do not reflect or align with the values of our office, the character of our deputies or the expectations of the people we serve. We are taking this situation seriously and cooperating with the investigating agencies.”

According to the criminal complaint:

Two State Patrol troopers were sent to County Road 4 near the intersection with E. 1st Avenue around 6:20 p.m. and saw the squad SUV in a field and a uniformed Flatten unresponsive and behind the wheel.

Flatten was removed from the squad and taken by air ambulance to St. Cloud Hospital.

A trucker driving behind Flatten before the crash told a trooper that he saw the squad vehicle turn from Hwy. 23 onto eastbound Hwy. 12 without observing a stop sign and then continue “all over the road, crossing over the center line approximately three-fourths of the width of the vehicle, crossing the fog line, and driving onto the grass shoulder of the road,” the complaint read.

The squad kept swerving at speeds topping 60 miles per hour before turning south onto County Road 4.

A second motorist reported seeing the squad on County Road 4 when it rolled five or six times into the ditch.

Soon after the crash, a trooper went to the hospital with a court order to collect a sample of Flatten’s blood to test for drug or alcohol impairment. However, Flatten refused to allow the blood draw to occur. The trooper did detect an odor of alcohol coming from Flatten and noticed that the deputy’s speech was slurred, and his eyes were bloodshot and glassy.

Flatten, who joined the Sheriff’s Office in late April, also declined to speak to the trooper about the crash.

To avoid a potential conflict of interest, Matthew Hohenstein of the neighboring Meeker County Attorney’s Office is leading the prosecution of Flatten.

In June, Flatten was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on allegations that he illegally arrested a 39-year-old Black man based on race two years earlier when he was a Willmar police officer.

The “walking while Black” arrest, as the ACLU called it, occurred in June 2022 and came despite Flatten being unable to see the face of Derrick Gilbert.

The ACLU said Flatten assumed Gilbert was a Black man named Sammy Price, even though Price was seven years younger, 4 inches shorter, 90 pounds heavier and has a much lighter complexion. The ACLU also alleged that Flatten knew Price through “multiple interactions [and] knew what he looked like.”

In response to the suit, which also names the city of Willmar as a defendant, the defense said that Flatten “was acting in his official capacity as a ... police officer and performing discretionary acts in the scope of his duties with a good faith belief his conduct was lawful, constitutional, proper and pursuant to probable cause.”