Ex-Minneapolis cop gets three years for stealing drugs during traffic stops

A former Minneapolis police officer convicted of making traffic stops in order to steal drugs was sentenced Wednesday to more than three years in federal prison.

Ty Jindra, 29, was convicted in November of three counts of confiscating drugs for his personal use and two counts of seizing drugs in violation of individuals' constitutional rights.

Judge Donovan Frank handed down the 38-month sentence in U.S. District Court in St. Paul. Jindra, who remains free, was ordered to report to prison or surrender to U.S. marshals on July 28.

Frank said that sentencing Jindra to anything less than that term would be "disrespectful to the law," pointing out that Jindra, as a police officer, committed "an extraordinary abuse of trust." But Frank added that he has sentenced a lot of good people who have committed crimes and praised Jindra for seeking sobriety through a 12-step program. He urged him to "keep doing what you are doing" and participate in treatment opportunities in prison.

In outlining his options, Frank said sentencing guidelines called for a 33- to 44-month prison term with a maximum sentence of four years. Jindra's attorneys asked for a downward departure, and prosecutors sought a 41-month sentence,

In a brief statement before his sentencing, Jindra said he wanted to apologize to his family, friends and fellow officers and vowed to pursue a new life. He did not comment after the hearing.

Jindra's attorney, Peter Wold, said afterward that he thought Jindra's sentence would be for less time. "The judge was focused on sending a message," he said.

Wold said Jindra talked to his 6-year-old son ahead of the sentencing "and told him this could happen." Jindra also has a 2-year-old daughter.

While Wold and co-counsel Aaron Morrison, contested the allegations during his trial, Morrison filed a pre-sentence brief in April saying that Jindra had lied to them about his complicity and was now admitting that he took the drugs to feed his addiction.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Jones urged Frank to take into consideration that Jindra "did not take responsibility until the 11th hour" after deceiving the Minneapolis department and abusing his authority as a police officer. She said Jindra had caused "damage and harm to the public trust."

Wold told Frank on Wednesday that he believed he and Morrison had built a sufficient case to win a not-guilty verdict, so he was surprised that months after the trial he sat down with Jindra over tea and heard Jindra say something he had never heard from a client. He said Jindra told him: "The jury got it right."

He said Jindra told him he was participating in a 12-step recovery program and was on his fifth step, where one admits wrongs. Wold said it was not a ploy to seek leniency from Frank.

Jindra's immersion in a recovery program clearly touched a chord with Frank, who has publicly and frequently admitted to being a recovering alcoholic. During the sentencing, Frank said that a study had shown that 70% of convicted people who continue working a 12-step program to address alcoholism or drug abuse never return to state or federal court.

Jindra was convicted of stealing tramadol, a controlled substance, during one stop; taking fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, on another occasion; and keeping a portion of some methamphetamine that he found on the roof of a garage and filing a false report with the department. He was also convicted of two civil rights violations, conducting an illegal search for drugs on a driver at a service station who had only a tag violation and conducting an illegal drug search of a car that rolled through a stop sign.

As a police officer, Jindra was assigned to the night shift, much of it on the city's north side. The majority of the drivers and passengers he stopped and searched and were cited in the indictment were people of color. Committing his crimes there made it "more serious," Frank said.

Much of the evidence in the case was video from Jindra's body camera or those of his partner officers. Jindra was a field trainer, and some of the partners were trainees.

In her closing argument at trial, federal prosecutor Amber Brennan — now a Hennepin County judge — said Jindra typically made a "bee line" for the vehicle's interior regardless of whether he had legal justification, searching for drugs, compared with his partners who patted down people for possible weapons but seemed far less concerned with finding drugs.

In one of the traffic stops, the jury found that Jindra violated the Constitution's Fourth Amendment barring unreasonable searches. He pulled over three young Black males whose car rolled through an intersection without making a complete stop. The driver did not have a license, and Jindra handcuffed him. He then searched the vehicle and found a baggie of what appeared to be marijuana and a baggie of pills. He confiscated the drugs but never filed a report.

Before joining the force, Jindra was in the Minnesota Army National Guard and spent time in Iraq. In 2013, the Minneapolis Police Department hired him as a community service officer, a civilian position. He became a police officer recruit in 2014.

In 2019, a paramedic on a crew that was treating a man suffering from an overdose on the front lawn of a house in north Minneapolis grew suspicious when Jindra and another police officer arrived and Jindra disappeared into the house for period of time. The paramedic thought there was no legal justification to go into the house and filed a complaint with Minneapolis police.

The police Internal Affairs Department reviewed Jindra's body camera video, which showed him going room to room, apparently looking for places where drugs might be hidden and searching a backpack in which he found what appeared to be drugs. Then, for no apparent reason, Jindra turned off his body camera for more than six minutes.

The episode led investigators to review other incidents, leading to Jindra's suspension and eventual firing.

Morrison wrote in his presentence brief that Jindra suffered trauma from his experience as a soldier in Iraq and as a police officer, leading him to abuse the prescription drug Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication, and when he ran out of that, drugs on the street.

Both Frank and Jones cited Jindra's military service. Frank noted that Jindra returned from Iraq suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), a condition that was worsened by being one of the first officers on the scene after the shooting death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond by police officer Mohamed Noor in Minneapolis in 2017.

Unrelated to the drug conviction, examples of Jindra's misconduct were highlighted in the recent PBS Frontline documentary "Police on Trial," made in partnership with the Star Tribune. In it, dashboard camera footage shows Jindra holding his gun to the heads of two men during separate traffic stops. Neither was resisting, and one was handcuffed.

Jindra comes from a police family. His father, Jeff Jindra, retired from the Minneapolis police force in 2015 after a long career in which he received numerous awards. The older Jindra also had his own history of misconduct allegations; in one case, he and a fellow officer were cleared of criminal wrongdoing by federal authorities.