In the days after Deputy Sheriff Josh Owen was gunned down, his widow told Tim Walz to stay away from her husband’s funeral. She didn’t want him there.
On the call, Shannon Owen informed the Minnesota governor turned vice-presidential candidate that if he tried to attend she would “make sure that I escort your ass out of here”. Mr Walz wisely didn’t show.
In a partial recording of the conversation passed to The Telegraph, Mrs Owen tells Mr Walz: “You have never been a supporter of the police and I’d just appreciate it if you just don’t come anywhere near my town.”
Mr Walz sounded chastened. “No, I totally understand and respect your rights. Our officers are here to support you in any way you need,” he replied before the call was brought to an abrupt end.
Mrs Owen’s husband had been planning to quit the force “right before he died”, upset by reforms that he complained had stopped him doing his job and had made his work just too dangerous.
The phone conversation highlights a major problem for Governor Walz in his home state of Minnesota. Local law enforcement appear not to be able to abide him.
In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, whose murder in Minneapolis in 2020 sparked days of riots and spawned the Black Lives Matter movement, Mr Walz found himself caught in the political crosshairs. Civil rights activists largely don’t believe he did enough to curb police action in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul in the aftermath while the Republican Right accused him of going too far.
Five years on, the views remain deeply entrenched. Minneapolis is short by more than 200 officers and has lost 40 per cent of its force in the wake of Floyd’s murder. Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes while his victim called out “I can’t breathe” was convicted on all charges and sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison.
Where Floyd was killed — renamed George Floyd Square — the vast tributes remain in place, including two monuments in his honour, scrawled with graffiti such as “Fire All Cops.”
In the city that created the political campaign to “defund the police” — of which Mr Walz is no advocate — activists on the Right accuse the vice-presidential candidate of helping to incubate those conditions in which police are no longer respected or appreciated.
In a little over a 12-month-period, five first responders (four police officers and a firefighter-paramedic) have been killed in the line of duty in Minnesota, most recently Jamal Mitchell, a black officer fatally shot during an ambush in May this year.
One senior police chief in Minnesota, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said rank and file officers were scathing of Mr Walz. “He doesn’t have our support,” said the senior officer.
Liz Collin, maker of the documentary Minnesota vs We the People, which investigated the spate of cop killings, said: “Minnesota has sadly become the home for the ‘defund the police movement’ and the consequences are clear. Under Walz’s watch, the dangerous job of being a police officer has become much more dangerous.”
Josh Owen was shot and killed on his 44th birthday. His favourite meal of steak never got finished, and his birthday cake went untouched, thrown in the bin in the hours after Mrs Owen had hugged her dead husband in the hospital for one last time.
The deputy sheriff had been called to attend to a domestic violence incident. As he tried to arrest the suspect, the man pulled out a hidden gun and started shooting.
Owen, a military veteran who had spent two years in Iraq, was hit by four bullets, the first one fatal, passing though his shoulder and entering his heart and both lungs.
Sitting in the kitchen of the family home in Glenwood, a town on Lake Minnewaska 130 miles north-west of Minneapolis, Mrs Owen, 41, shows me the video of the call with Mr Walz.
She’s angry and grieving, 18 months on from her husband’s murder. She has a tattoo on her left wrist with the date of his birthday and death — April 15 — and on her right arm 603 — his badge number. Their son Rylan, who has just turned 12, is playing at a friend’s house.
She remembers with great clarity the day her husband died. It was 7pm when Owen’s radio “went off”, in a call for backup in the nearby town of Cyrus. She and Rylan both gave him a hug goodbye — “Thank god we did,” says Mrs Owen now — and watched the man of the house disappear out of their lives forever.
‘I knew something really bad happened’
At about 8pm a car pulled up and the chief of police was knocking on the door. “I knew right away [that something was wrong] because he was sobbing and Rylan came running to the top of the stairs. I had to hold it together because I knew in my heart something really bad happened. The guys don’t usually come to my door bawling like that.”
A neighbour took in Rylan as it began to snow. “It was surreal. It was the prettiest snow,” recalls Mrs Owen. She got in the patrol car and was driven down the street to the local hospital. She asked if her husband was already dead but nobody would tell her. She only knew he had been shot.
“It was the hardest thing I ever did, driving down that hill to the hospital knowing it was really bad,” she says. Mrs Owen was taken into the room where her husband lay there, a sheet partially covering him.
“I walked in and there was nothing but cops and nurses surrounding him. I went to hold his hand and it was ice cold so that’s when I knew he was gone. Nobody had told me. I was confused because I couldn’t tell where he was shot. I never saw any blood. I finally saw a hole in his shoulder, just a hole and nothing else there. I didn’t realise it was because he had already bled out. The doctor looked at me and said flat out: ‘He is dead’ and I just screamed.”
Mrs Owen, who runs a clothing business, was forced to give up training to become a nurse because entering hospitals was too traumatic for her.
“I just thought what am I going to tell my kid because nobody gives you a handbook on what to tell your child when his dad’s dead.”
That night she took the little boy to the spare room. “I collapsed to my knees and held him and told him: ‘a bad guy shot your dad and he’s not coming back’.” Rylan, 10, at the time, just stared back. He didn’t even cry, unable to comprehend what the death of his father meant. Now aged 12, Rylan is starting to get it.
“This is the first year he understands that Dad is not coming back. He had a pet lizard that recently passed away and he bawled for like four days. When the lizard died, Rylan said: ‘I finally get it Mom. Dad’s not coming back’.”
Eighteen months on, Mrs Owen still can’t believe her husband has gone. “It’s weird. Your mind plays with you a little bit. It still hits me. Your life gets totally turned upside down that’s for sure. He was the glue. He kept us together.”
Two-year tour of Iraq
Owen was a “patriot”, dedicated to “public service”. Prior to joining the force, he served for 12 years in the National Guard, including a two-year tour of Iraq in 2006 with his Minnesota unit. (Incidentally, Tim Walz had quit the National Guard in 2005 just prior to his unit being deployed to Iraq, having decided to make a run for Congress.)
On the night he died, he didn’t stand a chance. He had been called as backup and entered the apartment to arrest the suspect.
“My husband was a very big man and very hard to take down. He worked out a lot, he tried to stay fit and healthy. The guy [who shot him] had mental health issues. They had been to his house before because he had tried to jump off the water tower. The couple had been known for fighting.”
The bodycam footage shows Owen walking into the apartment where two officers were already in place. But the killer had hidden a gun under his leg. As Owen tried to make the arrest “that’s when the guy brought out his gun,” says Mrs Owen. One officer was shot in the vest and then Owen took out his own gun and started firing back. “You can see him reeling. He said: ‘I am shot”. He started to lean over and then just spilled out and died.” The suspect was also killed.
“It makes me mad. He didn’t do anything. He literally just showed up. He didn’t get a chance. If he had been there earlier he would have searched him. But there were already two officers there.
“He walked into a fire and he didn’t have a chance. He was blindsided.”
The death was big news. In the days after, Donald Trump, no longer president, sent Mrs Owen a letter of condolence that she was proud to receive.
Governor Walz made a number of attempts to speak to the widow. Mrs Owen initially rebuffed them. Her husband had talked about quitting the force, unhappy with restrictions put in place post George Floyd’s death. He also felt he had been disrespected when sent to the Twin Cities to protect government buildings in the wake of riots that are estimated to have cost half a billion dollars worth of damage.
“Before all this happened, before Josh died, he was very angry because he was there when they did the riots and during the George Floyd incident they went down there. A lot of the guys told me he [Walz] had been disrespecting them because they were guarding these buildings and they didn’t have food or water. They were there for 24 hours with no sleep, on the floor.
In the wake of Floyd’s murder, Mr Walz had signed into Minnesota law a bill that banned choke-holds and imposed a duty on officers to report and intervene when colleagues use excessive force. It also prohibited aggressive “warrior” training techniques and created an independent statewide investigation unit for deaths involving police officers and a database related to police misconduct. Reactions to the bill were, reports said at the time, “tepid on all sides”. In other words, there was no pleasing anyone.
Mrs Owen is convinced Mr Walz “went too far” in introducing reforms post Floyd’s death. “After that everything was against the cops, defunding the cops,” she says.
The phone call with Mr Walz two days before the funeral and less than a week after the murder, went badly for the governor. The call was on speaker phone so her family could hear what was being said but she had no idea Owen’s stepmother was recording it. She is now glad she did.
‘I just let him ramble on’
“I took the phone call. I didn’t say much. I just let him ramble because that is what politicians do.
“I said: ‘are you planning on coming to the funeral’ and he said: ‘of course I’d be honoured to come’ and I said: ‘well you’re not welcome’. And he’s like ‘why is that?’ And I said ‘because you defunded the police. You don’t even support the police, why would I want you to come?’
“And Josh did not like him at all. And that would have been his wishes to not have any corrupt politicians there. He [Walz] was a little bit blindsided on that and didn’t know what to say. I just said: “And if you show up to my town I know everybody here will escort you out because I don’t want you here.”
Mr Walz declined to comment but aides pointed out that he issued a statement at the time of Mr Owen’s death describing him as a “hero” and offering condolences to his loved ones.
Asked if he was suitable to be the next-vice president, Mrs Owen says “absolutely not”, adding: “I don’t like the way he is with the cops’ situation, the military situation. I just feel he is a puppet right now. He is not actually speaking about what he really wants to do.”
She accused Mr Walz of feigning a “nice guy” image, the approachable mid-western white guy that Kamala Harris needed in her running mate.
Mrs Owen is speaking out now with just a fortnight to go to the election, aware of the criticism she may attract but wanting to voice the frustrations felt by her husband’s colleagues.
Mr Walz has a police problem. Hers is an intervention that reflects the mood among many police officers in the Midwest state and may just derail the Harris/Walz path to the White House.
Minnesota vs We the People is available to watch here.
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