Unless Winston “Boogie” Smith was the second coming of Pablo Escobar the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the U.S. Marshalls and several other offices have some serious ‘splainin’ to do. And by all indications they are yet again taking the attitude that they don’t have to explain anything to anyone, even when their latest shoot-out set off a riot that pretty well drove the last nail into the life of an entire neighborhood.

You can tell by the tone and placement of a couple recent Strib stories that the paper isn’t buying much of what the BCA, et al are trying to sell.

In her October 15 story Strib reporter Maya Rao makes the following points:

1: ” … officers at the scene were never interviewed as part of the state’s investigation.”

2: ” … officers submitted only written statements giving their accounts of the June 3 shooting.”

3: “Officers were not wearing body cameras”

4: ” … the BCA did not interview the officers.”

5: “Why was a federal task force involved in pursuing Smith on a state-level case?”

6: “Why did officers shoot at him 14 times?”

7: “Smith had only one weapons case … tied to his warrant, which originated in 2019 when a friend he was going to see tipped off police that he had a gun. Officers found no gun on him [when he was killed], but searched the car that he arrived in and found a firearm under the seat. Smith was prohibited from carrying a gun as a felon. He had an aggravated robbery conviction stemming from a dispute with his ex-girlfriend.”

8: “One of the family’s biggest questions is why officers waited to apprehend Smith.”

9: ” … officers watched while Smith and a woman had a lunch date on the rooftop of Stella’s Fish Cafe, and continued monitoring him as the pair walked across Lake Street and into an elevator to the top floor. The officers didn’t confront him until the couple were already in a car, boxing him in with their own vehicles and announcing he was under arrest.”

And then in a follow up story this past Wednesday, Rao and two other reporters added …

10: “After they had a lunch date at Stella’s Fish Cafe, [Smith and his date] returned to his vehicle in the Uptown parking ramp across the street when ‘all of a sudden like 50 police cars’ came up to them and officers ordered them to put their hands up.”

11: “There were so many officers, and helicopters whirring overheard, that Askar [the girlfriend] wondered, ‘What the hell did he do wrong’?”

12: “An unnamed Ramsey County sheriff’s deputy said in a written statement four days after the shooting that he ‘developed information’ that Smith was at Stella’s that afternoon and asked members of the fugitive task force to come to Uptown to assist him with the case. The deputy’s statement indicated that at least nine task force members confronted Smith in the parking ramp.”

That’s a quick dozen lines of questioning for whenever the BCA or whoever decides the public deserves an full explanation for what otherwise looks and sounds like yet another jacked-up cowboy operation.

You don’t have to be a highly-trained law enforcement professional to wonder what in the hell all this action was really about? A missed court appearance for one gun charge? Nine armed and ready-for-combat personnel and a chopper? Give me a break.

Unless Boogie Smith — who we can agree was probably no altar boy — is revealed to be a central cog in a violent national meth manufacturing operation, or a wanted hit man for MS-13 with a high likelihood of blowing out of town on a second’s notice, the size of the “apprehension”, the confrontation in a high-traffic shopping/dining district with no consideration whatsoever of providing the public with 21st century transparency makes no sense at all.

Post- Boogie Smith, the Uptown business district is pretty much a zombie zone. The enraged rioting that ensued his killing looks to have put a shuddering stop to any recovery from … the rioting after Minneapolis cops killed George Floyd over a fake $20 bill.

What, I ask, might have been the reaction if the cops involved in the Smith operation had body cams running — that proved Smith fired at them first — and then quickly followed up with a definitive accounting of his very serious, very threatening-to-public-safety crimes? How much of Uptown would have been wrecked again?

This is 2021, not 1985. The public has a justifiable expectation that any police encounter, especially one where cops are anticipating violence, is recorded. Any cop, cop supervisor or politician overseeing cop behavior has to be smart enough to understand public expectations, particularly in yet another killing of yet another black guy.

To date, none of that crowd seems to comprehend the era they’re living in.