Minneapolis’ Police Union Chief Won’t Talk to Reporters. Maybe He Should Admit He’s Married to One.

Minneapolis Police Union President Lt. Bob Kroll addresses the media in 2018.Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune via AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Lt. Bob Kroll, the outspoken leader of the Minneapolis police union, is not normally one to shy away from the media spotlight. Last October, he proudly took the stage with President Donald Trump at a televised campaign rally in the city. And over the years he’s been quick to speak with reporters, whether to defend police officers or condemn Black Lives Matter, which he once described as a “terrorist organization.”

But in the days since George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white officer in Minneapolis, as tens of thousands of people protest around the country, Kroll has been reluctant to comment to the press. Over the past week, as activists call for Kroll to resign and accuse the police union he leads of protecting officers who engage in misconduct, journalists at multiple outlets, including myself, have reached out to Kroll repeatedly and not heard back. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Kroll called the police on one of its reporters who had knocked on his door for an interview. The reporter was later pulled over by an officer who said Kroll had reported suspicious activity on his front porch and explained that “he doesn’t want any press.”

But even as Kroll hides from the press, there’s a fact that he can’t run away from: He’s married to a local television reporter and anchor in Minneapolis, Liz Collin of WCCO-TV, who previously reported on policing in the city—without disclosing their relationship. On Wednesday, protesters showed up at the news agency’s headquarters in downtown Minneapolis and called for Collin to resign from her post. They described her marriage to Kroll as an “obvious conflict of public interest.”

It’s unclear when Kroll and Collin began dating. In 2016, Collin interviewed Kroll, who has been a frequent subject of reporting for the TV network, about police use of force. Minneapolis-based reporter Becky Dernbach, previously a Mother Jones fellow, learned about their relationship in June 2017, and revealed their marriage in a series of tweets in 2018. Since at least 2013, Collin had been covering the Minneapolis police department for WCCO. In July 2017, Collin reported a story about then-outgoing Police Chief Janee Harteau, who was resigning at the mayor’s request following the fatal police shooting of Justine Damond. Collin did not disclose her relationship with Kroll in the article, even though Harteau had a contentious history with Kroll: In one heated exchange in 2016, the police chief said the union president made “jackass remarks” when he commended officers who walked off their security jobs at a Lynx basketball game to protest players wearing Black Lives Matter warm-up jerseys. Kroll responded to the chief’s criticism by selling #jackass T-shirts to the public.

Collin and her station, WCCO, say there is no conflict of interest in her marriage to Kroll. In a statement to Mother Jones, a WCCO spokesperson said Collin has not reported on stories about the police department or police union for two and a half years, since around the time that Dernbach started tweeting about their marriage. “We would like to add nothing that goes on our air is the work of just one person,” the spokesperson added. “Our news managers, producers, anchors, reporters, photographers and editors all work together as a team that delivers news everyone in our community can trust to be fair and accurate.” Collin and Kroll did not respond to a request for comment, but Collin made a similar statement in 2019.

Kroll, meanwhile, has slammed the media for covering his relationship with Collin. In 2019, he threatened to never give another interview to the Minneapolis Star Tribune if it reported on their relationship. (In a profile of the union leader, the paper briefly mentioned their marriage anyway.)

Kroll has also criticized the media for its coverage of the anti-police protests that have taken place since Floyd’s death, during which Minneapolis’ officers launched tear gas and flash grenades at demonstrators. The day after Floyd died, Kroll put out a statement expressing solidarity with his colleague Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes during the arrest.

In an email to members of the police union—leaked on Twitter by former police chief Harteau—Kroll described the media coverage as biased and inaccurate. “I commend you for the excellent police work you are doing in keeping your coworkers and others safe during what everyone except us refuses to call a riot,” he wrote in the email. He described the protests as a “terrorist movement” and said the four officers involved in Floyd’s death had been fired “without due process.” “What is not being told is the violent criminal history of George Floyd,” he added. “The media will not air this.” (Floyd was arrested by the four officers for allegedly trying to use a fake $20 bill at a shop. He had a previous arrest record and was sentenced to five years in prison more than a decade ago. But this history appears to have no relevance to his death: Video footage of the arrest does not show him acting violently toward the officers. He went unconscious minutes before Chauvin stopped kneeling on his neck.)

Kroll chalks up his silence to safety concerns. “Another large reason we have not been more vocal beyond our initial press release is the negative impact and safety implications it would have for you trying to do your work,” Kroll wrote to officers. “I’ve been a visible target from the groups conducting this riot, politicians on the left allowing it and encouraging it, and liberal media. My visibility during this time would only increase your danger.”

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Kroll, despite his marriage to a journalist, is slamming the media for its coverage of the police and the protests. It was only last October that he stood onstage and praised President Trump for “everything he’s done for law enforcement.” Trump, after all, wrote the playbook for threatening journalists and brushing aside their facts as “fake news.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate