Dagoberto Rodriguez-Cardona has some freaking nerve, asking for his money back.
He's a 29-year-old illegal immigrant from El Progresso, Honduras, who faces deportation.
Yet, he sued and still wants back the $4,500 he says members of the now-defunct Metro Gang Strike Force took from him at the Minneapolis impound lot more than a year ago.
Really? Is this guy bonkers? Who does he think he is? He has no rights. He and his ilk are responsible for virtually every ill that has befallen our great nation, doncha know — from spiraling health care costs to unemployment to crime to swine flu to the "browning" of America. Too bad they didn't work with Bernie Madoff on Wall Street, or we would have pinned the financial scandal on them, too.
"You are like cucarachas invading our country," a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent allegedly told Rodriguez-Cardona during the July 31, 2008, incident.
I'm sure there are folks right now vigorously nodding their heads in agreement.
Yet, what happened to him and six others that midsummer night is shaping up to be the biggest police corruption scandal in the Twin Cities in recent memory.
The litany of woes surrounding the gang unit — ranging from lax supervision and sloppy paperwork to allegations of police misconduct and criminal activity — has dominated the news in recent weeks.
A hearing was held Wednesday at the state Capitol on a state-commissioned report outlining alleged crimes that are now the focus of an FBI probe.
The Rodriguez-Cardona case epitomizes the multitude of miscues that led to the demise of a once highly regarded law enforcement strategy.
"The facts of this case are deeply troubling," wrote the report's investigators, former federal prosecutor Andrew Luger and retired 28-year FBI veteran John Egelhof.
Rodriguez-Cardona showed up at the impound lot to get his girlfriend's car after a routine parking infraction.
He earlier had cashed a check for $4,500 in connection with a residential painting/remodeling project. Three co-workers, all in paint-stained clothes, went with him.
At the lot, a family of strangers, also Latino, approached them about joining a local church.
"We did not want to be rude," Rodriguez-Cardona said this week. "They were talking to us about the Lord for about five minutes when they showed up." He was referring to five plainclothes members of the gang strike force.
Luger's report notes that impound-lot employees were instructed to tip off strike force members when "Mexicans" showed up to reclaim cars.
Members of both families, without any probable cause, it seems, were searched and questioned. One officer went through Rodriguez-Cardona's pockets and pulled out more than $4,000 in cash.
"Oh, money," the cop said.
Rodriguez-Cardona protested that the cash was payment for legitimate work and that he could prove it with receipts.
The police laughed.
A Minneapolis police K-9 squad car showed up minutes later. Cops and dog searched not only the girlfriend's car but also the car Rodriguez-Cardona borrowed to get to the lot. No drugs were found.
None of those bagged that night had gang ties. Rodriguez-Cardona had no arrests, not even a parking ticket. Other than an acknowledgment that a little more than $4,000 was seized, Luger's report found minimal information on the encounter in strike force records. No crime was alleged or prosecuted against those arrested and held in custody that night.
Yet, police contacted federal immigration officials in violation of a Minneapolis ordinance that prohibits officers from doing so unless a crime has been committed.
In their report, Luger and Egelhof suggest this was an improper search and seizure in violation of the Constitution.
If true, this is the stuff our Founding Fathers went to war against.
Rodriguez-Cardona's common-law wife posted the $8,000 bail — much of it collected from family and friends — to allow the father of the couple's now 9-month-old child, Derrick Alberto, to get out of jail pending deportation.
But he would not stay quiet.
"My client has shown incredible, raw courage in coming forward about this," said attorney Phil Fishman, who said his office has received a flood of calls from other alleged victims of gang unit rip-offs.
Rodriguez-Cardona fears he will be harmed or even killed.
The FBI has yet to show him pictures of strike force members, particularly ones he might be able to identify.
That may be strange, unless ex-strike force members have rolled on colleagues.
Fishman said he hopes his client's cooperation will lead to a waiver of his deportation on grounds he is a potential government witness as well as an alleged crime victim. That remains to be seen.
But the one thing lacking in Wednesday's legislative hearing was testimony of someone like Rodriguez-Cardona. He would have driven home the human experience of someone placed in handcuffs in front of a sobbing relative and stripped of money earned by the sweat of his brow. Throw in the fact that his alleged muggers were officers of the law.
Rodriguez-Cardona's situation touched indirectly on the spirit of the emotionally charged Mass on Wednesday morning at Sacred Heart Catholic Church on St. Paul's East Side, just six hours before the Capitol hearing.
The service was to commemorate the fatal shootings of St. Paul police officers Ron Ryan Jr. and Tim Jones — hours apart on Aug. 26, 1994 — by a deranged drifter, who is serving a life sentence. Ryan was killed in the church's parking lot.
The church's pastor, Eugene Michel, said the Mass drew more than 100 people, many of them uniformed St. Paul cops.
"We must always remember the sacrifices of the majority of officers who put their lives on the line each day for us," Michel told me. He noted his parishioners are mostly South American immigrants not unlike Rodriguez-Cardona or those corralled that night last year.
"There is never a good reason for a police officer to cross that line, because it's really hard to go back," said Michel, who provided a brief account of how the church welcomed mostly German-speaking immigrants more than a century ago, regardless of status.
He noted that the Mass has been held each year since the 1994 killing at the request of Ryan's father, Ron Ryan, the longtime strike force commander until he retired in October.
Despite his experience with officers under Ryan's command, Rodriguez-Cardona retains great respect for American law enforcement.
"Most of them I know are good," he told me. "Back home in Honduras, they shake you down sometimes for no reason.
"They're corrupt. But I never thought that this would happen here. But I earned that money. I don't do drugs. I'm not in a gang. It's not right."
Rubén Rosario can be reached at 651-228-5454.