A Twin Cities woman is taking action, after she says Minneapolis Police falsely identified her as assault suspect without ever contacting her.
Lauren Peterson is trying to get her life back in order, after being wrongly identified by Minneapolis police as an assault suspect during a protest downtown on August 24.
She only learned of the case, after it went public in September when the charges were filed against HER, and this video was released.
It shows a reporter with Alpha News being harassed by protesters and she says prompted strangers to send her nasty emails and texts, "I couldn't wrap my head around it, I thought it was some kind of a hoax," she said.
At a news conference Tuesday she told reporters she was camping with her four children and husband at Savanna Portage State Park, about 140 miles north of Minneapolis, when the incident took place.
"No one from the Minneapolis Police Department ever reached out to me," Peterson said. "No one came to see me to look to see that I wasn't the woman in the video."
She believes the failure of police not to verify the identity of the alleged attacker has put her family in danger as the public court records display her name, address and personal cell phone number.
She hired attorney Kelly Keegan to help. Keegan gathered evidence that Peterson was camping, such as a park pace, and gas receipts and delivered them to the city attorney, and the case was dismissed on Friday.
"Now we have to look to the future and get this case expunged," Keegan said. "There's public records on her and we need to clean this up, and unfortunately, it's going to take 6 months."
The city issued a statement about the case Monday explaining that it had "filed a dismissal with the court after additional evidence showed that Ms. Peterson was not in Minneapolis at the time this offense took place."
WCCO News has reached out to police for comment but have not heard back.
Peterson said she is not sure yet if she will sue the city.
