Community organizations are demanding the permanent termination of officers involved in the case of a man who died after suffering a stroke in Dakota County jail without receiving proper medical aid.

“They cannot cover this up,” Toshira Garraway Allen, founder of Families Supporting Families, said during the conference. “We see it for ourselves. We see what is happening to human beings right here in the state of Minnesota.”

Allen spoke Monday at a press conference at the Dakota County Judicial Center demanding the county, state and law enforcement agencies take accountability for the death of Kingsley Fifi Bimpong. Other groups involved included the Minnesota Freedom Fund, Minneapolis NAACP and Black Lives Matter Minnesota. The groups’ demands include that:

Eagan Police Department terminate all officers involved in the arrest of Bimpong.
Dakota County terminate correctional officers responsible for Bimpong’s care and custody during his detention.
The Dakota County Attorney’s Office recuse itself and refer the case to the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office for an independent criminal probe.
The Minnesota POST Board initiate disciplinary proceedings against all law enforcement officers at the scene who failed to render medical aid or perform their sworn duty to preserve life.

“He needed help, but what he got was a cell that turned into a coffin, and it happened because when they looked at him, they didn’t see his humanity,” Elizer Darris, executive director of Minnesota Freedom Fund, said during the conference.

What happened

Kingsley Fifi Bimpong (Courtesy of Robins Kaplan LLP)

Bimpong, 50, of Cottage Grove, was arrested Nov. 16 in Eagan after he drove into oncoming traffic and onto a median, according to a federal lawsuit filed by his family for $120 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

Bimpong got on the road after leaving his postal service job early, reporting to his employer that he was experiencing a headache and vision loss. Eagan officers said they believed Bimpong was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Video footage of Bimpong in a jail cell shows him incoherent and in distress on the floor of a Dakota County jail cell, lying in his own urine for close to three and a half hours until he was reported unresponsive, according to the lawsuit.

He was then taken to United Hospital in St. Paul and determined to be brain-dead by medical professionals. Three days later, Bimpong’s family decided to take him off a ventilator.

‘Could have been any of you’

Darris said officers involved in the incident watched as Bimpong slowly died in front of their eyes. It was clear that he needed help, he said, but officers continued to report “Inmate OK” despite his condition. Bimpong died because officers didn’t see in him their own brother, uncle, cousin or son, he said; instead, they saw a criminal.

“Here’s the bottom line, Kingsley could have been any last single one of you,” Darris said. “Any single one of you could have found yourself lying on the floor begging, hoping and pleading that someone would see your humanity and intervene.”

The incident is a clear result of racial profiling, said Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality. Gross, a retired nurse and active medical paralegal, said those involved, from the police officers who arrested Bimpong to the correctional officers who watched as he died, have all received the proper training for their roles to determine when someone is in need of medical attention.

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“The level of medical care that people get in the jails is frankly appalling,” Gross said. “I would liken it to no medical care.”

Gross said officers failed to take Bimpong’s pulse, follow medical protocol and were heard on video speculating that Bimpong was suffering a medical emergency.

“Health care should be a human right, and people who are in jails or prisons are human beings just like everybody else … this man was a working man, and he did not deserve to be treated the way he was,” said Trahern Crews, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota. “We treat animals better than we treat human beings, especially Black human beings, here in the state of Minnesota.”

Spokespeople for Dakota County and the city of Eagan stated that they could not offer a comment on the group’s demands due to the pending litigation.

By Rae Ellen Bichell and Sam Whitehead, KFF Health News

This summer, the state of Louisiana texted just over 13,000 people enrolled in its Medicaid program with a link to a website where they could confirm their incomes.

The texts were part of a pilot run to test technology the Trump administration says will make it easier for some Medicaid enrollees to prove they meet new requirements — working, studying, job training, or volunteering at least 80 hours a month — set to take effect in just over a year.

But only 894 people completed the quarterly wage check, or just under 7% of enrollees who got the text, according to Drew Maranto, undersecretary for the Louisiana Department of Health.

“We’re hoping to get more to opt in,” Maranto said. “We plan to raise awareness.”

The clock is ticking for officials in 42 states — excluding those that did not expand Medicaid at all — and Washington, D.C., to figure out how to verify that an estimated 18.5 million Medicaid enrollees meet rules included in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending law. They have until the end of next year, and federal officials are giving those jurisdictions a total of $200 million to do so.

The policy change is one of several to free up money for Trump’s priorities, such as increased border security and tax breaks that mainly benefit the wealthy.

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The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the work rules will be the main reason millions of people won’t be able to access health insurance over the next decade. It estimates changes to the Medicaid program will result in 10 million fewer Americans covered by 2034 — more than half of them because of the eligibility rules.

For now, state officials, health policy researchers, and consumer advocates are watching the pilot program in Louisiana and another in Arizona. Mehmet Oz, director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, has touted those test-drives and said they will allow people to verify their incomes “within seven minutes.”

“There have been efforts to do this in the past, but they haven’t been able to achieve what we can achieve because we have technologies now,” said Oz, during a television appearance in August.

Brian Blase, the president of the conservative Paragon Health Institute and a key architect of Medicaid changes in the new law, has chimed in, saying during a recent radio appearance that with today’s artificial intelligence “people should be able to seamlessly enter how they are spending their time.”

KFF Health News found scant evidence to support such claims. Federal and state officials have offered little insight into what new technology the two pilots have tested. They do say, however, that it connects directly with the websites of Medicaid enrollees’ payroll providers, rather than using artificial intelligence to draw conclusions about their activities.

Oz said the Trump administration’s efforts started “as soon as the bill was signed” in July. But work on the pilot programs began under the Biden administration.

And Medicaid is a state-federal program: The federal government contributes most of the funds, but it is up to the states to administer them, not the federal government.

“Oz can say, ‘Oh no, we’re going to fix this. We’re going to do this.’ Well, they don’t actually run the program,” said Joan Alker, a health policy researcher at Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families.

Officials have also offered few details about the pilots’ effectiveness in assisting enrollees in Medicaid or other public benefit programs.

The shortage of information has some state officials and health policy researchers worried that the Trump administration lacks viable solutions to help states implement the work rules. As a result, they say, people with a legal right to Medicaid benefits could lose access to them.

“What actually keeps me up at night is the fear that members that are eligible for Medicaid and are trying to get health care services would fall through the cracks and lose coverage,” said Emma Sandoe, Oregon’s Medicaid director.

Officials involved in the Louisiana and Arizona projects declined to answer many specific questions about their efforts, instead directing KFF Health News to federal officials.

Spokespeople for Arizona’s Medicaid and Economic Security departments — Johnny Córdoba and Brett Bezio, respectively — did not share data on how many people participated in the state’s pilot test nor describe the outcome. They said the pilot had been used to verify eligibility only for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a smaller program than Medicaid.

The Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, a nonprofit that helps people sign up for such SNAP benefits, hadn’t heard of the pilot program.

State officials and health policy researchers said neither pilot program could confirm whether a person meets other qualifying activities — such as community service — or any of the numerous exemptions. The tools being tested can verify only income.

Andrew Nixon, director of communications for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Oz’s agency, wrote in a statement that the digital tools officials aim to share with states “are largely under development.”

One person doing that development is Michael Burstein, a software engineer who, until recently, worked at the U.S. Digital Service, which later became known as the Department of Government Efficiency.

As the U.S. Digital Service was turned into DOGE, Burstein and other staffers left and started a nonprofit called Digital Public Works to finish supporting the technology to make it easier for people to verify their incomes for Medicaid enrollment.

But without permission from state officials, Burstein would not describe the tool in development, aside from saying that it’s mobile-first, can quickly verify income for a new or returning client, “and we’re pretty happy with it.”

The state agencies that manage benefit programs, such as Medicaid and SNAP, are understaffed, and they use different eligibility systems, many of which need updating, which makes improving them “a challenging task,” he said.

The $200 million in start-up costs the federal government has earmarked for systems to track work requirements equals roughly four times what it cost to administer Georgia’s Medicaid work requirement program alone.

That state, which has the nation’s only active work requirement program, called Georgia Pathways to Coverage, in September was granted a temporary extension, despite a recent report from a federal watchdog saying it hadn’t received enough federal oversight. A complicated sign-up process has kept enrollment in the program far below Georgia’s own projections.

Trump’s tax and spending law allows states to ask for extra time — until the end of 2028 — to start enforcing the rules, but only with the approval of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It also allows counties with high unemployment rates to be exempted, but states must apply for that exemption.

Even with an app that states can use to prove people are eligible for Medicaid, enrollees would still need to know that app existed and how to use it — neither of which is a given, Alker said. There is also no guarantee they’d have reliable cell service or internet access. As KFF Health News has reported, millions of Americans live in rural areas without reliable internet.

Private vendors also have been working on such apps, said Jennifer Wagner, who researches Medicaid eligibility and enrollment at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Wagner said she has seen several vendors demonstrate products they plan to pitch to states for the work rules. Many are limited in scope, she said, like those in the pilot tests.

“Nobody has a magical solution that’ll make sure eligible people don’t lose coverage,” she said.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

With a major funding question before St. Paul voters on the Nov. 4 ballot, the St. Paul Public Schools have rolled out their own white yard signs stamped with school district logo and a QR code that takes visitors to the district website. Once there, voters find a rousing YouTube video with parent, teacher and student interviews about the proposed special 10-year tax levy, set to stirring music.

“Vote Nov. 4. Protect their future. Invest in our community,” read the the district’s yard signs, which are popping up on lawns, school grounds and outside rec centers, mirroring the wording on the district website’s central landing page. “To continue providing high quality education to all of our students, we are asking all of our community to vote on an operating levy.”

Elsewhere on the district website, staff are “invited” to collect yard signs from district headquarters, post them in their front lawns and share them with neighbors.

Campaign finance report

It’s an aggressive push for one side of the ballot question, and apparently backed by taxpayer funds. There’s no record of a campaign finance report detailing manhours, expenses or funding sources behind the school district effort, which is distinct from that of the parent-and-teacher driven “Vote Yes for Strong Schools” campaign, which has rolled out yellow lawn signs.

“Their stuff says ‘Vote Yes.’ Our stuff says ‘Vote’,” said Erica Wacker, a spokesperson for the St. Paul Public Schools, who confirmed that the district is using an as-yet-untallied amount of its own funds for the white signs. “It’s still an ongoing project, so there hasn’t been a final (expenditure) report on the referendum, so it would take some time to compile.”

Some supporters and critics alike of the 10-year, $37 million-per-year special property tax levy have been taken aback by the degree to which the school district may have crossed the line from sharing impartial information to advocacy.

Peter Butler, who lodged a complaint against the St. Paul DFL this month around an unrelated campaign flier issue, said he has not been intimately involved in the school levy question, but he was surprised by the degree of the district’s involvement.

For ballot matters, “the attorney general is very good at saying … you can’t be using taxpayer money (to reach out) just on one side of the issue,” Butler said. “You can inform people, but you can’t advocate. It certainly sounds like they’ve crossed the line there.”

Muddy legal waters

Historically, public agencies in Minnesota have been barred from promoting either side in levy referendums, constitutional amendments and ballot questions, though they are allowed to distribute factual, impartial information, such as the size of a levy proposal and how the money will be spent. By statute, districts must send voters a mailer spelling out those particulars.

During the 2021 ballot initiative around a new citywide rent control ordinance, members of the St. Paul City Council were allowed to use their personal Facebook pages to advocate for or against its passage, but they were told not to use their official council office websites or even their political ward’s Facebook pages in that manner.

“Until recently, the question of whether public funds could be used for such activity seemed settled: With rare exceptions, the answer was no,” reads a previously-published opinion by State Auditor Julie Blaha, which was updated in June.

A 2012 case muddied the legal waters.

In “Abrahamson v. St. Louis County School District,” the Minnesota Court of Appeals and Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that rather than avoid promotion outright, school districts must follow campaign finance reporting laws when they advocate for or against ballot measures to the same extent as a campaign committee.

In other words, expenditures for materials that support a particular outcome can trigger requirements to file campaign finance reports detailing expenses, donors and donation amounts, among other state campaign finance regulations. By state statute, most campaign materials larger than a bumper sticker must be labeled “Prepared and paid for by the (named) committee,” and no campaigning is allowed within 100 feet of a polling place.

St. Paul’s ordinances — which cover city government — go even further to ban campaigning on government property: “It shall be unlawful for any person to use city property for a political purpose.”

Yard signs, website, video

St. Paul Public Schools has been heavily disseminating word of its $37.2 million levy proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot, with no campaign finance record-keeping in sight. The school district has encouraged staff to distribute lawn signs to their neighbors.

“A limited number of SPPS Referendum yard signs are available at the District Administration Building, 360 Colborne Street, by the front entrance,” reads The Bridge, the district’s online newsletter. “Staff are invited to pick up a yard sign to put in their yards or give to neighbors who live in St. Paul.”

Elsewhere, the school district website urges “let’s work together to protect the opportunities our students need” and explains, under the sub-headline “What’s at stake?”, that “without additional revenue, the programs that make our schools strong will be forced to take significant budget reductions or be eliminated entirely.”

The website features a public letter from Schools Superintendent Stacie Stanley, which urges readers to watch a four-minute YouTube video featuring testimonials from levy supporters, including state Rep. Maria Isa Perez-Vega and school board chair Halla Henderson, as well as a parent, teacher and students.

After about three minutes of highlighting the importance of school funding, a narrator explains the estimated property tax impacts on a median-value St. Paul home ($289,000), which would be $309 per year, in addition to the school district’s normal annual levy.

Stanley herself then appears in the video and encourages voters to go to the polls, though she never explicitly tells the viewer to “vote yes.”

‘If this doesn’t pass’

Quentin Wathum-Ocama, a school district employee who chairs the independent “Vote Yes for Strong Schools” campaign, confirmed that the school district has made stacks of yard signs available at school building open houses. He said he was not otherwise intimately familiar with the mechanics of the district’s efforts, such as whether it used its in-house print shop and marketing budget for the white yard signs, which are distinct from his campaign’s yellow yard signs.

“I can’t speak on behalf of the district,” he said, “but I know they’re walking the line and trying to do what they can within the confines of the law. They’re trying to explain what happens if it passes and what happens if it doesn’t. It feels political because the district is being really upfront and saying ‘if this doesn’t pass, we will cut programs.’ Some people say that feels like a very ‘Vote Yes!’ (effort), but it’s also the truth.”

“I do appreciate the district not sugar coating why they are asking for this,” Wathum-Ocama added. “Let’s say it doesn’t pass, and then the district says ‘we’re going to close this school.’ People will say ‘Nobody told me!’”

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By SYLVIE CORBET

PARIS (AP) — A delegation of French senators visited the Louvre on Tuesday and acknowledged that the museum’s security was “not in line” with modern standards, calling for improved measures at the Paris landmark that was the scene of a stunning heist earlier this month.

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Thieves took less than eight minutes on Oct. 19 to steal jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102 million) from the world’s most-visited museum. French officials described how the intruders used a basket lift to scale the Louvre’s façade, forced open a window, opened a breach in display cases and fled.

Two suspects were arrested on Sunday and are being questioned by police.

Sen. Laurent Lafon, head of the Culture Committee at the Senate, said “we all noticed that the security equipment is not suitable for a 21st-century museum such as the Louvre. It is our flagship, it must be exemplary, and today we cannot describe the security conditions at the Louvre as exemplary.”

Speaking to reporters after visiting the Louvre with fellow senators, Lafon said “there are many improvements to be made. Our security system does not meet nowadays’ standards.”

Lafon acknowledged there was a “weakness” regarding outdoor cameras that allowed the robbery, but would not enter into further details for “confidentiality reasons.”

The senators called for a speedy start of massive renovation work that was already planned — as soon as possible, since France’s budget for 2026 is currently being debated in the parliament.

The decade-long “Louvre New Renaissance” plan, which includes security improvements, was launched earlier this year. It is estimated it would cost up to 800 million euros ($933 million) to modernize infrastructure, ease crowding and give the famed Mona Lisa a dedicated gallery by 2031.