The Eagan Police Department is the first department in Minnesota to utilize the Grappler Police Bumper, a gadget intended to safely end high-speed vehicle pursuits by law enforcement.

“We’re always looking for new, innovative ways to keep the public safe,” Eagan police Sgt. Brian Boekhoff said. “This was something that we decided to try out.”

The Grappler is one of various devices used by police to stop pursuits in Minnesota. The Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, Woodbury Police Department and Maplewood Police Department use sticky GPS trackers to locate fleeing vehicles without pursuing them at high speeds. Bloomington police use MobileSpike, a device that allows officers to deploy a stop stick from inside their vehicle with a push of a button.

Boekhoff said the department’s main goal in trying out the Grappler is to cut down on vehicle pursuits. Eagan police initiated 18 pursuits last year, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

“In the last five or so years, our pursuits have gone way up,” Boekhoff said. “Pursuits are super-duper dangerous, and not only to the suspects but the officers, the general public.”

Since 2021, there were 12,606 agency-involved pursuits in Minnesota. At least 24 people died during these pursuits, according to BCA data, including several in uninvolved vehicles.

How it works

Three switches comprise the control panel for the Grappler Police Bumper. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

The Grappler has a nylon net loaded into a compartment in the bumper. Police officers deploy the webbing by flipping a switch on an inside console. The net wraps around the fleeing car’s tire and suspension, preventing the vehicle from moving forward. Boekhoff said the police car must be within about 10 feet of the fleeing vehicle in order to deploy the Grappler.

The Eagan Police Department has Grappler units attached to two of its Chevrolet Tahoe SUVs. Each unit installation costs $5,000, and the net, which cannot be reused, costs $400 to replace after each use.

Grappler founder Leonard Stock said police in 37 states currently use the Grappler. He said Eagan is the first department in Minnesota to use it.

“In the Minneapolis area, I believe it’s going to start taking off,” Stock said. “In the Denver area, we had an agency that started, and now we have about eight or nine agencies using it. Same with Kansas City.”

Safety concerns

Eagan’s policy says the Grappler should be used with extreme caution in pursuits over 75 mph, according to Boekhoff. He said using the Grappler to stop a pursuit will not be documented in a use-of-force report, but it will be documented in an incident report and the BCA pursuit-reporting form.

Rich Neumeister, a citizen who follows privacy issues at the state Capitol, has raised concerns about the cost-effectiveness and safety of the Grappler. He compared police using the Grappler to a cowboy lassoing a runaway cow.

A Grappler Police Bumper mounted on an Eagan Police Department SUV. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“It’s definitely a use of force under the state statute,” he said. “There’s so much potential for physical harm. The impact on vehicle control, or it can swerve, or flip.”

In a 2024 incident, both vehicles involved in a pursuit in North Dakota lost control and landed in a ditch after a deputy deployed the Grappler. The deputy’s car flipped over, and he incurred minor injuries.

Neumeister has also advocated for tighter restrictions on sticky GPS trackers in the past, such as requiring law enforcement to obtain a search warrant or remove the tracker within 12 hours of attaching it.

Success rates

Boekhoff said that if using these two Grapplers is successful, the Eagan Police Department will probably purchase more.

Although Eagan installed the Grapplers in May, Boekhoff said Wednesday that they hadn’t been used in the field yet.

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“The only reason it hasn’t been used is that the vehicles that are equipped with a Grappler have not been involved in a pursuit,” Boekhoff said. “Had they been in a pursuit, I can almost assure you that it would have been used.”

Stock said the most successful use is a “preemptive grapple” where the officer approaches the suspect’s vehicle unnoticed and deploys the net.

“When there’s a suspect that’s weaving back and forth and it’s a 80 or 90 mile-an-hour pursuit, they’re swerving all over, those are definitely more of the 50-50 success rate,” he said. “Just because it’s extremely difficult to get the net into position.”

Colorado State Patrol Trooper Gabriel Moltrer said the agency’s Investigative Service Section began using the Grappler in 2021.

Last year, the section attempted 60 Grappler deployments; 34 of those attempts resulted in a successful “grapple” of the vehicle, about a 57% success rate.

Stock said there’s “no way to document” whether an injury or death in a pursuit was prevented with the Grappler.

“According to our police departments that use it frequently, they swear that it has saved lives,” he said. “It’s initial cost up front, but it’s keeping everyone safer.”

Questions and theories are mounting as the city of St. Paul marks a week into the cyberattack on its internet-based computer networks, though few answers have been offered.

The breach was first detected last Friday, July 25. The city voluntarily cut off most of its own access to Wi-Fi and internet services Monday. Mayor Melvin Carter declared a state of local emergency Tuesday, and now the city is being assisted by the FBI’s and Minnesota National Guard’s cybersecurity experts.

St. Paul police and firefighters are still responding to 911 calls, but they don’t have all the technology they’re accustomed to. For example, officers use in-squad laptops to check if someone has a warrant or a vehicle is stolen. Now, they are temporarily having to obtain that information by phone or over police radio.

Libraries, recreation centers and other buildings remain open, but with no access to internet-based services, some check-in and registration activities are affected.

RELATED: St. Paul cyberattack: Which city services are available?

The Pioneer Press spoke with cybersecurity expert Betsy Cooper, the founding director of the Aspen Policy Academy and former executive director of the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, to understand the potential scope of the attack.

A Bay Area-based initiative of the Washington, D.C.-headquartered Aspen Institute, the Aspen Policy Academy is a program designed to help experts and community members get involved in policy, with a focus on cybersecurity.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Betsy Cooper Q&A

Q: How widespread could the range of impact be when a city’s internet-based computer networks are attacked?

Betsy Cooper, a cybersecurity expert and founding director of the Aspen Policy Academy. (Courtesy of the Aspen Policy Academy)

A: It can have a wide range of impacts. If your internet basically goes down, your city systems won’t work, your payments won’t work, staff who are doing every type of job at the city – from picking up garbage bins to processing taxes – won’t be able to do that work if they don’t have a way to do it without the internet.

Thankfully, in St. Paul’s case, it sounds as though 911 is not affected. A worst-case scenario could see emergency services affected.

We live in a digital era: most of the work that we do as a city is digital. All of those operations can be affected when there is a cyberattack that interferes with internet communications.

Q: Why might someone choose to attack a city in this way?

A: I put motivations into 4 categories: Money, revenge, data and fun.

Potentially the most common is money, which often occurs with a ransomware attack. In a ransomware attack, a malicious actor will block systems and ask the city, or whatever entity is being attacked, to pay bitcoin to release the data or the system.

Revenge would mean someone has it out for the city of St. Paul for some reason, maybe a disgruntled city member for example, and they are seeking to do this to get revenge for one reason or another.

Sometimes malicious actors want to collect some form of data. Is there something about the city of St. Paul that has sensitive information on certain citizens or leadership of the city? Is there a reason why somebody might want data from the city?

Lastly, there are people that find it fun and amusing to hack cities and other organizations. They are proud of their ability to cause this sort of havoc. It’ll be annoying, but the effects will be less likely to be long-lasting.

Whatever the initial reason looks to be, it’s still going to be important for the city to do forensics and make sure, because someone could launch a ransomware attack to distract from the fact that they’re collecting data.

Another example could be the hackers trying to make it look like someone’s just having a bunch of fun, when it is actually a nation state with more specific goals than might initially appear.

Q: What is the worst-case scenario for the city in a breach like this?

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A: The worst case would be if data is manipulated or disappears. For instance, one of my biggest fears in a situation like this is not just that records are unable to be accessed for a short amount of time, but what if the records are tampered with or removed altogether?

Say they take the tax payments and change all of the numbers or mix them all up so the city has no record anymore of the information. Or, say they delete that database altogether.

For instance, you can imagine a situation where a city no longer has records of who paid property taxes and if individuals don’t have those records themselves, it’ll be very hard for everybody to sort all of that out. (St. Paul’s property taxes are collected through Ramsey County, so there may be outside records that could be used as a backup.)

For the city, you hope for sensitive systems like criminal record systems, that they have backups in a separate place. Without paper backups, it becomes incredibly difficult to restore that information.

Q: What is the worst-case scenario for individuals in a breach like this?

A: Worst case for individuals, for example, would be if you don’t have a record that you paid your taxes and the city doesn’t have its records — that’s gonna be a big difficulty to unwind.

Another example would be if someone changes records to make it look like you have a criminal record when you don’t. How do you prove a negative?

Those are some of the scenarios I most worry about, but I will say the average hack is probably not going to reach those scenarios. In all likelihood, it is a more traditional hack seeking to gather data or extract money.

Q: What are some factors that St. Paul residents should consider?

A: If the data is tampered with or missing, that would be something ordinary people will want to care about. They are going to want to hear from the city what systems were affected and what data was collected.

For instance, if the hackers got into sensitive city systems like voter records, the actor may have access to sensitive data about the people who live in the city.

If that happens, you may want to consider getting credit monitoring and consider the implications that could have. For the average person, it may not be that sensitive, but for people in certain categories, like those with criminal records they may not want public, that could be cause for concern.

Q: Could the scale of this attack be cause for concern?

A: The fact that they called in the Minnesota National Guard suggests that the city believes this is a pretty serious attack.

There are attempts at attacking cities regularly, but this is a particularly broad one for the city of St. Paul, so the effects are pretty significant.

We’ve seen significant cyberattacks before, Cleveland experienced something similar, so I don’t think this is entirely novel. The city of St. Paul will be able to reach out to other cities once they know more about their attack and should be able to figure out some systems and best practices. While the attack on St. Paul is serious, it is not unique.

Q: How can everyday citizens keep their information safe?

A: We work closely with a campaign called Take9. The program is all about getting people to take a 9-second pause to think about their cybersecurity when they’re online.

Take9 is a great moment for people to reflect: Is that email legit? Is someone really offering you free Taylor Swift tickets? Have you set up multi-factor authentication on your computer system? Have you compartmentalized your data into different places so if someone gets access to one system, they don’t get access to all your data?

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Q: Could we see more cyberattacks in the future?

A: I do think cyberattacks are on the rise because artificial intelligence is going to make it easier to take on these sorts of attacks.

Very often, though not always, humans are the weakest link in a cyberattack. A phishing scam will trick someone into clicking on a malicious link and, with artificial intelligence, it’s getting easier and easier to send targeted attacks that look to be legitimate.

Using the Taylor Swift tickets example, with artificial intelligence, an attack could be targeted only to people who have posted on social media about Taylor Swift, which would increase their likelihood of clicking a link.

In July’s Morning Report newsletter, we said goodbye to Rhino the cat, celebrated the rescue of another cat called Harley and introduced you to four dogs — Audrey, Scuppers, Betty and Tru Blu.

Molly Guthrey also shared a photo of her late mother with her first dog, Pootsie. Shall we start a vintage pet series?

Send in your pet photos and stories by signing up for our newsletter at twincities.com/newsletters.

In June, we highlighted nine pet stories from the Morning Report.

Thursday, July 31

Harley was adopted through Twin Cities Rescue at Petco in Highland Park. (Courtesy of Shawn)

“Harley, one of our new rescue cats, posed so nicely I thought I’d send it along, ” Shawn writes. “We adopted Harley and his brother Rocket when Kit-Kit, our beloved cat, passed away at age 20. Both Harley and Rocket love perching on high places. This window in the new breakfast nook is a favorite of theirs.”

Note: Shawn tells us that Harley and Rocket were adopted through Twin Cities Pet Rescue at Petco on Ford Parkway in Highland Park — and that there are currently more adoptable cats waiting at this Petco.

Wednesday, July 30

Welcome, Tru Blu!

“Our new Golden Retriever, Tru Blu,” Jim writes.

Tuesday, July 29

Luna

“This is Luna McComas, a rescued pet from Oklahoma,” Jeff writes. “We had X-rays done of her sore knee a while ago and they found buckshot in her and asked us if we shot our dog. Oh, come on. She is the sweetest dog we’ve ever met. Sometimes a bad dog but always a good friend.”

Monday, July 28

Rest in peace, Rhino.

“In the early morning of July 16th, we had to put Rhino down due to kidney failure,” Robin writes. “Rhino was born in Petaluma, Calif., on Aug. 15th, 2008. He was one of 17 furry kids (six dogs, one ferret, two skunks and a total of eight cats) who moved to Florida. Rhino was the last of the 17, Rhino was one in a trillion the sweetest cat ever never had an ounce of mean in him, always purring and making the cutest sounds. Rhino leaves behind his best furry friend, Rhody.”

Friday, July 25

Leslie and Pootsie.

“Good morning, pet corner fans,” Molly Guthrey wrote in Friday’s newsletter. “Here’s a photo of my mother, sitting outside the house her father built in Wisconsin. She’s with her first dog, Pootsie. My mom has passed away and I’ve been away from work as we said goodbye. I have found myself looking at family photos a lot in the last few weeks; it’s been fun to spot our pets through the decades. If you have vintage pet photos in your own family archives, please send them my way at mguthrey@pioneerpress.com and I’ll start a new vintage pets series. In the meantime, thank you for your patience as I catch up on your July submissions.”

Thursday, July 3

Betty wading in White Bear Lake.

“My dog Betty wading in White Bear Lake,” Linda writes.

Wednesday, July 2

Scuppers takes a catnap.

“Good morning,” Melenie writes. “In 2020, Scuppers, the months-old Wonder Airedale, was introduced in the Daily Doggo as the water-lover he promised to be. Having spent his fifth birthday last week romping and playing at his home on Madeline Island, he demonstrated his proficiency at snoozing whenever and wherever he wishes. Happy birthday, Scuppers.”

Tuesday, July 1

Audrey, assistant painter.

“I work in special education as a paraprofessional in Mound, ” writes Steph. “Every summer, I try to accomplish something at home.”

This summer, she’s painting the first floor of her small, 100+ year home.

Fortunately, there’s a “painting assistant” on hand. Meet Audrey.

“Audrey is a rescue from The Bond Between, my daughter’s dog, ” Steph says “No white trim paint on her yet!”

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Lakeville’s Regan Smith recorded a season-best time in the 200-meter backstroke final at the World Championships on Saturday in Singapore, touching the wall in 2 minutes, 4.29 seconds.

That was less than a second behind Australian backstroke queen Kaylee McKeown, and gave Smith her fourth individual silver medal of the major meet.

Smith also finished second in the 50 backstroke, 200 fly and the 100 backstroke, the latter was also won by McKeown.

Smith came out hard in Saturday’s race. She was ahead of world-record pace at the 100-meter mark and still held a three-hundredths advantage over McKeown at the final turn. But the Australian finished strong to comfortably win the race.

“Something I’ve been really working on is focusing on my own race. I think it really helped me on the outside lane, not seeing the other girls around me, and just really focusing on what I’ve been working on,” McKeown told reporters. “I don’t see a whole lot when I’m racing. I had to ask for my time at the end.”

Fellow American Claire Curzan finished third with a time of 2:06.04, putting two Americans on the podium in the event.

“It’s really special, it’s been a while since we had two Americans on the podium in the 200 backstroke,” Smith told reporters. “It’s 2025 and we have 3 years until the big dance (in LA) so that is something we absolutely want to repeat in the years going forward.”

Smith figures to swim the backstroke leg for Team USA in the women’s 4×100 medley relay on Sunday — the final day of competition. She won gold in that event in last year’s Olympics.