A former Minnesota police officer who accused officers across the Minneapolis area of snooping into her driver’s license file is poised to receive $665,000 in settlements from various municipalities, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Anne Rasmusson, a one-time St. Paul and Eden Prairie officer, is pursuing the state’s most expansive lawsuit relating to misuse of driver and vehicle services data. She claims cops routinely looked at her file, which includes photographs, addresses, physical descriptions, driving records, and other personal information. The Minneapolis newspaper CityPages reported that gossip about Rasmusson spread when she trained for a body sculpting competition at a gym popular with other police officers
Rasmusson named more than 140 officers she believes accessed her file without an official purpose. In a proposed settlement, St. Paul does not admit any wrongdoing but agrees to remove Rasmusson’s name, picture, address and any other personal information from the city and police department’s internal directory, intranet, and website. St. Paul City Attorney Sara Grewing said statutes call for minimum damages of $2,500 per unauthorized lookup. With a total of 228 St. Paul lookups alleged in the suit, the city could have been on the hook for at least $570,000 plus attorneys’ fees.