Rafael Lopez is a U.S. Army veteran who served two yearlong tours in Iraq. The first, in 2003-2004, he describes as nerve-racking. The second, which came after the troop surge, he describes as almost like a vacation.

But the war did not prepare the 27-year-old for what happened to him and a group of his friends one recent morning in downtown Minneapolis, which some folks say resembles the Wild, Wild West these days.

Lopez, of Coon Rapids, and two married couples he knows were attacked by a gang of 10 men ages 16 to early 20s, shortly after the group of friends left the Aqua nightclub in the city’s Warehouse District early Sept. 2. The brazen assault took place not more than 30 feet from the 1st Police Precinct station on Fourth Street between Hennepin Avenue and First Avenue North.

Now, if I were going to get assaulted, I would think that being next to a police station would be the best place to be. Help is next door, right? Not that morning, according to an internal affairs unit complaint filed by the group last weekend.

SHE SAID COP SAID ‘NOT MY PROBLEM’

The assault took place after members of the gang of assailants crossed paths with Lopez and his friends – Joshua Rivera, 27, and his wife, Magdalena Malajowicz, 26, of Blaine, and Joshua’s brother, Jonathan Rivera, 19, and his wife, Bobbie, 19, of Coon Rapids – as the group walked to their car.

Several “inappropriate” remarks were directed at Magdalena, who responded by declaring that she was “taken.” That prompted more remarks from the gang.

Lopez was ahead of the married couples when he heard the commotion and doubled back to escort Magdalena from the fray. That’s when one of two assailants sucker-punched Lopez on the left jaw and began beating him.

Jonathan Rivera confronted Lopez’s attackers and was then jumped by three others. Joshua tried to protect his younger brother and was accosted by four others.

Magdalena, according to the complaint, was punched in the head as she tried to pull one of Lopez’s assailants from him. That’s when she ran up the police station’s steps for help. She passed through the front door, but the second one leading into the station was locked. She began gesturing wildly for the officer visible on the other side of the glass door to come out, “but he just shrugged his shoulders,” according to the complaint.

The thugs fled north on Fourth Street as Magdalena returned to find her husband unconscious on the sidewalk. She ran down the street and called 911 from a bystander’s cellphone. Then she saw the same officer come out and she confronted him, asking him why he did not show up sooner.

“He said that she needed to calm down and that he didn’t need to deal with this because it happens all the time and then he went back inside,” according to the complaint. “Didn’t even give her a chance to calm down, didn’t even ask if we needed an ambulance, it was literally 10 seconds and he was already going back inside.”

‘GET OUT’

Lopez, meanwhile, was regaining his senses from a pummeling from which he almost lost consciousness while lying in the middle of the street near the police station.

“I remember one of them telling the other to grab my wallet, and that’s when I awoke and tried to punch them off me,” he told me last week as he recounted the incident.

His face bruised and bloodied, he said, he tried to enter the police station to at least file a report.

He got one foot in the second door, which was now open, but the same officer – identified only as badge No. 2702 in the complaint – repeatedly yelled for him to get out.

“I tried asking them about the situation in a calmly (sic) manner and two other cops came out, put their gloves on and were yelling at me, telling me to get out. I didn’t want further implications so I walked out,” Lopez wrote in the complaint.

Minneapolis police spokesman Sgt. William Palmer identified badge 2702 as officer Aaron Hanson.

During the incident, two more calls were made to 911 before two cops on horseback, one male and one female, approached the group on the street and asked if they needed an ambulance.

They said no and then asked to speak to the chief of police. Good luck there.

“Two more police officers came and one of them told us that the chief of police was too busy and they were not going to be able to do anything that night,” according to the complaint. “They said that there were a lot of fights going on that night, and if we want to file a complaint against what happened, we could do that tomorrow.”

ANY HELP FOR ‘REGULAR FOLK’?

Lopez returned to the station later that morning and filed an incident report. He figured police surveillance cameras on the street and at the police station captured the assault. He hoped the videos would lead to the identity of the assailants, whom he suspected were members of a gang because they were all wearing white and red shirts.

It turned out he wasted his time.

“We regret that this case does not meet our threshold for investigative assignment at the present time,” stated a letter on official police department stationery that arrived in Lopez’s mailbox Monday.

Palmer, the Minneapolis police spokesman, said the department and Hanson had no comment because of an active investigation into the complaint filed by Lopez.

Lopez said he understands the cops downtown have their hands full with a thug and criminal element that seems to be running amok after dark.

“It’s very clear to me now who has control of the city, and that is the lowlife people that patrol it at night, just looking for trouble, looking to see who they can harass, assault and rob,” Lopez wrote in the complaint.

Actually, violent crimes in downtown Minneapolis logged by police through Monday of this past week are down 15 percent from the same period last year.

There were 406 reported incidents through Sept. 12, 2010, and 346 this year.

But downtown has had its share of nighttime drama this spring and summer.

On Memorial Day, as bars closed, three men were shot. City officials also moved to strip the Karma nightclub of its liquor license after logging 165 police calls to the club since last year, as well as assaults against police officers and robberies in or around the club. Two Saturdays ago, scores of police in riot gear quelled a “mini-riot” that broke out during a party of 1,000 teenagers next to the Hyatt Regency. And on Monday, two men were stabbed, one fatally, inside a downtown Minneapolis parking ramp.

Lopez also understands that cops sometimes have a hard time distinguishing victim from attacker during such incidents. But he and his group of friends are not troublemakers, he stressed. He works as a tier 2 support engineer for a computer-data storage firm in Bloomington. Joshua Rivera is an assistant AT&T store manager. His wife has the same position at a Walgreens store. Jonathan Rivera is headed for U.S. Air Force boot camp in Texas next week.

As for the alleged behavior of the cops at the police station, Lopez knows the building would have emptied had it been a member in blue getting pounced on outside.

“But we are just regular folk,” he said. He recalled the department’s motto, which is stenciled on the side of squad cars and appears on the online site he used to file the complaint: “To protect with courage, to serve with compassion.”

“Unfortunately, in our case, they did neither that night,” he said last week.

Ruben Rosario can be reached at 651-228-5454 or rrosario@pioneerpress.com.