Wintana Melekin and Navell Gordon, employees of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, were arrested on Sept. 11 after confrontations with an off-duty Minneapolis police officer working at the store. Charges have been dropped. Courtesy of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change

The Minneapolis city attorney has dropped charges against two community organizers cited for trespassing at a north Minneapolis Cub Foods store in September.

Navell Gordon and Wintana Melekin, employees of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, were arrested Sept. 11 after confrontations with an off-duty Minneapolis police officer working at the store.

In his official police report, Officer Tyrone Barze accused Gordon of circulating a petition in the store's parking lot without the store management's permission, even after Barze asked him to leave.

Gordon would later receive national attention after a widely ridiculed KSTP-TV report claimed he and Mayor Betsy Hodges flashed "gang signs" while posing for a photo at a get-out-the vote event. A video released shortly after the report aired made it clear that the two were merely pointing at each other.

Barze cited Melekin after she confronted him inside the store about arresting Gordon. Neighborhoods Organizing for Change posted cell phone video of that confrontation to YouTube.

The group is closely aligned with Hodges, and it sought her help in getting the charges dropped.

"The charges against Wintana and Navelle [sic] are still pending," Executive Director Anthony Newby wrote in an email to Hodges' chief of staff John Stiles five days after the incident. "We've been holding off on messaging related to the mayor but we can't hold the community back indefinitely."

After another email from Newby the following month, Hodges arranged a meeting between the group and City Attorney Susan Segal.

Segal's office dismissed the citations this week. She said Cub Foods agreed with the decision, and that politics played no role.

"I would not allow other elected officials to try to interfere with our prosecution decisions," she said.

Newby is not so sure. He said the citations were unfounded, but he's convinced the public pressure his group exerted was "part of the equation."

"It does open a larger question of: 'what about the people who don't have this degree of infrastructure around them?'" he said. "What happens to those charges?"