When a 31-year-old man answered a knock at the door of a St. Paul apartment with a drawn gun last January, he came face-to-face with St. Paul police officers.

Asad Mohamud Ibrahim said that when he saw the four officers, who were responding to a noise complaint, he quickly dropped the gun. Ibrahim, a Texas resident who has a permit to carry in that state, was arrested without incident.

All sides agreed in a Ramsey County courtroom on Wednesday that what happened early on a January morning might have ended in death. But representatives of the police union said they disagree with felony charges against Ibrahim being dropped.

The Ramsey County attorney’s office initially charged Ibrahim with two felonies and later added a gross misdemeanor charge. Ibrahim’s attorney said a compromise was reached and Ibrahim pleaded guilty to recklessly handling a dangerous weapon, a gross misdemeanor.

“The resolution to this case is unacceptable,” said Paul Kuntz, St. Paul Police Federation president. “The Ramsey County attorney’s office deviated from its own policy, resulting in a flawed and troubling resolution.”

Later Wednesday, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi offered an organized response — flanked by four county commissioners, three St. Paul City Council members and the chair of the Minnesota House of Representatives’ public safety committee.

Calling the union’s statements “unfair and untrue,” Choi said, “I’m pursuing justice. … If that means that I have to do what (police) want me to do every time, that’s not right. My role is to be independent … to enforce the rights of the public.”

It’s not illegal to come to your door with a permitted gun. It’s definitely illegal to willfully point it at officers.

But Choi argued that his prosecutors couldn’t prove that.

OFFICER SAYS HE FEARED DEATH

During Ibrahim’s sentencing, officer Dillon Marquis said the county attorney’s office asked him whether he agreed with the plea deal and he told them he did not “in any way.”

Marquis said he’s faced other violent incidents since he became an officer in 2015, but that was the “first night that I felt that I was going to die.”

The officer said he felt the plea deal is “politically motivated” and not in the best interest of justice.

Ramsey County District Judge Sophia Vuelo later said in court that it doesn’t have to do with political motivations, but she acknowledged Marquis might feel that way given “the climate we live in.”

DIFFICULT CASE TO PROVE

At his news conference, Choi acknowledged that officers were in a dangerous situation and “exhibited great restraint,” but added that when it came to whether a gun was willfully pointed at officers, “What was articulated by the police in the reports was not entirely corroborated and supported by what was depicted (in the body camera video).”

Choi stressed that he did not doubt how officers felt — but that the video evidence would make it difficult to prove. And he added that, “In less than one second, as soon as (Ibrahim) realizes that it’s the police knocking at the door,” Ibrahim complies with them.

“I want to just call out kind of what that all means, ” Choi added. “That somehow we are going to be safer as a community by us ignoring our ethical standards and pursuing a case that we know that we cannot prove. … To ignore the fact that this person, if we were to do that, would have consequences that are completely unfair, not similar to anybody else in this particular situation.”

Elaborating on the later part, Choi said his prosecutor considered the possibility of immigration deportation for Ibrahim, a man with no criminal record who has been in the country for 27 years.

A NEW POLICY

In a January memo to staff, Choi wrote about considering “collateral consequences” in plea negotiations and sentencings.

Choi wrote: “Whenever possible, without adversely impacting public safety, your goal should be to reach dispositions that don’t lead to deportation or other disproportionate consequences.”

Choi said Ibrahim was a legal resident who grew up in Texas since the age of 7, but not a citizen.

Ibrahim was originally charged with felony assault, which was dismissed. Andrew Tyler, Ibrahim’s attorney, said it would be “incredibly likely” that a non-citizen convicted of second-degree assault would be the subject of removal proceedings by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

When asked if Choi’s office had to isolate the charges in Ibrahim’s case simply on whether it was provable, regardless of any “collateral consequences,” Choi said they would have come to the same conclusion.

“That was all the facts would support,” Choi said.

At the news conference, Ramsey County Board of Commissioners Chairman Jim McDonough said there is “a long history in our community of overreacting and putting people deeper into our system than what was warranted. And this is a part of the values of our County Board, is to ensure we’re being appropriate.”

POLICE UNION CRITICISM

In the courtroom on Wednesday, Marquis was joined by other officers.

Kuntz, the union president, said decisions like the ones in this case ignore “the realities of violent crime committed with a gun.”

“When the Number 1 stated goal of the St. Paul Police Department is a reduction of gun violence, … when law enforcement faces more and more scrutiny and ever increasing dangers, to have the county attorney utilize a policy that takes into account ‘collateral consequences’ … is unconscionable, yet that is exactly what happened today,” Kuntz said.

Choi pointed out in his news conference that at no point in the two body camera videos did officers announce who they were before Ibrahim opened the door.

Ibrahim makes the same point in the video.

“How do you identify yourself, officers?” Ibrahim asks as he is being handcuffed, after complying with multiple officer commands.

Choi also said prosecutors would have a difficult time proving Ibrahim pointed the gun at officers; the angle of the video makes it difficult to determine. Choi said it’s possible Ibrahim was pointing the gun upward and then lowering it.

“I think a jury could easily come to the conclusion that what’s happening here is he’s realizing that these are police officers and he needs to get the gun down, comply,” Choi said.

MAN APOLOGIZES TO POLICE

As agreed to in the plea deal, Judge Vuelo sentenced Ibrahim on Wednesday to 364 days in the Ramsey County workhouse, with most of the sentence hanging over his head if he doesn’t comply with conditions of his two-year probation.

Ibrahim will be serving a 60-day sentence on electronic home monitoring. He also was fined $3,000.

On Jan. 25 at 2:50 a.m., St. Paul officers responded to a noise complaint at an apartment on Supornick Lane, which is near Hazelwood Street and Maryland Avenue. A 911 caller reported loud music coming from the apartment.

Officer Marquis knocked on the door and a man, later identified as Ibrahim, “opened the door with a black handgun that held an extended magazine pointed straight out at the same height as his head as if he were going to shoot whomever had knocked on the door,” according to the criminal complaint filed by the Ramsey County attorney’s office. “Officer Marquis, fearing for his life, immediately walked backward away from the residence.”

Ibrahim, a truck driver, was in town from Arlington, Texas. He wrote in an apology letter to the officers that he “was scared it was robbers on the other side of the door.”

Ibrahim told an investigator he didn’t have his finger on the trigger and didn’t know the gun was stolen, the complaint said.

In Ibrahim’s letter to the officers, he wrote: “I did not want to scare you, I did not want to harm you. After looking at the videos of the event, reading the police reports, I understand how close things came to a disaster. People could have been hurt. Innocent people could have been hurt.”

An assistant county attorney handed Ibrahim’s apology letter to Marquis in court, but he said he did not want it.

Vuelo said whenever an officer puts on his uniform, “they wonder, ‘Am I coming back home that day?'” Ibrahim’s actions made that question real for the officer, Vuelo added.

“But for a second of different circumstances,” Ibrahim or the officer might not be here, Vuelo said. “I hope Mr. Ibrahim has learned his lesson.”