St. Cloud Police Officer Named 2021 Officer of the Year

(KNSI) – St. Cloud Police Officer Ryan Priebe has been named the 2021 Minnesota Peace and Police Officer’s Association’s Officer of the Year.

Priebe was nominated by his fellow officers and recognized, in part, due to his actions the night of June 14th, 2020.

Priebe says he was working 5:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. that day, and as part of his work with the Community OutPost, or COP House, he was monitoring social media when he came across a Facebook live video of a man at a gas station nearby. He said it appeared in the video that the man had a handgun in his pocket. He says he worked with two other officers to formulate a plan for approaching him and investigating the gun complaint.

Priebe says he got out of his car and announced who he was, and said the man took off running. A foot chase ensued, and Priebe said he ran past a gun on the ground during the pursuit and assumed it was the gun he had seen in the video. Priebe was able to get a hold of the suspect in a backyard near 9th and 10th avenues. He said the man continued to resist arrest, so he discharged his Taser once. Priebe said that had little effect on the suspect, so deployed another Taser cartridge, which caused the man to go down on his back. Priebe said he was trying to roll the suspect onto his stomach when he said the man turned back toward Priebe with a gun in his hand and swung it toward him like he was going to point it at him. Priebe said he dropped his Taser and flashlight, grabbed the gun in the suspect’s hand with his left hand, and drew his service weapon with his right hand.

He says the two struggled for about 30 seconds, just trying to keep the gun pointed away from him and trying to gain control of it. He says the gun was pulled underneath the suspect, and he was on top of him in a bear hug. At some point during the struggle, the trigger on that gun was pulled. He says a bullet entered his right hand through the front of his wrist and out through the top of the back of his right hand.

Eventually, Priebe got the gun away from the suspect and threw it, and with a bullet hole in his hand, held the man there long enough for his partners to arrive and get him into custody. By then, the damage was already done.

Priebe had surgery on June 15th, 2020 to remove bone fragments and 13 bullet fragments from his hand. A week later, he underwent another surgery to reconstruct his hand. That included bone fusions and a plate on top of his hand where the bone for the middle finger would be, followed by seven months of physical therapy so he could relearn how to use his right hand.

He was able to go back to full duty out on the road this January but suffered a setback after a bone fracture, which was unable to be seen on X-rays and broke the plate in his hand. That required a third surgery in March to do a bone graft and remove the broken plate to replace it with one that is smaller and stronger.

Priebe is on light duty for now and is waiting for that bone to regrow and strengthen. He says the healing has not been without struggles, but even after all of that, he is motivated to return to duty, saying, “This job is something that I love to do, so it has been easy to keep pushing forward and trying to get back.”

Priebe was also recognized for his ongoing efforts to provide community safety, particularly in St. Cloud’s South Side neighborhood and his work with the COP House. He said he was assigned to the COP House when it first opened, which allowed the team to set the tone for what it was going to be.

Working nights, he said, they were primarily trying to clean up the crime and make it a neighborhood where people could be comfortable living their lives and walking around. He says some of the work was targeted enforcement, but the team has also been known to play basketball with the kids and start hockey, soccer, and fishing programs.

Their goal, he says, is to “make the community safe so that they can feel like they can go out and play without thinking about anything other than enjoying the game and having fun. It’s a blast to get out there and play with the kids and my kids like to show up to some of these, and that allows the community to see, you know that at home, we’re just fathers and mothers and just a regular family, kids and people just like they are.”

When Priebe learned he was named the MPPOA Officer of the Year, he said he was “speechless. It was very humbling. It’s a huge honor and I didn’t even know what to say. Just being nominated is a huge honor but to be named the winner was amazing and it was, you know, it’s not just me. There were six other guys there with me that night and had they been not not been there or not been responding that night I don’t know how it would have ended but knowing that they were coming and who was coming, kept me fighting that night and kept me alive.”

Priebe also praised the entire St. Cloud Police Department, saying their support has been “fantastic. They stood side by side with me and my family supporting us. The city, the mayor, they’ve all supported us through this entire thing so the support that we’ve gotten from my partners, the administration here, the chief, the city in general has just truly been amazing, which is what you know drives me to come back and and serve them and do what we do.”

He also thanked the community for their outpouring of support. Not only the outpouring of support for his family but the police department, too.

He said, “unfortunately took an incident like this where one of us was injured pretty seriously for the community to show support. [That] was huge for our department. It shows that everyone cares about us and and respects the job that we do, and that even in the current climate, our department stands out, and is respected by the community and they stand up for us when we needed it.”

Priebe is a 14-year veteran of the St. Cloud Police Department with specialized training as an instructor in the use of force, defensive tactics, and firearms.

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