Detective Martin Dougherty was given a potentially explosive assignment on September 20, 1922.
Minneapolis Police Officers had made several arrests for attempted safe burglaries over a period of months.
Nitroglycerin and stick dynamite had been confiscated as evidence in these attempted burglaries and was accumulating at the Courthouse.
In the 1920s, the Minneapolis Police Department had no Bomb Squad and no robust protocols for managing explosives.
Accordingly, Captain of Detectives Frank Brunskill – who was getting worried about the safety risks of storing these explosives at the Courthouse – assigned Detective Martin Dougherty the job of transporting the explosives down to the Mississippi River for disposal.
Detective Dougherty took the explosives carefully in hand and walked from the Courthouse to the Third Avenue Bridge. When he reached the west end of the bridge, he walked down to the river bank, stopped under the first arch of the bridge, donned hip-boots, and with a small spade dug a hole underneath the water and buried the explosives.
We can only imagine that Detective Dougherty felt more relaxed as he walked back to the Courthouse than he had earlier as he made his way to the river.
Photograph courtesy of Hennepin County Library
Story from Minneapolis StarTribune of September 21, 1922