On 21 July 2023, Water Protector and veteran of both the U.S. Marine Corps and Army National Guard, Nicholas Engel (aka Bernie Santa), was found guilty of fleeing law enforcement in a motor vehicle in Pennington County, Minnesota. Santa’s case was the first felony case of the #StopLine3 Movement to proceed to trial, although hundreds were criminally charged for protesting construction of the Line 3 pipeline due to human rights and environmental concerns.

In their defense, Santa testified about the reasons they were afraid to stop on a deserted rural highway in the middle of the night, including not only fear of law enforcement generally, but of the police violence during Line 3 construction, as well as their own prior experiences as a police academy graduate and later the victim of police violence.