Three Anoka, Minnesota police officers stood in a Domino’s Pizza parking lot at 1:17 a.m. on February 19, 2025, wrapping up a post-training briefing when one of them looked up and saw something that didn’t belong in the sky.
What followed was a 90-minute observation of a multicolored, sphere-shaped object hovering near the western horizon — an object that appeared to move dozens of miles in seconds, descend like a falling leaf, and drift toward a nuclear power plant. One officer recorded it on his iPhone through a pair of binoculars. The report eventually made its way from a UAP nonprofit to the FBI. And in 2025, the documents were declassified and released by the National Archives and Records Administration.
This is one of the more well-documented UAP sightings to emerge from the federal government’s ongoing disclosure push — and the witnesses aren’t anonymous civilians. They’re law enforcement.
What the Officers Saw
The sighting began when one officer spotted an object on the horizon and alerted his colleagues. According to the declassified FBI complaint form, the object displayed what the report describes as unusual, rapidly changing “tie-dye” multicolor lighting, inconsistent with any known aircraft light pattern. The witnesses described it as roughly the size of a school bus and estimated it was approximately 50 miles away, hovering at an altitude of somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 feet.
The object’s movements were what made it genuinely hard to explain. Witnesses said it moved in three separate bursts toward the Monticello Nuclear Power Generating Plant, northwest of the Minneapolis metro. At points, it appeared to travel 30 to 40 miles in a matter of seconds. One description compared its movement to a stone skipping across the surface of a pond. At other moments, it descended slowly, “like a leaf floating on a breeze.” The contrast between those two behaviors — sudden acceleration and gentle descent — is exactly the kind of inconsistency that makes UAP accounts difficult to dismiss as simple misidentification.
One officer traveled toward the object, driving in its direction and arriving in Elk River before determining it was still too far to the west. The others remained at the parking lot, continuing to observe. The cold eventually pushed them to leave, but not before capturing video through binoculars. In the witness statement, the reporting officer noted that weather conditions made it impractical to deploy other magnified optics or night vision equipment that night, but that they intended to be better prepared for future sightings.
That last line is telling. The officer closed his statement with the observation that similar objects had been seen in the area before, and that he could “only assume we will have another opportunity to monitor these objects again.”
The Federal Paper Trail
The case didn’t stay local. At least one of the officers reported the sighting to Americans for Safe Aerospace, or ASA, a nonprofit organization founded by former military pilot Ryan Graves that receives, evaluates, and documents UAP reports. ASA conducted an interview with the reporting officer and forwarded that interview, along with its assessment, to the FBI.
The FBI then received the case through its Cincinnati field office. Three documents related to the Anoka sighting are now part of the National Archives’ Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection, a federal archive established under the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act to preserve and release government records tied to UAP sightings and investigations. The records include witness accounts, FBI review documents, and references to the video evidence captured that night. The case was eventually closed without further investigative action, though the records remain publicly available.
Graves, the ASA founder, said publicly that his team found the report credible. He emphasized that police officers represent a different class of witness than the general public — trained observers whose accounts carry weight precisely because they are accustomed to reporting accurately under pressure. “We don’t take a position that these are therefore aliens or something else,” Graves said, framing ASA’s role as one of documentation and safety advocacy rather than extraterrestrial speculation.
Prior Sightings in the Area
The February 19 incident was not the first time something unexplained was reported in and around Anoka. The declassified records reference an additional sighting two days earlier, on February 17, 2025, when the same reporting officer said he observed a similar object around 11:30 p.m. while on routine patrol. He watched it for approximately ten minutes before moving on, choosing not to discuss it with colleagues until they all witnessed something together two nights later.
The officer also mentioned a separate incident in September 2022, when an unidentified flying object was reported hovering near the Anoka Ice Arena before disappearing.
And Minnesota has a longer UAP history than many people realize. In 1979, Marshall County Deputy Val Johnson encountered a blinding light on State Highway 220. His squad car came away with unexplained damage, Johnson suffered flash burns to his eyes, and the vehicle’s dashboard clock had stopped. That case remains one of the more unusual law enforcement UAP encounters on record in the United States.
The declassified documents also include a separate report from the Twin Cities area around the same period: a sighting in St. Paul where a witness described a diamond-shaped object that appeared to bounce erratically across the sky before disappearing.
What Skeptics Say
The FBI’s own documents raise the possibility that what the Anoka officers observed was a drone. It’s a reasonable first explanation. Consumer and commercial drones can carry multicolored LED arrays, and some are capable of hovering silently at a distance. The estimated range of 50 miles would, however, put the object well beyond the operational limits of any commercial drone. The apparent rapid movement — 30 to 40 miles in seconds — is also difficult to account for with current drone technology.
Atmospheric phenomena and unusual light refraction can also cause distant light sources to appear to move and shift color in unexpected ways, particularly on cold, clear nights. Weather balloons, military aircraft operating at altitude, and even bright celestial objects have been misidentified as UAPs in the past.
The 2024 report from the congressional office created to investigate UAP found no confirmed evidence that the U.S. government has ever verified a sighting of alien technology. That context is worth keeping in mind as more declassified files continue to surface.
Why This One Stands Out
Most UAP reports come from individuals with no formal training in aerial observation and no institutional accountability. This case involves sworn law enforcement personnel conducting an official debrief, one of whom had already observed a similar object on a prior patrol shift and chose to document it through proper channels. The report was then evaluated by a nonprofit with military aviation expertise before reaching the FBI.
That chain — witness to ASA to FBI to National Archives — represents a level of institutional handling that most sightings never receive. Whether it points to something genuinely unexplained or simply reflects the government’s new commitment to transparency around aerial phenomena, the Anoka case is now part of the official federal record.
And somewhere in Minnesota, at least one police officer says he’s ready the next time it appears.
Have you seen something unexplained in Minnesota or anywhere else? Send your report to Reports@ParaRational.com.
