Police Surveillance Leads to Meth Bust at Minnesota Gas Station

Rochester, MN (KROC-AM News)- A Rochester man is facing felony drug charges that stem from a run-in with police last year. 

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It happened in June of 2023. The Olmsted County Attorney’s Office filed the charges on Wednesday. 

The criminal complaint says Rochester Police were conducting surveillance at a gas station in northwest Rochester when they spotted a man sitting in a parked vehicle who was not getting gas or going inside of the store. 

A second vehicle then pulled up next to the first one and the man in the first vehicle got into the second vehicle. Police suspected the behavior was indicative of drug sale activity and approached the two vehicles, the complaint says.

The two men in the second vehicle are named in the complaint but have not yet been charged in the case. Officers then spoke with a third person who was sitting in the driver’s seat of the first vehicle, identified as 57-year-old Martin Dale Empson.

Still suspecting a drug transaction, officers searched the first vehicle and found a backpack that Empson initially claimed belonged to him. Police found three baggies containing suspected methamphetamine that measured out to a combined weight of 23.8 grams including packaging, the charges state. 

There was also a digital scale in the backpack. Empson told officers the backpack was not his as they opened it for a search. He also denied the suspected meth found inside of the backpack belonged to him, the court document says. 

Empson is charged with felony first-degree sales and felony third-degree drug possession. He’s due to make his first court appearance in April.

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