A UFO sighting in Anoka, Minnesota, by at least three police department employees, including one police officer, led to an investigation by the FBI.
On February 19, 2025, at approximately 1:17 a.m., during a post-training debriefing in a parking lot, several Anoka Police Department employees observed a colorful UFO in the sky, according to a newly released FBI file.
Witness accounts claim that the object exhibited abnormal movements and rapidly changing colors. One police officer recorded a video of the UFO with his iPhone and binoculars.
“It was too cold out for us to utilize some of our other magnified optics and night vision however in the future we will work on capturing better quality images and videos with some technology we have available to us,” a witness explained. “I can only assume we will have another opportunity to monitor these objects again as they have been seen in the area in the past.”
After moving to the nearby Anoka Municipal Ramp for a better perspective, the group watched it for almost ninety minutes. Anoka Police Chief Andy Youngquist confirmed to Fox 9 News that at least one of the witnesses was a police officer.
Anoka Police Department employees described the UFO
One police department employee estimated that the UFO was as large as an SUV or a school bus, while another described it as looking like six “hula-hoops with lights around each loop,” similar to an orbital diagram of an atom, Fox 9 News reports.
“The object was a sphere shape. We saw red, blue, green, and white light emitting from the object,” one witness said. “Best I can describe is a ‘tie dye’ shirt in motion. We speculated that it was possibly attempting to emulate typical aviation navigation lights however the object did not appear to be conventional aircraft.”
According to the FBI documents, the UFO seemed to move several times during the sighting. A witness said that the object moved in “three separate bursts” toward the Monticello Nuclear Power Generation Plant.
“The object hovered and then descended like a leaf floating on a breeze,” the witness explained.
Other descriptions claimed the UFO moved like it “skipped across the sky like a stone on a pond” and seemed to travel “30–40 miles in a few seconds.”
Another witness reportedly captured a “second video (daytime)” of the UFO about five miles away from the original sighting.
Through Americans for Safe Aerospace, a nonprofit that assesses complaints of unexplained aerial phenomena, or UAPs, the UFO sighting eventually reached the FBI. Despite the thorough reports, investigators found no conclusive explanation, and they closed the matter.