Sheriff uses "undercover" liberally

Good morning, Reformers. 

We’re raising money this week and next and about halfway to our goal. Give if you can, to support investigations like the one below: 

News this morning from our colleagues in D.C.: Justice Samuel Alito ignores voluminous record, says Trump’s decision on temporary protected status for Haitians is not racially motivated and allows deportations to commence; Supreme Court hands win to Monsanto on Roundup-cancer link in state courts; a federal judge blocked major portions of Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail.

Moving on: The emergence of police body-worn cameras has been an important transparency tool, adopted by most big law enforcement agencies across the country. 

But the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office has found a convenient workaround when it comes to disclosing the video: If an officer is “undercover,” then judges have deferred to the sheriff’s request that the video not be disseminated, even in open court, let alone to the public. 

Max Nesterak tells the story of Allanzo Johnson, who was pulled over in north Minneapolis by an unmarked pickup and — my words here — harassed by a couple of “undercover” sheriff’s deputies. They punched him and tased him. An officer’s name was on the charging document. Not the best op-sec.

Hennepin County public defenders Amanda Brodhag and Raissa Carpenter, who represented Johnson after he was charged with misdemeanors, which were eventually dropped, have tallied 66 cases since April 2025 in which the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office has used protections for undercover officers to restrict body camera footage from being shared with the public. There are likely even more cases that haven’t crossed their desks.

“I don’t buy that they’re undercover,” Brodhag told Max. “The majority of these cases involve people being pulled over for very minor traffic violations.”

There’s another interesting wrinkle here: The Johnson stop has all the markings of what’s known as a pretextual stop, which is when police use a minor equipment violation to stop a car in pursuit of their real goal: A search that can yield contraband.

The Minneapolis Police Department, as part of a consent decree with the state Department of Human Rights, is forbidden from using pretextual stops, but that doesn’t apply to the sheriff. 

Read Max’s blockbuster. 

Also in the Reformer: 

New Yorker writer Mark Singer died, which had me return to this profile he wrote of Donald Trump in 1997, during Trump’s “comeback” after his financial crisis. It stacks up among the great magazine profiles. 

“If the gossips hinted that he’d been cuckolded, they had it all wrong; untying the marital knot was based upon straightforward economics. He had a prenuptial agreement, because ‘if you’re a person of wealth you have to have one.’ … It would reportedly pay Marla a million dollars, plus some form of child support and alimony, and the time to do a deal was sooner rather than later. A year from now, she would become entitled to a percentage of his net worth. And, as a source very close to Trump made plain, ‘If it goes from a fixed amount to what could be a very enormous amount — even a small percentage of two and a half billion dollars or whatever is a lot of money — we’re talking about very huge things. The numbers are much bigger than people understand.’ 

The long-term matrimonial odds had never been terrifically auspicious.”

The use of italics there with a source very close to Trump is genius. 

From the Singer obituary: 

“Mr. Singer sent a mock thank you to Mr. Trump for the publicity, which apparently bumped his book higher on the Amazon book charts. He also enclosed a check for $37.82, ‘a small token of my enormous gratitude,’ he wrote. Mr. Trump returned the letter with an all-caps note at the bottom, reading, in part, ‘MARK — YOU ARE A TOTAL LOSER.’

Mr. Trump also cashed the $37.82 check, Mr. Singer later said. Mr. Singer framed a photocopy of it for his apartment.”

Three minute dance break: “Rafters” by Antony Szmierek. 

Have a great day all! JPC