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Sam Stecklow
@samstecklow.bsky.social
1.2K followers 560 following 150 posts
journalist & FOIA fellow @invisible.institute
indie local news cheerleader
if you were really smart, you’d know what to do
orlando
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samstecklow.bsky.social
ty jasmine!
October 7, 2025 at 3:32 PM
samstecklow.bsky.social
Register here:
AccessFest25 Registration - Investigative Reporters & Editors
IRE's virtual conference, AccessFest, is October 9-11, 2025. Join us for training and learn how to be a better watchdog journalist!
www.ire.org
October 7, 2025 at 3:30 PM
samstecklow.bsky.social
This story has been cited in a brief today filed on behalf of a coalition of news media organizations — including @invisible.institute, @startribune.com, @mprnews.org, @axios.com, & @propublica.org.

Read the full brief, and selected other filings, here: www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
According to a review by the Invisible Institute, one of the members of the Coalition, “all but three” of the officers that were designated as undercover “had information online linking their given name with being a police officer in Minnesota before the release” of the POST Board data. Sam Stecklow, Undercover Minnesota cops suing oversight board have public LinkedIns, discipline and shootings, Sahan Journal (Sept. 24, 2025), https://sahanjournal.com/news-partners/undercover-minnesota-police-officers-post-board-mppo-lawsuit. In other words, for the more than 200 other “undercover” officers, their employment as a police officer was already public in court records, press releases, news articles social media posts, or even their own LinkedIn profiles. Id. The examples are striking. The POST Board data at issue in this case supposedly identified an “undercover” officer who was involved in a killing while responding to a mental health crisis call in 2019. Id. But that officer’s LinkedIn profile acknowledges that he was a police officer, as do numerous articles detailing the killing. Id. That list also included an “undercover” officer who, according to a state website, is a high-ranking special agent within the Department of Public Safety; an “undercover” officer who signed his name and position to a public letter supporting the nomination of a federal judge; and an “undercover” officer who appears on public webpages as leading training sessions for an undercover drug investigation program. Id. None of this information could possibly be considered “private.” The District Court’s characterization of the data is especially concerning because, as the Invisible Institute’s analysis demonstrates, “undercover” designations may be outdated or unreliable. The MGDPA includes no definition or requirements for what qualifies as an “undercover assignment” for the purposes of Minn. Stat. § 13.43, subd. 5. There is also no oversight of decisions to designate officers as “undercover,” in terms of time, scope of the work, or third-party review of that designation. Once the “undercover” designation does attach, all data regarding the officer that would otherwise be public under Minn. Stat. § 13.43, subds. 2 and 3, becomes private data. Agencies, therefore, could misuse the designation to hide bad actors from public scrutiny or to prevent outside oversight of a police department. For example, nothing in the MGDPA prevents an agency from assigning an entire police department as “undercover.” The District Court’s decision, therefore, sweeps far too broad in the data it purportedly protects.
September 25, 2025 at 10:33 PM
samstecklow.bsky.social
The lawsuit threatens public access to data on all officers in Minnesota — not just undercover — as well as potentially makes more disciplinary records at the state level secret.

The data was sought for Invisible Institute's National Police Index to provide access to data on "wandering cops."
Minnesota police group fights release of undercover officers’ names
The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association is suing the Minnesota POST forreleasing the names of undercover police officers to media outlets, but many have already been publiclyidentified.
sahanjournal.com
September 24, 2025 at 7:05 PM