A former Minnesota state trooper has pleaded guilty after being charged for taking the phone of a woman during a traffic stop, opening it, and texting nude photos of her to his phone.
After detaining the woman, Minnesota State Trooper Albert Kuehne sat in his cruiser in March 2020 and scrolled through a phone belonging to a 25-year-old woman he’d just detained on suspicion of drunken driving. As paramedics evaluated the woman, who had crashed her car, he clicked through her photos.
Hours later, the woman’s boyfriend noticed something alarming on her MacBook, which was synced to her phone: Outgoing texts messages to an unknown phone number with nude and partly clothed pictures of the woman attached.
As reported by The Star Tribune, Kuehne, 37, of Dayton, Minn., admitted Tuesday in Hennepin County District Court to nonconsensual dissemination of private sexual images, a gross misdemeanor, while a felony count of harassment is being dismissed. Sentencing is scheduled for Monday.
The State Patrol fired Kuehne on Oct. 2. Also, he is no longer licensed to serve in law enforcement, according to the report.