Police Report: Reps. Engen, Hudson Had Booze Bottle in Baby Seat, Gun Inside Car

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

Police Report: Rep. Hudson Was Riding Drunk With Rep. Engen—and a Pistol!

Last Friday we reported on Rep. Elliott Engen (R-White Bear Lake), the legislature’s hair-gelled Charlie Kirk acolyte, getting arrested in White Bear Township on suspicion of DUI. A photo had emerged of Engen, 27, skipping work to pound afternoon brewdawgs with Rep. Walter Hudson (R-Albertville) at Burger Moe’s in St. Paul, prompting many to wonder: Where was Hudson at 2 a.m., when Engen blew .13 after being pulled over for speeding with expired tabs and a busted headlight? 

Well, per a police report obtained by the Minnesota Reformer, Hudson was in the car with Engen, also drunk, and in possession of a 9 mm handgun. Great work guys. Just awesome stuff. The kicker, which the Reformer included far too low in the mix considering how embarrassing it is? Cops discovered a bottle of booze resting in a kid’s car seat. At first, Engen told the arresting officer he hadn’t been drinking, but later yielded that he’d had two beers. An unidentified second passenger was inside the party car.

“As soon as I got to the vehicle, I could smell the odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from inside. Engen’s eyes were watery, glassy, and bloodshot. Without being asked, Engen stated, ‘I’m sober cabbing them,’ referring to the two passengers in the vehicle," the police report reads, noting that Engen appeared "disheveled."

It’s unclear how this—again, profoundly embarrassing—ordeal will impact Engen’s bid to be Minnesota’s next state auditor. Then again, the current auditor, DFLer Julie Blaha, was involved in her own eyebrow-raising vehicular mishap in 2022, and Engen’s Democratic challenger, Dan Wolgamott (DFL-St. Cloud), was busted for DUI in 2023. Perhaps these people should audit their relationship with alcohol!

“I’m owning it. I screwed up, and I’m willing to take the blame and have this make me better in the long run because of it,” Engen tells the Reformer. “I don’t drink often. I don’t keep it in the house. But when I do it doesn’t mix well with me.”

Hudson should win a passive voice medal for his statement to the Reformer: "I'm grateful that no harm was done to ourselves and others."

Maybe They Call it "Funeral Bread" Because it Kills You

Are you familiar with funeral bread? We weren't until today, when its unholy trinity—cinnamon bread, Cheez Whiz, olives—was the subject of the Star Tribune's latest Curious Minnesota podcast. The potluck offering is apparently popular in some parts of Minnesota and North Dakota, especially Roseau, Minnesota.

"When you go to our local grocer—we only have one in town—on the Super One display is fresh baked, in-house cinnamon swirl bread with a pyramid of Cheez Whiz displayed next to it,” Sinnamon Krings, Roseau's promotions director, tells the Strib's Erica Pearson. “To someone not from here you might wonder why but to a local it’s as common as peanut butter and jelly.”

Hm, OK! Honl’s Bakery, which closed in the 1980s, gets some credit for popularizing the, uh, "treat," but as for the origins of this specific combo? Well... would you take credit for it?

More on the Horrors of Whipple Detention

On the witness stand earlier this month, Tauria Rich, acting field office director for ICE's office in St. Paul, said that detainees at the Whipple Federal Building are always able to make calls. But then, why, for a 25-day stretch in January, do records show that detainees placed exactly zero calls?

Sure seems like another classic tall tale from the federal agency that brought you "that guy rammed his own head into the wall," don't it? And that's just a part of the new evidence being presented to Minnesota judges this month, as MinnPost's Cleo Krejci reports. Brave detainees like J.J.B., a 20-year-old refugee from Venezuela, have recounted being treated "like animals" inside the Whipple Building; he was "held in a cell that lacked blankets, beds, garbage cans or toilet paper, he said, and was so cramped that people were forced to sleep standing up," Krejci writes.

Never Forget What They Took From You

Now, more than ever, Minnesotans deserve an "Abolish ICE" snowplow, and if MnDOT's annual Name-a-Snowplow competition actually went by a democratic process, we'd have one. As Racket reported last month, proposed plow names with anti-ICE sentiments blanketed this year's competition like so much snow, but were buried in a blizzard of bureaucratic meddling.

So we'll just have to settle for admiring Chicago's newly minted "Abolish ICE" plow from afar...

A thing of beauty. Never have I felt more like the small and grumpy child in this old meme.