The history of law enforcement in the Twin Cities, as in the rest of the United States, has been deeply influenced by race. Since the early twentieth century, many Minnesotans of color have responded to racial targeting and police brutality by forming community organizations and citizen patrols; others have served as officers themselves and grappled with racial inequality inside the police force.

In early 1953 Minnesota’s new US Attorney, George MacKinnon, began an attack on organized interstate prostitution in the Upper Midwest, centered in Minnesota on John’s Bar and Funhouse in Northeast Minneapolis. When the campaign ended in mid-1956, John’s Bar had lost its license, and 110 men and women had been convicted of violating the Mann Act.

In 1952 Russell Heim (1886–1960) was a practicing physician and, after 1942, Hennepin County’s elected coroner. The Minneapolis Star called his narcotics prosecution “one of the most sensational trials of a public official…in the history of Minnesota federal courts.”

On Saturday, November 12, 1955, Kenneth E. Lindberg, cashier of the Northern State Bank of Thief River Falls, met in the bank with a man who had identified himself as Herbert Johnson of the Johnson Wax Company. Lindberg was never seen alive again in Thief River Falls again.