When 74-year-old Judith Wahler was leaving a Fourth of July parade in South Hero last summer, a Grand Isle County Sheriff’s Department corporal who was directing traffic ordered her to pull over. She did.
“Stop your car!” the corporal roared as he approached the stopped vehicle. “I’m giving you a lawful order. What part don’t you understand?”
In a tense exchange, he accused the woman behind the wheel of trying to run him over.
“You are out of control,” Wahler said to the uniformed deputy, as she sought her license in a wallet on her lap. “Who are you?”
He was Brandon Allen, the son of Grand Isle Sheriff Ray Allen, and he’d patrolled the roads for years. He ordered Wahler out of her car, castigated her loudly and, grasping her arm, escorted her to the sidewalk. He barked questions but interrupted her answers. He threatened to arrest her for gross negligent operation and accused her of attempted murder, bodycam footage obtained by Seven Days shows.
A few weeks later, Wahler filed a complaint with the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, which trains and certifies law enforcement officers in the state. Christopher Brickell, its executive director, said in an email that he was “prohibited from acknowledging whether or not a complaint was filed” until the agency takes an official action.
Police bodycam footage shows that Brandon Allen had become angry during other traffic stops as well. Another woman he pulled over, for speeding, wound up forcefully cuffed as Allen threatened to arrest her. And six months before that incident, a video of the same uniformed cop arguing with a man went viral on YouTube.
“My immediate reaction was, this guy has no business being in law enforcement.” Dennis Kenney
Seven Days obtained bodycam video of the stops involving the two women and provided both to Dennis Kenney, a professor with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He’s worked for more than 35 years in the law enforcement realm, as a Florida police officer; a director of research and planning in Georgia; director of research for the Police Executive Research Forum; and in academia. He offered a blunt assessment of Allen’s actions.
“He managed to turn what should’ve been minor, fairly innocent interactions into major events,” Kenney said. “My immediate reaction was, this guy has no business being in law enforcement.”
Brandon Allen is no longer with the department. On August 23, he submitted a letter of resignation — two days after the department sent Seven Days bodycam footage of the stop involving Wahler. His brother, Blake Allen, who was a sergeant, also resigned that day.
But the incidents raise questions about the department, which has long been associated with the Allen family. Their South Hero apple orchard, Allenholm Farm, dates back to 1870, and the Allens have run it for seven generations. In 2022, Seven Days‘ Eva Sollberger featured the local institution in a “Stuck in Vermont” video.
Sheriff Ray Allen’s wife, Connie Allen, served in the Grand Isle Sheriff’s Department for 19 years, including nine as sheriff. In 2011, Connie died by suicide, as was widely reported at the time. Weeks later, her husband, then a deputy, was appointed sheriff.
Ray has run the department since then, winning three county elections over the course of 12 years. Blake was hired in 2004, and Brandon in 2012. Brandon left the department in 2020, but returned in 2021. As of October, the department had seven sworn deputies.
Seven Days requested interviews with both the sheriff and Brandon Allen. The sheriff declined, writing, “I will not be interviewed at this time while the complaint is investigated,” an apparent reference to Wahler’s formal grievance. His son never responded to messages left via the sheriff or at several phone numbers, but the department did provide Seven Days with a narrative he wrote about his encounter with Wahler.
Questions about Brandon’s professional conduct first surfaced publicly in January 2024 when bodycam footage of a traffic stop was posted on YouTube. It shows a tense interaction between Grand Isle resident Stephen Bellows and deputies Eric Pockette, Blake Allen and Brandon Allen in November 2023.
In the video, Pockette stops Bellows for an inspection sticker violation, and Blake and Brandon eventually arrive at the scene. Bellows argues with the officers and refuses to answer some of their questions.
At one point, Brandon yells at Bellows to “stop interrupting me and shut your mouth,” pushing him against his car. “You eye me one more time, and we’re going to have problems,” Brandon said. The video has amassed more than 1 million views.
Bellows submitted a complaint to the Grand Isle County Sheriff’s Department. To avoid a conflict of interest, Sheriff Allen asked the Williston Police Department to review the complaint. Its report says the incident “was a lawful traffic stop of reasonable duration and scope.” Still, the video prompted some selectboards on the islands to reconsider their contracts with the sheriff’s department for law enforcement services.
Alburgh Selectboard chair Elliot Knight supported decreasing his town’s funding for the department. “Based on the bodycam footage, this is someone I don’t really trust to run around with a gun and have authority,” Knight said, offering Seven Days his personal opinion of corporal Allen’s conduct.
Ultimately, the Alburgh selectboard decided to continue funding the department — and even approved an increase.
Bellows said the experience was upsetting. “For a while, I didn’t want to leave my house,” he told Seven Days. Bellows paid the ticket he received for having an expired car registration, he said, and reregistered within weeks of the encounter.
Natasha Rainville, an Alburgh resident, had her run-in with corporal Allen six months later, on May 29.
Allen was parked on Route 2 when Rainville sped by in her pickup. He followed Rainville with his lights flashing and siren on. Rainville pulled into a driveway at a house that she later explained belongs to one of her landscaping clients and got out of her truck.
Allen told Rainville that he had pulled her over because she had been driving well over the speed limit. Rainville told him that she was having a bathroom emergency and needed to head into the house.
The corporal agreed to let her go, following closely behind. Their conversation grew tense. She made a gesture with her hand, and, based on the video, it appears that her dangling bracelet made contact with the officer.
“You just whacked my hand!” he exclaimed.
He informed her she was being detained and ordered her back to her truck, then radioed for backup. “You are ridiculous,” she said. “All you Allens are.”
They argued by her truck as Sheriff Allen arrived, and corporal Allen forcibly handcuffed Rainville.
“She’s been out of control from the very beginning,” the younger Allen told his father. “I tried to work with her, and she won’t listen.”
Eventually, Rainville was freed from the cuffs and ticketed for speeding. Brandon Allen lectured her repeatedly that he was letting her off easy, saying he’d “been nothing but cordial.”
“When the police put their hands on you, you do not have the right to fight the police,” he told her. “You’re lucky that I was more restrained than what I could have been because you could have ended up on the ground, Tasered, pepper sprayed, going to jail today.”
Rainville told Seven Days that she was alarmed by the situation and immediately requested bodycam footage. It was delivered to her on CD more than six weeks later, she said. She also appealed the ticket, which was dropped because Brandon Allen didn’t show up to court, she said.
Kenney, the John Jay professor, said the video clearly shows the officer overreacting. “The idea that she was physically resistant was kind of ludicrous,” he said. “It’s not uncommon that someone would be having a bathroom emergency [during a stop].”
Two months later, the sheriff once again arrived as his son was arguing with an individual he had stopped — this time, Wahler.
“She’s had nothing but attitude,” the corporal told his father, pointing to the mostly silent Wahler. “And she wants to make a complaint about me,” he yelled, thumping on his chest.
Corporal Allen went to his vehicle and looked up Wahler’s information. He returned and informed the woman that he was “looking at charging you for attempted murder.”
“I could be tracking you down to arrest you,” he warned.
Allen handed Wahler her driver’s license, and she headed back to her car. As she left, he shouted: “I hope you leave before you are arrested, and shut your mouth.”
“I don’t understand what the threat was that I presented to him. He did everything he could to provoke me.” Judith Wahler
Shaken, Wahler told Seven Days that she drove away and immediately pulled to the side of the road to write down what had happened. She was never arrested. Nor was she even so much as ticketed.
“It was such a terrifying experience for me,” said Wahler, who lives in Burlington. “I don’t understand what the threat was that I presented to him. He did everything he could to provoke me.”
In August, the Grand Isle County Sheriff’s Department sent Seven Days the bodycam footage of the incident, along with Brandon Allen’s written account of what had happened during the traffic stop. Wahler appeared “agitated” and was driving in a “very unsafe manner,” Allen wrote. “I felt that my life was in danger.”
“The female driver did not want to comply with my demands,” he continued, adding that “Wahler was very argumentative during my encounter and did not show any remorse for the way she was operating her vehicle and the danger that she put the public in.”
Doug DiSabito, the Grand Isle County state’s attorney, had not seen the bodycam footage acquired by Seven Days. But he had a sympathetic viewpoint regarding corporal Allen’s resignation. “It’s getting really difficult for law enforcement officers to even do their job,” he told Seven Days.
Advocates for police reform say they are concerned about a lack of accountability for Vermont sheriff’s departments. Sheriffs are elected officials, which means the state legislature has a limited capacity to oversee their work.
Recently, lawmakers considered impeaching Franklin County Sheriff John Grismore, who was a captain in 2022 when he was caught on camera kicking a handcuffed suspect in the groin. Grismore was cited by Vermont State Police for simple assault, but the charge was later dropped by DiSabito, Grand Isle’s top prosecutor, after two trials ended with hung juries.
Grismore, who has been defiant since the video came to light, remains Franklin County’s elected sheriff, though he’s been stripped of his law enforcement certification.
“We’ve seen over the last couple of years just egregious behavior that has gone unpunished,” said Falko Schilling, advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont. “But because of our current structure of oversight, [officers are] able to maintain an incredible amount of power within their communities.”
After seeing the videos, Kenney, the John Jay professor, said he thinks that Brandon Allen should be banned from working in law enforcement ever again.
“I didn’t get the sense that his reaction was simply because of a lack of training,” Kenney said. “It was a kind of overexcited, almost hysterical response to what he imagined to be some sort of challenge.”
Kenney added: “I can only imagine what’s going to happen when he encounters somebody who actually challenges him.”
The Vermont Criminal Justice Council has revoked the credentials of 15 law enforcement officers since June 2013. But records show that Brandon Allen isn’t one of them, meaning he remains certified.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Arresting Moments | A former Grand Isle corporal — and son of the sheriff — berated citizens during traffic stops, videos show”
This article appears in The Reading Issue 2024.
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