A police officer (Trenton Garner) in (Cedartown) Georgia shot and killed HeeHaw, the one-year-old mini donkey, who lived at a children’s petting zoo in Cedartown, Georgia. A federal civil rights lawsuit has already been filed. These are HeeHaw’s lawyers, Solomon Radner and Chris McCormick.
The Gofundme is here.
The lawsuit:
Cops respond to a silent alarm coming from within their own county courthouse, where they find intruders locked inside the dark, closed building. After taking them into custody, the ‘burglars’ tell the cops they are actually professional hackers, hired by the State Judicial Branch to test the courthouse’s security measures.
Then the local sheriff arrives, apparently embarrassed by the fact that the hired hackers were able to just walk right in an unlocked door in the middle of the night, and angry that he wasn’t informed of the security testing ordered by the state. So instead of releasing them, he orders handcuffs put on them and has them taken to the county jail and charged with burglary.
Then it gets even worse. The bureaucrats at the state judicial branch then get worried about their own jobs, and they attempt to throw the hackers they hired under the bus, initially claiming they did not authorize the “burglary,” even though they did. Eventually the State Supreme Court admits they hired the hackers and apologized for the confusion.
But the county still wanted to prosecute the two innocent hackers, who were caught in the middle of this government power struggle. Even up through the day before trial, the county prosecutor was refusing to drop the charges. He finally had to though, because they were innocent. So then the two hackers filed a civil lawsuit, which took years to litigate. Now, that just settled, with the two hackers receiving $600,000 from the county for their false arrest and malicious prosecution.
This is an absolutely insane story out of Iowa.
The official statement of facts from Justin and Gary’s lawsuit that was presented to the Court, much of which is quoted in the video:
Statement by Justin and Gary’s attorney, Martin Diaz, on the settlement:
The statement issued by Gary and Justin after the settlement:
Imagine that a law abiding, completely innocent, Texas oilfield worker is just driving to a worksite and back one day as a part of his job, and his government, who is spying on him from some secret base somewhere, where a spy named Kiki is wondering why he was making the trip in one day, as opposed to two… And so he directs a secretive unit of Texas deputies, who were trained by the highly respected legal scholar, “Dennis,” a former cop who runs Street Cop Training – since banned from training police in his home state of New Jersey – to pull over the innocent oilfield worker, and using the Jedi-mind tricks they learned from Dennis, along with an alert from a drug dog who has never NOT alerted for them, reveal the truth that the innocent oilfield worker is actually a mastermind cartel smuggling kingpin… Except that he isn’t.
After detaining him for an hour and searching every inch of his truck, the deputies let the guy go. But the guy is pissed, and he complains. Internal Affairs said they did nothing wrong. So he calls the Institute for Justice. They investigate and file a lawsuit. They also tell this West Virginia lawyer with a YouTube channel, who is sort of just starting out, about the case, and he does a video on it that goes viral… Which in turn causes Internal Affairs to reopen the case and fire the deputy. And at his termination hearing, the deputy complains that the YouTube video left a lot of stuff out of the video – and that it’s just not fair… That would be crazy, wouldn’t it? Well it all happened, just like that. And more….
My original video:
Raw footage and documents coming soon…
Alek Schott’s Raw Dash Cam:
Deputy Joel Babb’s Raw Bodycam – Part A:
Deputy Babb’s Bodycam Part B:
Deputy Martin Molina’s Raw Bodycam:
Deputy Joe Gereb’s Raw Bodycam:
The Complaint (which has links in a footnote to the raw bodycam and dash cam):
Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment:
Deputy Joel Babb’s Deposition Transcript:
Sheriff Salazar’s Deposition Transcript:
First Internal Affairs Report:
2nd Internal Affairs Report:
Deputy Babb’s Termination Documents:
Screenshots from the termination documents used in my video, showing the significance of Street Cop Training on what Deputy Babb ended up doing to Alek Schott, and others:
My 2024 Video on Street Cop Training and Dennis Benigno:
Exhibit Showing Deputy Babb’s Vehicle Positioning:
Exhibit Showing Deputy Gereb’s Vehicle Positioning:
Exhibit Showing Chat of the Interdiction Officers’ What’s App Group:
The warning citation issued by Deputy Babb to Alek Schott:
Redacted (due to a protective order I believe) Exhibit Showing Facebook Chat Between Deputy Babb and Dennis Benigno of Street Cop Training:
Initial Complaint Emails Involving Alek Schott:
Exhibit Showing Texts With Deputy Molina (K9 handler):
Exhibit Showing Personal Texts of Deputy Gereb:
Remember the video from about 8 months ago where the cop in Frankfort, Kentucky, barged into a woman’s home without a warrant and illegally arrested her while she was wearing only a towel? She correctly tells (former) Officer Larry “Gus” Curtis that he can’t do that – that what he was doing was illegal, due to the fact that he was acting without a warrant. Curtis tells her, “if it’s illegal, then file a civil lawsuit.” Well, she did file a civil lawsuit and it just settled. Was it enough?
Here’s my first video on the incident.
Here’s a media report about the settlement.
Here’s the complaint from the civil lawsuit filed against Curtis and the City of Frankfort:
Two years ago, Darius Lester, a young black man in rural West Virginia, was shot by a West Virginia State Police SWAT team while still in his bed during a botched pre-dawn raid while executing a search warrant at his uncle’s home. Despite the passage of two years, the state police still have not released the findings of their investigation into the shooting. The reason? They were most likely waiting the two years the victim had in which to sue them.
Two Sheriff’s deputies (Deputies Philpot and Cobb with the Dunklin County Sheriff’s Office) responded to a woman lying on the shoulder of a highway. The woman tells the deputies she was fleeing domestic violence. After talking for nearly 18 minutes, the woman, who very clearly appears to be drunk, asks the deputies for a ride away from the pitch black highway. The deputies talk it over and decide they don’t want to. They tell her to just keep walking. The woman pleads with the deputies to taker her to a gas station. But they leave her and tell her to keep walking down the dark road.
13 minutes later, the woman was hit and killed by a tractor trailer. The truck’s dash cam appears to show her purposefully sitting in the middle of the dark road. The State of Missouri is now seeking to discipline both deputies for reckless disregard of a woman who was clearly in need. But according to their lawyer, they did nothing wrong.
Excerpts from the police report that I discuss in the video:
Here the officer explains that they left Michelle Anders on the side of the road with instructions to keep walking, and that eventually she’d “end up in Kennett.”
Here the officer claims that Anders “did not appear to be intoxicated,” which is clearly contradicted by his own statements in the bodycam, as well as by the footage itself, showing Anders to be obviously unstable, confused, slurring her words and acting erratically.
Just below the original police report is a “supplemental” report describing being called back to the scene after Anders was hit and killed by a tractor trailer.
This is an excerpt of the disciplinary complaint against the officers by the Missouri Dept. of Public Safety.
In the Eighth Circuit (applicable in Missouri), as elsewhere for the most part, police officers are generally required to act where they have probable cause to believe that a vulnerable person might walk into danger or commit suicide. If there is evidence suggesting immediate risk or danger, officers must intervene in a manner that is objectively reasonable to prevent harm, or they could face liability for deliberate indifference to a known risk. See Graham v. Barnette, 5 F.4th 872 (8th Cir. 2021).
Media report no. 1 here.
Media report no. 2 here.
For complete context, here’s the full truck driver dash cam, since I only used a brief excerpt in the video.
Yet again, the Arkansas State Police make the news for their aggressive use of PIT maneuvers during pursuits. This time they actually wrecked the wrong “4 door sedan.” They got the color and the number of doors right. But unfortunately, it was the wrong one. Nevertheless, they stand behind their aggressive PIT policy. Is there a federal constitutional violation when they do this, and injure an entirely different person than they were intending to injure?
Breaking news out of federal court in South Carolina, where a federal jury has just awarded a $550,000 verdict against a former Richland County Sheriff’s deputy, as well as the sheriff’s department itself.
Here are the relevant case documents, including the complaint, jury instructions, verdict form, as well as the full deposition transcript of one of the officers:
Imagine you’re sitting in family court and the judge looks at you and says, what’s your address? I’ll meet you there in 10 minutes, and I’m going to search your house with your ex-wife and my bailiff – a police officer who will arrest you if you don’t let me in. March 4, 2020, that’s what happened to my client. Here’s an update on the current status.
We won on the issue of judicial immunity. Just before the jury trial was set to begin, the defendant judge appealed the case to the Fourth Circuit. Since this matter involves judicial immunity, it’s capable of being appealed prior to trial. Usually a defendant is required to wait until afterwards.
They just filed their brief a couple of days ago. Next it’s our turn to file a response brief, which is due mid-November.
Here’s the federal court opinion denying judicial immunity:
Today we filed a lawsuit against multiple West Virginia parole officers for a pattern and practice of sexual abuse of female parolees in the Parkersburg, West Virginia area. Imagine being a woman in the parole system, where your male parole officer, who has the ability to search your house, arrest you, or send you to prison at any time, begins to demand sexual favors. That’s what’s been happening in West Virginia. Imagine also that you report this to your parole officer’s supervisor and he intimidates you into silence and allows it to continue. Imagine even the FBI comes in and has to tell a Parole Officer to back off, that he’s under surveillance, and meanwhile, the guy’s still employed as a Parole Officer, as if it’s just par for the course.
My client, identified in the lawsuit by her initials, tragically, was already victimized in the West Virginia correctional system. She was therefore vulnerable to these predators. When her parole officer began to engage in misconduct, she bravely recorded him. Six recordings she created. She took those recordings to the supervising Parole Officer in the region, David Jones. Instead of protecting her and other female parolees from the predator, he ordered her to destroy the evidence, telling her that the predator, Anthony DeMetro, was his friend. He told her to just stick it out until she was off parole. Meanwhile, other women were victimized, and my client was forced to live in fear and humiliation.
According to the other lawsuit that was filed, which I’ve also posted, other female victims were coming forward to state parole officials, only to be ignored – which is absolutely unacceptable. Thankfully, the FBI was listening and began an investigation. Now the feds have indicted Anthony DeMetro. His indictment is posted in full below. They also filed a criminal information charge against DeMetro’s supervisor, David Jones. I’ve posted that as well.
Here’s the complaint:
Indictment of Anthony DeMetro:
Information charging David Jones: