In Newton, Iowa in 2022, disgraced police officer Nathan Winters falsely arrested Tayvin Galanakis, a completely sober college football player for DUI. A local kid, Noah Peterson, was outraged and calmly criticized the Newton Police Department, as well as the Newton Mayor, during a city council meeting. The ignorant and corrupt mayor ordered his arrest, in violation of the First Amendment. The Institute for Justice took on his case, filed a lawsuit, and just scored a huge win for free speech. I got the chance to speak with Patrick Jaicomo, Senior Attorney with the Institute for Justice about Noah’s case.
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:
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):
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:
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.
UPDATE VIDEO:
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. SeeGraham v. Barnette, 5 F.4th 872 (8th Cir. 2021).
The Supreme Court has made clear that “one of the most precious of the liberties safeguarded by the Bill of Rights” is the sacred promise to every American, enshrined in the First Amendment, that citizens enjoy the freedom to complain about their leaders. Lozman v. Riviera Beach, 585 U.S. 87, 101 (2018). But the city of Surprise, Arizona and its mayor, Skip Hall, broke that promise, arresting Plaintiff Rebekah Massie in front of her 10-year-old daughter for criticizing a public official at a city council meeting.
Surprise Police Chief Piña recorded an internal message video for his police officers about a week after the arrest. In it, he defiantly and irrationally claims that there was no First Amendment violation. He also has another officer, who gained valuable experience in First Amendment (and other) violations, while working at the Phoenix Police Department, give the officers advice on how to respond to encounters with so-called First Amendment Auditors.
The New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller recently published a scandalous report detailing private for-profit police training of 1000’s of police officers from around the country that, among other things: promoted the use of unconstitutional policing tactics for motor vehicle stops; glorified violence and an excessively militaristic or “warrior” approach to policing; spoke disparagingly of the internal affairs process; promoted an “us vs. them” approach; and espoused views and tactics that would undermine almost a decade of police reform efforts in New Jersey, including those aimed at de-escalating civilian-police encounters; and which included over 100 discriminatory and harassing remarks by speakers and instructors, with repeated references to speakers’ genitalia, lewd gestures, and demeaning quips about women and minorities.
Specifically, the report details a 2021 seminar held in Atlantic City, NJ, attended by approximately 1,000 police officers from across the country. Along with the report, the Acting Comptroller released video footage…
Here’s a media report about one of the instructors subsequently being charged with criminal violations for the video he bragged about, showing him shooting at a fleeing vehicle.
Here’s another media report about the founder of the training company retiring from police-work shortly after being sued for misconduct.
Here’s the list of states that sent police officers to the 2021 seminar featured in the report and video footage:
In the past couple of days, WCHS has been reporting about an anonymous whistleblower letter from someone within the West Virginia State Police, revealing numerous specific allegations of misconduct, mostly by senior staff at the agency. I just obtained a copy of that letter and it’s unbelievable.
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:
On May 10, 2019, officers attempted to stop Ronald Greene over an unspecified traffic offense around midnight. A high-speed pursuit began, ending in brutal treatment at the hands of police officers. They did everything in the book to Mr. Greene, who repeatedly cried out that he was scared. Just this week, the other surviving police officers involved in the death of Ronald Greene were criminally charged in Louisiana State Court with crimes ranging from negligent homicide to malfeasance.
The 46-minute clip shows one trooper wrestling Greene to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and punching him in the face while another can be heard calling him a “stupid motherf——.”
Greene wails “I’m sorry!” as another trooper delivers another stun gun shock to his backside and warns, “Look, you’re going to get it again if you don’t put your f——- hands behind your back!” Another trooper can be seen briefly dragging the man facedown after his legs had been shackled and his hands cuffed behind him.
Facing the most serious charges from a state grand jury was Master Trooper Kory York, who was seen on the body-camera footage dragging Greene by his ankle shackles, putting his foot on his back to force him down and leaving the heavyset man face down in the dirt for more than nine minutes….
The others who faced various counts of malfeasance and obstruction included a trooper who denied the existence of his body-camera footage, another who exaggerated Greene’s resistance on the scene, a regional state police commander who detectives say pressured them not to make an arrest in the case and a Union Parish sheriff’s deputy heard on the video taunting Greene with the words “s—- hurts, doesn’t it?”
Law enforcement attempted to coverup their misconduct and to suppress the body cam footage from the public.
Greene’s May 10, 2019, death was shrouded in secrecy from the beginning, when authorities told grieving relatives that the 49-year-old died in a car crash at the end of a high-speed chase near Monroe — an account questioned by both his family and even an emergency room doctor who noted Greene’s battered body. Still, a coroner’s report listed Greene’s cause of death as a motor vehicle accident, a state police crash report omitted any mention of troopers using force and 462 days would pass before state police began an internal probe.
All the while, the body-camera video remained so secret it was withheld from Greene’s initial autopsy and officials from Edwards on down declined repeated requests to release it, citing ongoing investigations.
But then last year, the AP obtained and published the footage, which showed what really happened: Troopers swarming Greene’s car, stunning him repeatedly, punching him in the head, dragging him by the shackles and leaving him prone on the ground for more than nine minutes. At times, Greene could be heard pleading for mercy and wailing, “I’m your brother! I’m scared! I’m scared!”
Not surprisingly, this wasn’t the first time. Now the DOJ has instituted a broad investigation into the Louisiana State Police.
The AP later found that Greene’s arrest was among at least a dozen cases over the past decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings of mostly Black men, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, racism.
Such reports were cited by the U.S. Justice Department this year in launching a sweeping civil rights investigation into the Louisiana State Police, the first “pattern or practice” probe of a statewide law enforcement agency in more than two decades.
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:
