A little over a year ago, an army of small town cops, went outside their jurisdiction, showed up at the wrong address for a midnight raid over a stolen weedeater that belonged to a local politician. They busted into an innocent man’s home in the middle of the night, shooting and killing 63 year-old Doug Harless, a man loved by his community. As you may know from my first video on this from back on January 3 of last year, the cops were refusing to release any information on what happened. They claimed they had a warrant, but they still haven’t released it – even a year later. The mayor has played dumb for over a year. They claimed that the Kentucky State Police were investigating – though they’ve basically said nothing – even now, a year later. As it turns out, now we know why.
An autistic father was playing Pokemon Go with his 10 year old son. A police officer with the Canandaigua Police Department (in Canandaigua, NY) interrupts their game, detains the father, questions him, mocks him, searches him, and interrogates him, accuses him of being on drugs or drunk – even though he was very clearly autistic. He not only violates his rights, but humiliates him in front of his son. And humiliates his son as well. And then just walks off into the sunset, like he just performed some great service…
About two weeks ago I posted a video showing cops in Owensboro, Kentucky responding to a guy’s house after he butt-dialed 911 by accidentally pressing the “emergency” button on his iPhone. But when officers from the Owensboro Police Department arrived, they claimed that officers had the “right” to detain the guy and enter his house, despite not having a warrant. The reason they gave is the alleged smell of marijuana. As I explained in the video, that was completely wrong – a violation of the important protections our Founders gave to the privacy of our homes. These were constitutional violations captured on the officers’ own bodycams. That video ended up making it into both the TV news, as well as the local newspaper there. Which was fantastic, because that, in turn, then prompted the Owensboro Police Department to publicly respond to my video.
This is Daniel Waltson. He was arrested for allegedly threatening to shoot police officers while they were at his home the previous night. A judge signed an arrest warrant after cops told him that Daniel “threatened to shoot the police for being on his property.” His house was besieged by police officers aiming guns at his home, where his two young kids were inside. He was arrested at gunpoint and placed in handcuffs. He spent 3 days in jail, lost his job, and was later indicted by a grand jury. Yet the entire time, there was video footage of the alleged threat, that completely exonerated Daniel, proving that he never threatened to shoot police officers. Rather, he threatened to “sue” police officers.
Jacob Cannon, formerly with the Ormond Beach, Florida Police Department, was just convicted of felony battery for slamming a highly intoxicated and obnoxious woman (who was handcuffed behind her back) during a DUI arrest processing. During the sentencing hearing, the judge played the video in open court, heard the testimony of the (now sober) victim, as well as the testimony of Cannon himself, who begged the judge for mercy, claiming mental illness, his family, as well as the provocation of the victim, who was verbally abusive during the arrest. This is a rare instance of accountability. But was the sentence enough?
In Bowling Green, Kentucky, a man and his girlfriend were trying to have a yard sale when police officers from the Warren County Sheriff’s Office and the Bowling Green Police Department appeared and accused them of shoplifting, due to there being multiple duplicate items for sale on the tables in the front yard. Despite not having a warrant, the officers refused to leave, detaining a man and attempting to interrogate him on the home’s front porch for over 45 minutes.
John Choe was driving through Athens, Georgia. When it began to storm, he pulled into a gas station to wait out the thunderstorm. Somebody called the cops. The cops want his ID, even though it wasn’t a traffic stop, and even though there was no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing that was particular to Mr. Choe.
If you think that being falsely arrested can’t happen to you, then you have to watch this video. This video shows my client being arrested for DUI even though she was stone cold sober. This can, and does, happen to innocent people across the country. Here you will see an egregious example of this happening, as it plays out in real time on the officer’s bodycam.
All hell has broken loose within the Kissimmee (Florida) Police Department. A single bodycam video showing former Officer Andrew Baseggio entering a man’s home, without a warrant, and inflicting violence on him inside his living room, has resulted in Officer Baseggio getting indicted, which has in turn taken down 10 other police officers in that department (including the police chief), found by a grand jury to have lied in an effort to coverup Baseggio’s misconduct from investigators.
A 70 year old man in Ada County, Idaho was arrested by police officers at a police station, after he dared to look into a police cruiser window. The charges were later dismissed. He filed a lawsuit, which just settled for $250,000, along with mandatory additional training for sheriff’s deputies in that county.
Here’s Sherriff Matt Clifford’s troubling statement, as discussed in the video:
Earlier this week, we settled a lawsuit with Mr. Heikkola, stemming from an incident in January 2023. It wasn’t our best day. It is the expectation that Ada County deputies perform to the best of their abilities every day — while keeping people’s constitutional rights in the forefront of their minds, while also keeping our community safe.
For anyone to claim we are trampling on someone’s constitutional rights simply isn’t true.The reality is, we have hundreds of contacts every day with people of all different backgrounds, religions, ethnicities and socioeconomic standings. While the vast majority of those interactions go well, occasionally we fumble and miss the mark.
Part of the settlement was to include additional constitutional policing training; fortunately, we had already implemented this training prior to the settlement. We will now also include a scenario similar to Mr. Heikkola’s in our scenario-based training. We are one of few law enforcement agencies across the country with routine built-in training time. Every patrol deputy receives 9.5 training hours per month. These blocks of training include topics such as firearms training, scenario-based training, legal updates, EVOC, de-escalation techniques, arrest and control techniques, CPR and first aid, and more.
Part of our culture at the Ada County Sheriff’s Office is to always strive to be better – and learning from this incident will help us to do just that.
