This guy got arrested at a Christmas parade in Florida for wearing a body armor vest concealedd under his shirt. The problem is, that wasn’t illegal. I saw this in the news, with cops taking a victory lap and Karens rejoicing about it, so I put in a request for the footage, and just got it. And it’s worse than I even thought it would be. Lawful conduct does not become illegal just because police officers – or Karens – are afraid of something. My rights don’t end where your fear of some perfectly legal object begins.
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:
A cop in (Ludington) Michigan sees a drunk driver at 2am and pulls him over. Then he realizes it’s his coworker – an off duty police officer at the same department. It’s his buddy, who just basically smiles at him and they both know he’s in trouble. Gee, that really sucks, right? But not to worry…. Everything will be okay because they’re the cops. And they can just turn their bodycams off, collect no evidence, and drive him home. Then the public will never find out, right?
This is Part 2 of the update on the viral video arrest of Demetrius Kern from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, which I originally covered in July of 2023, along with Mr. Kern’s attorney, Chris Wiest. Mr. Kern had been falsely arrested and charged after he was almost hit by a police cruiser driven by Officer Carly Lewis, whose video deposition was featured in Part 1 of this update. That arrest was primarily at the direction of Officer Lewis’ supervisor, Sgt. Naftali Wolf, whose video deposition is detailed in this video.
Here is the main brief by Mr. Kern’s attorneys that I walked you through in the video, using the video deposition excerpts they actually cited in the brief:
If you want to go further into the weeds, here is the motion for summary judgment filed by Defendant Wolf’s lawyers (to which the above brief is responding in opposition):
As I mentioned in the video, as of this date, the Court has not yet ruled on the pending motions. Which means that the case is just hanging in limbo with nothing happening, until such time as there is a ruling. The ruling will decide whether or not the lawsuit gets dismissed, or whether it proceeds to a jury trial. This is fairly unusual for a delay of this length to occur in federal court – though sometimes does happen).
Remember the video I did back in July of 2023, with attorney Chris Wiest, about the lawsuit that he had just filed for a guy named Demetrius Kerns? Kerns was almost hit by a police officer who was driving recklessly. Then when he stopped to get her information afterwards, and she apologized to him, her supervisor then showed up and began to escalate the situation, demanding Mr. Kerns’ ID and ultimately putting him in handcuffs – and later falsely charging him with obstruction, in retaliation for the fact that he was filming and being critical of the police. As Chris and I discussed, eventually he would have the opportunity to take the depositions of these two officers.
Well, it’s been a couple of years now and I have an update for you. The case isn’t over yet. It’s still pending. These things can take years. But I actually have the full video depositions of these two officers, and I’m going to go through them with you so that you can hear exactly what they had to say when confronted under oath. First, part 1 – the sworn testimony of Officer Carly Lewis. And then in Part 2 we’ll get to the rather-unbelievable video testimony of her supervisor, Sergeant Naftali Wolf.
By now we’ve also seen footage of the Alex Pretti incident, from multiple angles, and we’ve also seen clips showing federal officials clamoring to convince the public that what they’ve seen was completely justified – even prior to any investigation occurring. We see both sides pushing politics and sowing division, rather than looking objectively at the facts to figure out what happened, and then fairly applying the law.
I’ll walk you through what we actually know happened, based on the currently-available video footage, and then let one of the best civil rights lawyers in the country – Patrick Jaicomo, with the Institute for Justice – who is literally at the forefront of the efforts at holding federal officials accountable for civil rights violations, cut through all the b.s., all the propaganda, and give you the actual information that you need to know right now. And there’s a lot of it – that you’re not hearing anywhere else right now.
Imagine if cops showed up at your front door, banged on the door and demanded that you come outside and answer their questions. Why? Because the contractor working next door says you yelled at him and hurt his feelings… Knowing your rights – that the police cannot just stand on your front porch, detain you, force you to answer their questions, and shout things at you without your permission – you tell them to leave. You even call the cops on the cops. I mean, they don’t have a warrant, and they don’t have your permission. Right? But even though the courts have said this violates your constitutional rights, what if the cops just don’t care? What if the people at 911 don’t care? What if the supervisor doesn’t care? What if they just ignore your constitutional rights?
This involves the Coolidge, Arizona Police Department. Here’s the Police Report and Dispatch Log:
As the Supreme Court held in the 1980 case of Payton v. New York, absent valid consent or exigent circumstances (i.e., an emergency actively occurring) law enforcement may not cross the threshold of a residence without a warrant.” Either to search or arrest.
As the Supreme Court held in the 2018 case of Collins v. Virginia, police cannot enter the curtilage of a home (which is the area close to the home that is treated as a part of the home, such as an enclosed yard, garage or driveway or porch) to search a vehicle parked within that curtilage of that home without a warrant, even where they have probable cause. The Courts (including the 9th circuit) have held that it is “commonsense” and “easily understood” that area “an arm’s-length from one’s house” is curtilage. (citing Morgan v. Fairfield County 6th circuit 2018)).
A so-called “knock and talk” exception to the warrant requirement isn’t really an exception at all. But it allows police to enter the curtilage of a home to ask questions of its occupant “precisely because that is ‘no more than any private citizen might do.’ (Florida v. Jardines (2013). So while police, like “the Nation’s Girl Scouts and trick-or-treaters,” can approach a home to speak with its occupant, nothing in the implied license to have that consensual interaction suggests a visitor can restrict the movements of a homeowner next to his own home any more than she could force the resident to buy cookies or hand out candy. (U.S. v. Lundin (9th Circuit. 2016)).
There is no right to detain, arrest, or otherwise seize the homeowner implied by the license to perform a knock and talk. To the contrary, that implied license may be revoked by the homeowner. (Davis v. US (9th Circuit 1964)).
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.
You may have seen in the news, a federal jury in Michigan just awarded 4 million dollars to a man who got his eyeball squished like a grape, after being sucker-punched by a police officer for no reason. Daniel Reiff was on his way to a roofing job. He and his coworker, Ryan, stopped at Ryan’s house to get some tools. As they walked through the neighborhood, a neighbor got suspicious and called the police on a non-emergency number, reporting that she didn’t recognize two “younger looking kids.”
The Clinton Township police apparently didn’t have much going on that day, so they sent the cavalry – 8 police cruisers in total, who scrambled to the scene, even speeding and weaving through oncoming traffic, as if they were headed to a bank robbery. When Daniel saw this, having had prior bad experiences with the police, he left Ryan’s house and headed towards his bus stop. But Officer Broc Setty spotted him, got out of his car and chased him down, whooping a battle cry, as if he was a Viking about to murder some monks at a monastery. And actually Officer Setty wasn’t all that far off. When he caught up to Daniel, he sucker-punched him in the face, which ended up squishing Daniel’s eyeball like a grape, permanently blinding him.
