Kentucky State Police Trooper James Cameron Wright has finally been indicted by the feds for multiple civil rights violations, which were not only known by his chain of command, but some of which were personally reviewed and approved by the literal head of the Kentucky State Police. This includes beatings, perjury, and more. Kentucky civil rights attorney Chris Wiest gives us the scandalous details, including exclusive new bodycam footage of one of the incidents.
On July 31, 2024, Kentucky State Police Trooper Myron Jackson took exception to Christen Johnson, a dental assistant and mom of 3 young children, silently filming his illegal traffic stop from her front porch. Trooper Jackson stormed up to Christen and threatened her, “Go inside of the house or I will take you from your kids and take you to jail.”
When Christen remained filming on her porch, Trooper Jackson grabbed her, forcefully pulled her from her porch, and dragged her across the ground. Christen’s two, seven, and ten-year-old children screamed and cried, watching helplessly as their mother was violently hand- cuffed and dragged away to jail. When she got out of jail the next day, she was forced to walk several miles home, and when she got there, she found her children gone.
In Margate, Florida, Officer Sohn of the Margate Police Department observed a man sitting in his parked car during daylight hours in a local park. He approaches the driver’s side window of the car and begins to ask questions and demand identification. The officer refuses to take no for an answer, and the situation escalates to eventually holding the man in handcuffs. Once the supervisor arrives however, Officer Sohn is unable to justify his actions.
In the blink of an eye, a peaceful day of yardwork for Penny McCarthy turned into a nightmare. She was on her driveway in Phoenix, Arizona, in a sleeveless shirt, shorts, and slippers, when a team of United States Marshals pulled up in unmarked vehicles and aimed firearms at her.
Penny—who is a 67-year-old grandmother—was clearly at their mercy. And yet, the officers threatened to “hit” her, frisked her, placed her in handcuffs and ankle shackles, and drove her away from home. The officers did not so much as check Penny’s driver’s license or run any other basic checks on her identity before violently arresting her.
The whole time, Penny calmly but persistently insisted that there must be a mistake. The officers claimed that she was Carole Rozak, for whom they had an arrest warrant. But Penny was not Rozak, and Penny had no connection to Rozak. The officers had made a huge, inexcusable error.
22 year-old Paul was sitting outside the CVS store where he works in Edgewater, FL, sitting on a bench waiting for a ride using the Lyft app. Edgewater Police Department Officer Daniel Rippeon observed Paul and concluded that he looked suspicious. No crime had been committed. No crime had been alleged by anyone to have been committed. Yet Paul was almost immediately seized and threatened with being tased and bitten by a police K9. He was taken to jail, despite the fact that Officer Rippeon was fully aware that Paul was a store employee waiting for a Lyft driver.
Here’s the full unedited raw bodycam from Ofc. Rippeon, so that you can see what was cut and that there was no misleading editing involved. This is as provided via FOIA request from the City of Edgewater, FL:
In Milton, Florida, Deputy Zachary MacPherson observed 20 year old Aleczander “Zander” Cash, who is autistic, walking across his residential street and into his home. Becoming angry that he couldn’t hear him (due to his wearing headphones), MacPherson banged on the front door, and when Cash answered, yanked Cash out of the front door of his home and onto the ground, handcuffing and arresting him. Not only was no crime committed by Cash, but Deputy MacPherson admittedly did not have a warrant.
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.
In June of 2024, a woman called police and claimed Charles Read kicked down her door and assaulted her, then fled on foot. Officer Mark Bellotte obtained an arrest warrant for Mr. Read. The only problem was… Mr. Read has been in a wheelchair for 25 years.
The media report from 3 weeks ago on the situation:
The full raw, unedited bodycam footage from the arrest:
Monongalia County Sheriff’s Deputy Lance Kuretza was indicted by the Feds as a result of this never-before-seen bodycam footage showing him suddenly confronting and arresting an innocent man, who was sleeping in a hotel room. I tried to get the footage over two years ago. Since then, he was acquitted by a federal jury in his criminal prosecution. Now he’s back to work as a deputy. But should he have a badge in light of this footage, showing what really happened that night?
The hatemail that jogged my memory about the incident:
Viral Twitter post about the indictment that first got people talking about it:
The US Attorney’s statement about the incident, from a radio show appearance (IIRC):
Here’s the press release by the DOJ about the indictment of Deputy Kuretza:
Photo taken by the police during arrest processing:
Monongalia County Sheriff’s Quote (recently retired now) about the trial result, commenting that he was “glad” the jurors came to the same conclusion he/his department had:
A media report about the trial, revealing shocking testimony from an EMT an unnamed deputy lied to her about the cause of Mr. Graciano’s injuries:
EMS was eventually called to the department and the jury heard from one of the emergency medical technicians (EMT) who responded to the call.
Camden Boggs, who worked as an EMT with Star City at the time, said a deputy in a black shirt told him Graziano “was drunk downtown starting fights and got beat up.” He could not say whether that deputy was Kuretza.
Boggs said a fight made sense because he initially saw blunt force trauma and at minimum a fracture to the nose or eye and at maximum a traumatic brain injury. He testified that Graziano’s right eye was so swollen, EMTs could not pry it open to evaluate his pupils for brain injuries.
Initially, Boggs said Graziano wanted to go to the hospital, but after being told by an unidentified deputy that by not going to the hospital he could see the magistrate sooner and go home sooner, Graziano then refused to go with the EMTs.
Fourth Circuit caselaw I referred to in the video regarding the 4th Amendment rights of hotel tenants is here. This is based on the US Supreme Court opinion from Stoner v. California.
The RAW footage, showing that not only did I not edit in a misleading way, I substantially censored the footage in order to comply with Youtube’s guidelines. The raw footage is much worse. Here is the full, unedited, footage from Lance Kuretza’s bodycam from January 18, 2018:
The full, unedited, uncensored, footage from Isaac Coe’s bodycam from January 18, 2018:
The full, unedited, uncensored, footage from Lance Kuretza’s bodycam during the arrest processing portion of January 20, 2018:
The full, unedited, uncensored, footage from Sgt. J.D. Alexander’s bodycam from January 20, 2018:
Here’s the full complaint from the civil lawsuit that was settled for $175,000:
Here’s a clip of Deputy Ethan Mongold encouraging Deputy Kuretza to give Mr. Graciano “the solution.”
Here’s the portion of the trial transcript (from above) that features Deputy Ethan Mongold testifying under oath to the jury that he admits that is indeed his voice that can be heard encouraging Kuretza to “give him the solution,” but unfortunately doesn’t remember saying it, and doesn’t remember why he would have said it – and also doesn’t know what “the solution” was.
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.
