Andrew Brown Jr. Shooting, Rep. Jewell Jones Arrest, Brandi Levy Snapchat Supreme Court Case

Officials in North Carolina brace for impact on the verge of the release of new body camera footage. Cheerleader Brandi Levy of Pennsylvania is booted from the squad and takes her case up to the Supreme Court. Michigan Democrat House Representative Jewell Jones is arrested for multiple charges. And more! Join criminal defense lawyer Robert F. Gruler in a discussion on the latest legal, criminal and political news, including:

• Officials in Elizabeth City North Carolina declare a state of emergency on the verge of releasing new body camera footage from an officer involved shooting.
• Andrew Brown Jr. was shot and killed on April 21st but details have yet to be released.
• North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper tweets and says Brown’s death was “extremely concerning”.
• Ben Crump, they attorney who helped the George Floyd family recover $27 million, appears to be representing the family and is set to meet with lawyers today.
• Highschool cheerleader Brandi Levy was booted from the cheer squad after posting an inappropriate (according to school officials) Snapchat post.
• Levy and her parents sued the school, and the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.
• Scheduled for oral arguments in the case of Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., we review the court docket and the arguments proffered by the parties.
• Democratic Representative Jewell Jones was arrested for driving under the influence.
• Jones, a Michigan House Representative, threatened to call Governor Gretchen Whitmer is he was not released by the officers.
• Review of the body camera footage that captured the interaction between Jones and the officers.
• Your questions from Locals.com after each segment!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, my friends. And welcome back to yet. Another episode of watching the Watchers live. My name is Robert Mueller. I am a criminal defense attorney here at the RNR law group in the always beautiful and sunny Scottsdale Arizona, where my team and I over the course of many years have represented thousands of good people facing criminal charges. And throughout our time in practice, we have seen a lot of problems with our justice system. I'm talking about misconduct involving the police. We have prosecutors behaving poorly. We have judges not particularly interested in a little thing called justice, and it all starts with the politicians, the people at the top, the ones who write the rules and pass the laws that they expect you and me to follow, but sometimes have a little bit of difficulty doing so themselves. That's why we started this show called the, watching the watcher so that together with your help, we can shine that big, beautiful spotlight of accountability and transparency back down upon our very system, with the hope of finding justice. And we're grateful that you are here and with us today, we've got a lot to get into. We're going to start by talking about a new case that is sort of floating right now under the radar. You may have heard about it. It's about a case by the name of a guy named Andrew Brown Jr. Was a shot and killed out of North Carolina. A city called Elizabeth city and the city right now is on emergency lockdown right now, basically they, the, uh, the mayor said that we're going to go into lockdown mode because there is a body camera video that is supposed to be released any minute. Now, any day. Now, the family and attorney who was, uh, speaking with the city today, they had a meeting between the, uh, the, the family of Andrew Brown and Ben Crump, who was representing the family and the police department. And so of course, this is about a police shooting. I don't even know if I mentioned that. Uh, but Andrew Brown was shot and killed during some police interaction that happened about, I want to say about about 10 days ago, maybe we had that. I have the dates. Anyways, we've got to get into this story because the city has sort of bracing itself for impact. Governor came out and released a statement. We've got Ben crumps out there. And so many people are sort of on high alert, waiting for the body camera to drop so that everybody can see what really happened. So we're going to go through that story and then brace ourselves as this does, does come out. Then we're going to talk about a high school cheerleader by the name of Brandy levy. 14, I believe is how old she is. And she is somebody who is in the middle of this free speech battle. So she was a cheerleader at her high school, posted something on Snapchat that the school did not like, even though she wasn't at school, when she posted it was on the weekend, she'd posted from some site off campus school came back and said, Nope, you're booted off the cheerleader squad. And so she took her case up to the Supreme court. And by God, she's there, they're there. They have oral arguments in this case scheduled for Wednesday. So very, very interesting case because a lot of people are piling in on this. We have a lot of people who have a big stake in education. Many people think that this is sort of ground zero for the culture war, for the future of the country, based on, you know, what we teach our students. We're at this whole, we're going to see 20 years later manifest itself in our government and in our society. So a of people are bracing themselves for this as well. What happens or at oral arguments, what can schools do as it relates to free speech? Can they stop students from speaking out? Then we're going to finish up by talking about a democratic representative out of Michigan goes by the name of Juul. Jones was arrested for a DUI, which is something that happens to people. Doesn't make you a bad person. But when you start now throwing your weight around, because you're a representative and say, Hey, let me go. Otherwise, I'm going to call the governor. That is a problem. And so we're going to talk about Juul Jones and the last segment of the show today. So if you want to be a part of the program, they'll way to do that is to go over to our locals.com platform. It's at locals.com. You can search for our community. It's called watching the Watchers. And if you want to ask a question throughout the show, you feel free to do that. There's a live chat taking place right there right now. It's just waiting for you to go over and support the show and join in on the fun. There's also a way that you can download my PDF, a free PDF of my book called beginning to winning. You can get some promo codes for my new course called existence systems, which I'll tell you a little bit more about later, but there's a lot going on over there, watching the watchers.locals.com. So go and check that out. And let's get into the news of the day. Andrew Brown, Jr. We're talking about a man who was shot and killed by police very recently out of North Carolina place called Elizabeth city. And the mayor just declared a state of emergency tonight Monday night, because there is new revelations that are supposed to be coming out very soon. I'm talking about of course, body camera footage, that details what happened here. So law enforcement got involved with Andrew Brown Jr. Uh, something about executing a warrant. There was a shootout and Mr. Brown was killed. And so a lot of people are really concerned about this body camera coming out, because we've already seen some red flags go up. We've seen the governor call this extremely concerning. And today we had Ben Crump who you may remember from the George Floyd case was representing the Floyd family and help them settle their case for$27 million. He's on this case. So he kind of just picked up and moved over to it to the next one. And here we are. And so he is out, he was out in front today. They had a meeting between the family of Brown Jr. And Mr. Crump and city officials to review some of the body cameras today. And the mayor in North Carolina officials have already said, we're going, we got to brace ourselves for impact here because this thing is going to be bad. And so I want to show you what happened today because this the police department not doing themselves any favors by dragging this thing out, we're going to go through a, I got a bunch of clips here. We're going to sort of bounce around a little bit. We're going to go in and out of some news stories, I've got some clips from the press conference today. As far as I know, the video is not out yet of this, the body camera footage of Mr. Brown, uh, engaging with law enforcement or with them engaging with him should I should say, but, uh, but it's going to be coming pretty soon. At some point, they're waiting on a courts to grant them permission to release it. So the police department apparently is communicating with the prosecutors. Everybody's checking everything before they can release this. And that typically does not out well for law enforcement. I've been very critical about law enforcement on this issue for a long time. Now I'm saying, guys, you gotta hurry. You gotta release this stuff sooner rather than later, because if you don't, the narrative is going to develop with, or without you, people are going to start jumping to conclusions one way or the other. And we saw this with McCaya Bryan, where they released the body camera footage immediately, right? We already saw that narrative bubbling up. A lot of people in this country just wanted you to spring loaded. This was a racist white cop killed a 16 year old African-American girl. And this was sort of the second wave of the George Floyd unrest that we were all to be expecting. Well, that really didn't happen, right. It really wasn't like that. She had a knife and she was going to attack somebody else. And in my opinion, the officer, there was a perfectly acceptable shoot. It was unfortunate and tragic that she's dead. But I think that that officer saved the other woman's life. So, you know, we have that we're, we're where everybody's just primed and ready to go. And the police did themselves a favor and society, a favor, quite frankly, all of us by releasing the video, the body camera footage, quickly getting in front of it and doing the press conference so that we could all see it. Now, I want you to compare and contrast that with this, where they're not giving us the information where they're not giving us any of the footage, and I'm going to walk you through this and, you know, say what you will about Ben Crump and him sort of, you know, bouncing around from family to family, making tens of millions of dollars off of these settlements. But he's got a point here. They are not being transparent with any of this stuff. And I think that's a huge problem. That's going to come back to bite them in the butt as we're going to see, because the narrative is already starting as Ben Crump is helping craft it because the police is sort of asleep at the wheel, have they, that it's sitting on their hands, waiting for the courts and everybody to, you know, get the wheels in motion so that they can release some of this information to the public. So we're going to go through, we're going to bounce around. Let's take a quick look at this article over from Fox news, it says Andrew Brown, Jr. Shooting Elizabeth city, North Carolina declares a state of emergency ahead of the body camera video release. So on Monday ahead of the possible release, uh, during a drug-related warrant, Brown was killed after that was executed by sheriff deputies last week Brown's family and their attorneys will be privately shown the video at passcode tank County Sheriff's office at 11:30 AM Eastern time today. So they had that today. We've got some clips from the conference. They're going to hold a news conference immediately following Ben Crump. The high-profile civil rights attorney who secured the$27 million settlement for Floyd is also going to be there along with a number of other attorneys, Elizabeth city passcode tank, city public school. Officials will also operate on a full remote schedule for all students and staff through Friday quote, due to continuously evolving state of civil unrest in our local community and under advisement of our local law enforcement partners. So we've got the city that's getting locked down. We have private schools. They're going to go back to a remote schedule because all of this is now going to be released sooner rather than later, we're waiting on a court to come out and grant permission for them to do that. So let's take a quick look at the declaration by the, uh, the city Elizabeth city. It says here, mayor is authorized and empowered. You may remember a lot of these. We saw a lot of these, uh, very recently throughout the COVID era. Unfortunately she says, whereas on Monday, April 26 city officials will file a formal request with the Sheriff's office seeking the public release of a body worn camera footage from the incident resulting in death of Andrew Brown on Wednesday, April 21st. So not long ago, about five days ago. All right. And, uh, it is our understanding that numerous news media outlets have taken steps to secure a court order, directing the Sheriff's office to release those tapes. It seems likely that the video and audio footage will be released in the very near future in order to ensure the safety of our citizens and their property city officials realize there may potentially be a period of civil unrest within the city following the public release of that footage. So the big question, you know, of course it has the mayor seat in this is, is, has mayor Betty Parker seen this, that she sort of bracing for impact? Does she know what's coming down the pike here? It goes on in order to absolutely ensure that the city has all state and federal resources necessary to protect our citizens during any such period of unrest. We deem it necessary to declare a state of emergency within the city from Monday, April 26 at 8:00 AM and continuing until deemed no longer necessary to protect our citizens from a threat to their safety. So they have a right to peaceably assemble, and businesses must be protected for violence. Therefore she's declaring a state of emergency direct all departments and agencies to take whatever steps necessary to protect life, Liberty, property, infrastructure, and such emergency assistance as deemed necessary. So it's going to take in full force in effect, uh, all law enforcement. Everybody's going to respond, distribute this everywhere. It's going to take effect today this morning at 8:00 AM. So that whole city now is essentially on a lockdown. Let's learn a little bit more about what happened here. So the background comes from a cnn.com. So we're bouncing from Fox over to CNN attorney for Andrew Brown. Junior's family says the video of the fatal police shooting shows and execution. And so once again, this is Ben Crump, right? So take that for what it's worth. Uh, the Sheriff's deputies were authorized to look for crack cocaine, other controlled substances and evidence of criminal activity in Brown's two vehicles and his residence, according to a search warrant that was signed by a judge on April 20th, according to the search warrant investigator Mead's guy by the name of Ryan Meads received information from the dare County narcotics task force in March of 2021 regarding the illegal sales of controlled narcotics by Andrew Brown residing in Elizabeth city task force had been in touch with an informant who had claimed to have been buying drugs from Brown for over a year, including it as home hotels, according to the warrant, however, Brown's aunt Betty Banks. So the family was told that authorities did not find any drugs or weapon weapons in his car or his house. So we, we know here that Elizabeth city located in the Northeast corner of North Carolina population, just under 18,000 people. So a very small town, right? Small, not, not like Phoenix. For example, we have a, uh, you know, basically a billion dollar police industry here. So we're probably talking about some local, you know, smaller town police officers there. And it's a, it's a bit of a different ball game in that regard. So we'll S we'll see where this goes. Apparently there must have been a warrant. They're talking about that a judge signed off on, they executed it. And so you're going to see this, right? You already know how this goes. Every time police involved shooting involving somebody else. There's a segment of this country that comes out and they want to demonize the person who was shot and killed. Oh, he's a drug dealer. Oh, he's an addict. Oh, he's whatever, right. He's a rapist. He's a murderer cake. Fine. I understand all of that. Okay. You can, you can have that opinion. You can say maybe that human life wasn't worth all that much to you because of one of those things I disagree with that. I think that that person still has value. I think there's opportunity for rehabilitation and things like that, right? I'm a defense lawyer. I tend to sort of give people the benefit of the doubt in those regards. But I also understand that this sort of, uh, con con con countervailing viewpoint here, that you got to take that into consideration when you're doing your analysis. And when the police get involved. Now, all that being said, this person still deserves due process. It doesn't matter what type of crime he committed. The police officers are not judged jurors and executioners. They don't get the ability to just sort of make all of those decisions in one fell swoop. If this guy was dealing drugs fine, right? Arrest him, charge him, bring the evidence in a court of law. Let's see where that goes. See if they can convict him there. They don't get to just start shooting somebody unless there are some pretty high standards they're typically involving a lethal force being directed back at the officer's, right? There's a, there's a, some force that is coming back their direction that justified the elevation of their use of force to a higher level. And from what it sounds like, maybe they went a little bit over the top, but it's, it's, it's, it's a little premature. We'll see the reason why, when this happens, the reason why I give the benefit of the doubt to not the police is because they have all of the evidence they could show us. Right? They could have had some policies in place that this, this happened on the, on what the 21st. So they've had some time to get this stuff out and in front of us. And it's just slowly starting to sort of trickle out. So that's on them right now. It's only been about what five days and that's, that's fine. I think that's still way too long. I would like to rapid response, 24 to 48 hours, I think is very reasonable. If somebody is shot and killed, but you know, as long as the family's notified and those types of things, because you're going to see what happens, that the narrative is already percolating right now, and it doesn't serve the police. So I think that more transparency, more accountability, more of a rapid response would actually serve them. Not hurt them, but I've never been a police officer. So, uh, that was out today. Of course, you know, he's involved in some narcotics task force who knows what the warrant says or whether it was justified or whatever happened. We know that there were some problems with the Brianna Taylor warrants. We know that those cops went over there, said that they knocked on, announced neighbor says kind of, they did then sort of recants that they did, that they didn't, then they did. And you know who the heck knows. And apparently they were wearing body cameras. So this should all be available for us to take a look at, but we just haven't seen it yet. And apparently the family today, well, they saw some of it. Let's take a look and figure out what's going on. So Ben Crump, as you can see at a press release, we have Ben Crump, Harry Daniels, Bakari sellers, and members of the Brown family. They were all there today. This is from a press release, nationally renowned civil rights attorney, Ben Crump, and others will address the media, following a meeting with the County Sheriff's office, where the attorneys are going to view the video. Okay. So they met and watched it today and it says here, it has been alleged that deputy shot Brown in the back as he drove away from them while they were attempting to execute a search warrant, few details, and no body cam footage had been released by police seven County Sheriff's deputies have been put on leave following Brown's death. Two have resigned and one has retired, right? So two, so two just bailed and one just quit seven of them to set out, you know what? I'm only I'm I'm out. I'm done. I'm resigning. Somebody else just said I'm retiring. Right? Okay. So that doesn't typically bode. Well, if everybody's abandoning, maybe this was not as good as, uh, as some people might hope. So here is Ben Crump today. Now talking about what they saw when they were meeting with the County,

Speaker 2: 15:59

What we witnessed here, our legal team. And you're going to hear from our legal team who got to witness the video, and then you're going to hear from the family members. And then we'll take your questions. We want to say on the record from the onset, we do not feel that we got transparency. We only saw a snippet of the video when we know that the video started before and after what they showed the family and they determined what was pertinent. Why couldn't the family see all the video? They only show one body cam video, even though we know there were several body cam videos, if they were falling the low in the policy in this County, that everybody has video cameras on their uniforms,

Speaker 1: 17:06

It looks really bad. It looks terrible. I don't know why they do that. Right? And you're going to see here as we go through this, they saw like 20 seconds of the whole thing. And apparently we're going to hear from the family. They're going to explain what they saw there. It's it's one officer who's sort of like somewhat related all there's. Other officers all scattered around, running all over the place, all also wearing body cameras, but they pick the guy who's like way in the back that you can't see anything. Hey, here's 20 seconds for your family. You know, come on, guys, what are you doing? You know, we, we, it's going to come out sooner rather than later. Why are you hiding the ball on this stuff? Ben Crump is, is exactly right on this. If you are not going to be open and honest about it, then we can't presume that you're acting in good faith. We can sort of jump to the conclusion that you're being shady as hell, because you are by not letting them see the full story here. Just a little 20 seconds that we've clipped out and made difficult for you to really understand what happened here. And this is, this is a problem, right? And I've said this for a long time. I think that when, when law enforcement agencies do this, anytime that our government does this in general, I have a huge problem with it. It's almost worse than what happened, right? Let you, you can say yes, our officers made a mistake. Yes. Something bad happened. We screwed up. But when you then try to cover it up, it's like, Oh gosh, all right. You know, now, now any sort of reasonable person I think is well within their rights to say, well, you guys are, you guys are liars, you're liars and manipulators. And, uh, you should be held accountable for that. So today, right? There's no video out there. Uh, they could have been in motion. They could have filed this motion in front of the judge immediately. They didn't, they're sort of dragging their feet on it. And now Ben Crump and this narrative is now we're on CNN, right? Right here on CNN, out there talking in front of everybody about this. So of course, what, what are, what are everyday citizens supposed to do? What is somebody who's already predisposed to say? You know, the police are kind of garbage. Maybe I'm, I'm, uh, naturally inclined to not be in favor of them. They see this type of stuff and they go see, there you go, right again, they're hiding the ball again. Somebody else has shot and killed. It's been five days, six days, seven days, eight days. And they show 20 seconds to the family. Well, the rest of the public wants to see this. And now when it does come out, the rest of the public is not going to be happy, nor should they be because their own government was trying to hide this from them, which is insane. So we go back to this story over from Fox, says, schools, as we mentioned are also going back down into remote learning. As a result of this, they posted this on Facebook. It says, we appreciate your support and understanding during this time unclear when the body camera footage is going to be released, we have the sheriff, Tommy Wooten said in a recorded video statements Saturday, that he would file a motion in court to ask a local judge as early as Monday to allow its release. He said he would first check with the North Carolina state Bureau of investigation, which is probing the fatal shooting to make sure that releasing the video would not hamper their efforts. So I still got to go check, right? Oh, I've got to go check. Let me go talk to them. Call this guy, call this guy. Then he goes back only a judge can release the video. That's why I've asked North Carolina state Bureau of investigation to confirm for me that releasing in the video will not undermine their investigation. Once I get that confirmation, our County will file a motion in court, hopefully Monday to have the footage release. So we'll see, could Wooten release the statement just after a family attorney, local clergy and civil rights leaders, including barber and others held a news conference to demand that the footage be released and right. It should be released. I don't know what the, what, what, why this takes so long. Okay. They know how this game works and they are dragging their feet on it. Here's Ben Crump again. And I think this is where we're gonna get, hear some of the things

Speaker 2: 20:31

They wanted to have. Just the two family members see the video with no legal counsel as if they did not have a right to have their legal counsel present. When they watch this execution of their loved one, knew what it was. And we have to keep demanding transparency because we do not feel what the County attorney offered was transparency at all. And so it's very emotional, not only the video, but how this family was disrespected. Even in the aftermath, you talk about insult on top of injury, but be not dismayed. The truth will come out. The video will be seen by the public and we will get justice for Andrew Brown Jr.

Speaker 1: 21:32

Right? Right. It's good to come out one way or the other. Now, you know, whether we, we look at it and we say, huh, that was a justified shooting. Or we look at that and we say, Nope, that was a, an execution as Mr. Ben Crump says, that's up for determination yet. We haven't seen it. So apparently he has. He's the, you know, calling it an execution, which is a pretty provocative thing for an attorney to say, right? That's it that implies that somebody was executed, which is a big deal to be claimed to be making here, especially as it relates to law enforcement. Now let's finish the story. America here is the issue said, uh, president Keith Rivers, somebody from the NAACP says a warrant is not a license to kill. Even if a suspect supposedly drives away. Barbara said at a news conference attended by Brown's children. A warrant is not permission to shoot someone he's right about that. Under North Carolina law, judge must generally sign off on the release of law enforcement body camera footage, which is an insane, stupid rule leaders of the Elizabeth city government have demanded the release of the footage and a coalition of media filed the petition in court to make it public. Everybody wants it. Democratic governor, Roy Cooper issued a statement calling for the Swift Swift release of the footage. And so of course, right, he's a Democrat. So you know how sort of this, these things go, everything is politicized these days, but he certainly sounds like he's concerned about what he saw on it or what he's hearing is on it. Here's what he posted a couple of days ago on Twitter said, ah, this is governor Roy Cooper over from North Carolina. The governor said initial reports of the shooting in Elizabeth city and the death of Andrew Brown Jr. This week are tragic and extremely concerning body camera footage should be made public as quickly as possible. And SBI should investigate thoroughly to ensure accountability. So, you know, hard to tell if that's just a governor's statement, right. To come out and say, every I'm concerned everything's concerning, right? Everything that happens in the world is extremely concerning and thoughts and prayers and whatever. We're better than this America, America, America, right? That's what politicians do. But is it, is it, is there something really concerning here because the police is being mom about they're being mom about this, right? They don't want this coming out. They showed the family 20 seconds. And as we're going to hear in this next clip, it wasn't even that great of footage. It was sort of footage. That was well, here it is.

Speaker 2: 23:42

Did you hear in that 20 seconds? And could you tell how many officers were firing? It was at least seven to eight officers there. And the number there were really enough, you know, um, we lost count. That's 20 seconds. We lost count in 20 seconds. How many shots were left? The video you saw with the police vehicle? Mark marked was Mark. Yes. Were they in uniform or were they not? Some of them was in SWAT. Some of them had on, uh, jeans and khakis with the upper part in uniform, in the audio portion that you would hear them identify themselves. You hear them say to him who they were and you need to stop. They had cut that part out. We didn't 20 seconds. We didn't get a laugh. All they said was, um, let me look at my note. Make sure I get it correct at the time. Second one guy's phone pointing at him. Why his hands are on the steering wheel. Let me see your hands. His hands on the steering wheel. It was at least five on the driver's side, pointing the gun at him. Let me see your hands. That's why it started at the one second Mark. So you did not see the beginning, them driving up. You'll see that this video was them standing shoot guns pointed at him. Yeah. That's why I already being fired. That's already been fired by the time he saw it. And then someone was running from devil's side of the street, another officer. Um, so you, you not before, but what you saw as soon as the video starts, you already hear shots. Yes. It's my understanding that the body cam that was shown was an officer furthers away, not the officers who who's right in front of them. Right. So that's the body cam they show. So there were five cops standing on the driver's side. You did not see the body cam from those five cops that were going to bend. Oh no, we didn't see that. What was the vantage point behind the car side of the car? On the side of the carpenter? Across the street. So he was running to the opposite side of the truck, right? So it wasn't the ones that were shooting. He was shooting two at some point further away. Yes.

Speaker 1: 25:48

So they take the cop furthest away and they cut his body camera out. There's seven, eight cops, seven. She said so many different body, so many different gunshots going off. They can't even keep track of them and they get a full 20 seconds. So they don't even get to see what happened as they approached. So they're okay. So they're being accountable. They're being trans. What is this? This is insane. So let's go over. We'll finish this story up here. It says Monday marks six days since the shooting happened on the 21st and authorities so far had provided limited information regarding the circumstances under which Brown was killed. Meanwhile, protests are demanding transparency. They persisted in the city, a municipality of 18,000 people, 165 miles North of Raleigh. Wooten said deputies from his department, including a tactical team were attempting to serve a drug-related search and arrest warrant. When Brown was shot, he said multiple deputies fired shots, but he disclosed few other nearby dare County had issued two arrest warrants for Brown on drug related charges, including possession with intent to sell cocaine Brown 42 had a criminal history dating back to the nineties, including past drug convictions. Seven deputies, as I mentioned, had been placed on leave amid indications and uh, including emergency scanner traffic and an eye witness account that Brown was shot in the back. As he tried to drive away in his neighborhood, it's going to be bad. It's good. Could, could, could be very bad. Now, you know, the other thing you have to sort of ask yourself, what's always missing from these stories, right? If somebody gets killed, it's always there. Well, they had a gun, they had a knife, they had some sort of dangerous weapon. Haven't seen anything like that yet. Right? Did they open the door after they shot him and you know, find gun and guns and drugs and everything like typically if they do, that's one of the first things you hear officers were responding to a threat, he opened fire, they fired back. And the story, right? Just like what we saw with Mikaila Bryant. He shot her, but we got the video as a knife. Right. She was attacking another female with that. So pretty kind of open and shut case. Even a lot of people on CNN, I think Don lemon and some others were also going in, well kind of had to happen that way because of what we saw. This one haven't seen anything quite like that yet. Right? They haven't, they haven't shown us that 20 seconds of this guy waving a gun or this guy waving a knife. And if he was driving away and officers loaded into the back of his car, it's not good. All right. Let's take some questions over from watching the watchers.locals.com. If you want to support the show, that's the place to do it. First question comes over from Chris, John in the house as why isn't there an obligation for the police to promulgate the body cam footage. Forthwith. Good question there, Chris. Uh, it's, it's a, it's, it's a departmental issue, right? This is something that individual departments, cities, municipalities, States, counties, they all figure this stuff out on their own and they deal with it. And a lot of people are saying, this is a pretty big problem that there should be some sort of a national standard or, you know, local state standards where everybody, where they have certain policies that the people demand are put in place in a situation like this, you can have a rapid response team. And the city of Phoenix, the Phoenix police department to their credit have done a very nice job with this. We've had a couple officer involved shootings here. They get the whole thing, scripted, edited. They bring in somebody of a certain demographic to come in and sort of voiceover for that. They match it all up beautifully. It's nice. They do it quickly and they do it. Um, they do it with precision, which I think is a better model. I think it's what other law enforcement agencies should be doing, because you can see what happens here. If they don't tell us what happened, people are going to fill in the blanks themselves. And when they're being shady and not telling us what really w what what's going on, and they're sort of Deloitte, we've got to go ask a file, a motion. We've got to talk to the County and they're investigating. And, and then when you do get to see it, you bring the whole family and you say, well, we're only going to take two of you and you don't even get to bring your lawyer. And when you get into the room, now we're only going to show you 20 seconds. Give me a break, guys, you got to open up the books. You got to show us this stuff. Otherwise, it's going to be even worse if you don't national. And that's not a threat from me, I'm saying that's a threat from, from society. Society wants to see this stuff. We're seeing what happens if they don't next up, we've got national populace says like 20 seconds. Are we sure it is 20 seconds? Have we seen the tape? Is Crump capitalizing? Well, he, he certainly is capitalizing. I don't think that there's any question about that. He is doing a good job, right? And as I mentioned, if the government's not going to put, put, give us the information first, then he hasn't. He has a clean slate. He has a tabula rasa. You can just go and create whatever narrative he wants, whether it's

Speaker 3: 30:25

Or not, who's going to rebut that because they haven't really

Speaker 1: 30:29

At least any information. So currently the only story we

Speaker 3: 30:32

Have is his, we have town

Speaker 1: 30:34

Trout in the house. As on the other hand, Ben Crump only wanted to ignore all the other video from the Shovan trial.

Speaker 3: 30:43

Did he?

Speaker 1: 30:45

So I think he, I think he was very, he was mostly interested in the bystander video because of course that was the most damaging. We have hack consulting in the house. As I hope police departments start getting more restrictive on what they release. Well, really hack. See that's the opposite of what I think. Why should the family have access to the full video? They lost their loved ones already. Why do they want to see the movie of how it happened? Why is this seen as a coverup? Why is this seen as lying and manipulating? Why, what about the people in the area that happened to be on the video? They show their face in the area of privacy and confidentiality, but why trust the police? Well, I think it's, I think it's that we don't trust the police, which is why we demand eyeballs on what they're claiming happened right there. We don't trust the police. I don't trust them at all. So they are saying something happened a certain way. All of us are saying, no, it did. And we don't believe you. So you have to open up your, your books and show us, cause you're a public extension. Okay? You, you, you, you know, you're not a private citizen, you are working for us, the public, you're working for the citizens in your locality. And so we want to

Speaker 3: 31:44

Know what you're doing. You are

Speaker 1: 31:46

Our employees essentially. Now, you know, they don't like it when you frame it that way, but it's true. They're performing a public service. We, as a society have gathered together and said, well, we're all going to pay a certain amount of taxes to fund these goods that can be evenly more or less distributed across society. And law enforcement is one of those things. So if they are going to be performing a duty and people are going to be getting killed in the performance of those obligations, and we have problems with them, killing people, then we want to be able to go and investigate when necessary. And so it's, it's sort of a tradition of public access and public records and transparency and accountability that you want the government to be able to be opened up. So you can see what they're doing. We have Jeremy Machita says, unfortunately, a lot of veteran law enforcement is quitting across the country. They take with them all the wisdom and experience that won't be passed down and making the overall state of law enforcement on a downward. I think you're absolutely right, Jeremy and I actually saw a headline on this. I don't think it's in our slides today, but we did talk about, or I did read about, uh, I think Philadelphia had something like, you know, a hundred or so or so recruits just kind of bail, right? And their, and their, their, their, their numbers are down dramatically and that's going to be a problem. And I don't think that is going to be addressed easily because the momentum seems to be going the other direction. And the momentum seems to be in favor of the defund, the police, not in favor of the increased funds for the police. We have Mar Fox in the house says, can we just legalize drugs already? I'm tired of no-knock warrants and drug raids and 30% of the prison population being in their Fort ridiculous sentences. Some for life for goodness sake here, here on that one ma well done. Yeah. I agree with you completely. I think the drugs, you know, the drug war is so dumb. We've seen time and time again, how many people get killed because around it, up in drug crimes, you know, and, and this guy, right, they were, they were serving a drug warrant, cocaine. Okay, good. Well, he's dead. And now, you know, the rest of the city is going to be on high alert and you're going to have to pay for it. I hope that cocaine was worth it for you. I hope that that big interdiction was really worth it because now you're going to, you know, the,

Speaker 3: 33:49

The whole, the whole city is going to have

Speaker 1: 33:51

To pay the consequences. There. A lot of people in prison, a lot of people in jail for drug crimes and they are addicts. They're addicted to things. They're not bad people. They're not broken people. They're addicts, they've got problems, just like the rest of us. Do we we're all addicted to something. Okay. You can say that you're without flaw may not be alcohol or drugs or cocaine or methamphetamines, but might be those, uh, those donuts might be that coffee you get every morning might be that, you know, that website you go to on the internet or whatever. Okay. We all got our little quirks and flaws. Some of them just happen to be way more illegal than the others and the drug, you know, people who are addicted to drugs, they're in pain and their life is in trauma because of their upbringing or their environment or whatever. And they just need some support and a little bit of help. And so when we just say, we're going to, I don't know, execute warrants and then murder them. Cause they're driving away with some cocaine. That is not a good thing. That is not how I think society should, uh, should operate because it's just

Speaker 3: 34:46

Drugs, right? It's just drugs,

Speaker 1: 34:48

Not worth shooting and killing a man over that. Uh, and so, you know, you can make the argument that he sell. Those drugs might kill somebody else. I got all of that. But the point is we have a system of laws. We have a system of due process. We have the presumption of innocence. We do not want to empower anybody in this country with the legal authority to go and just start executing people, uh, especially

Speaker 3: 35:07

In the mission

Speaker 1: 35:10

Of wiping off drugs from our streets. It's ridiculous, Liberty or death says, I think what would be great. A great thing is if these individual police departments set up a server or archive where body cams are uploaded daily and the public could watch it. So this is something I've mentioned here before Liberty sort of a public database and even a national database, right. Somewhere where theoretically there is, there's a website called evidence.com, which is, I think it's the backend interface for axon. So if you go there, they are already uploading these, right. A lot of these are contracted companies, private companies that contract with local law enforcement agencies. And so they're national companies and they've got a national infrastructure and a national backend. So if you go to axon, if you go to evidence.com, I think you can actually, if you have the right number and access information, you can download all of the body cameras. So there's an infrastructure in place for that, but there's just no privacy policies and the police departments, they don't want that. They don't want you going through their stuff. Most, most of these things are never seen and they would prefer it that way. If you made it all publicly available, you'd have guys like me just poking around on, on these, uh, websites and seeing if I could find anything we're talking about on YouTube, we have hack consulting says, Ben Crump is the reason why the family does not have legal counsel with them. The police are showing the family, the footage out of dignity and respect their way of apologizing. If need be as well as saying there's sorrow, then you have a political

Speaker 3: 36:34

Ideolog like Crump

Speaker 1: 36:37

Trying to make it a battle. Well, that's interesting hack consulting. I think that that might be nice if the police want to do that, but it's kind of not up to them to decide how that works. Right. The family, I think, is fully entitled to the information regardless of how they want to wrap it up. We have, Oh, sock, Rob, big fan. So do you think the hold on the video could be, they may have riots over it. Yes, I do. I think that is the reason, is that a good reason not to release a video? So I don't

Speaker 3: 37:06

Think so, but they do, right.

Speaker 1: 37:08

They think that, uh, you know, they need permission. They got to make sure everything's all okay. Issue the emergency orders and all this stuff

Speaker 3: 37:17

Because they, they, they probably know it's bad,

Speaker 1: 37:19

Which is why they are delaying it. Jeremy[inaudible] in the house as law enforcement agencies could probably raise a lot of money if they offered a paid subscription for live streaming police, body cameras, cops live, live and uncut. That's from Jeremy. Yeah. They're the biggest shows. Right? True crime is very popular. Some of the biggest podcasts, best novels or biggest novels, I don't know about best, but the biggest ones are out there. They're all true crimes. Netflix here in Amazon, this it's popular. We have, my Fox says sounds like they thought he'd be a,

Speaker 3: 37:48

If he drove up, drove off or we're thinking he

Speaker 1: 37:51

Run someone over. That's my guess. Anyways. We'll see. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 37:54

Well, we'll see.

Speaker 1: 37:57

And that's kind of a similar argument to what we were talking about with Kim Potter. Remember that? And when I sort of did the defending Kim Potter, now there's an argument. I think that the police could make that argument, that somebody who was resisting arrest is a fleeing felon and they're a danger to society. And so you're justified to shoot them. Right? And I think that's not a, not an argument that I, um, endorse or, uh, even appreciate, but it is an argument and that would be one of them that they could proffer forward in a situation like this leafy bug in the house says it boggles my mind that after all that's gone down over the past few years in particularly the last the police would allow the perception of what happened to be portrayed in this way. Maximum transparency is required. Totally agree with you on that leafy bug. It's like, Hey,

Speaker 3: 38:44

You know, if you, if you want to nip this stuff in the bud, you got it

Speaker 1: 38:49

Forthcoming about it. You got to show it to us so we can see it. Otherwise the narrative is going to be whatever the opposition side says it is. And so, you know, this is sort of like a lesson in politics, right? When, when I was in, in college, when I was a, I was studying political science and there was a professor who I actually couldn't stand at all. And I'm not sure whatever happened to the guy, but he was a political person and he was running for office and all this stuff ran a very obnoxious class. Of course, like the rest of college was on one particular side of the aisle. And he, he taught a very lesson. We were reading through something or other, and he was talking, I think it was, it might've been about Obama. Yeah, because that would have been in 2008, right. That was his first campaign. And he said something in one of Obama's books, he came out and in the book, he released a lot of, sort of, at that time, damning information about himself, he smoked marijuana, he smoked cigarettes. He had some flings with some women, whatever. He sort of did a deep dive on his college days and sort of put that out in the public first, before he even started running for anything serious. Right? One of the, one of his first books was sort of airing out all of his garbage in his closet. Here it is. America here, take a look at it. I wrote about it in my book twice. I wrote two books about all of it in there. And so he's being proactive. You do this in trial. It's sort of like you throw out the bad facts. First. We talked about this in the Shovan case,

Speaker 3: 40:11

Show them your cards because that's how,

Speaker 1: 40:13

How you diffuse the situation. Yes. We're sorry. Here's what's going on. But when you try to hide it and people find out after the fact that it makes it way worse. When you know the police now release this stuff, or if a bad fact comes out in trial, or if you're in a situation in, you know, running for politics and your opponent finds the information out and they release it, they get to craft the narrative. They get to tell the story in their version and you lose the opportunity to go out and be defining. So that's what's happening here. They have just totally dropped the ball on it. We've got Viva in the house, Viva Fry's in the house. He, we got, he says, it's public force. It's public police force. It's a public police force. These body cam footage, it is, should be public domain. They should be released immediately. No delay, no editing here, here on that Veeva, there can obviously be exceptions for which body cam footage should be withheld or blurred or censored. But with incidents like this, no, excuse couldn't agree. More release edited, or censored footage, but released footage. Yeah, I totally agree with Viva it, it, you know it, and I agree, right. There are some very sensitive things that can come out in these videos, identities, you can have,

Speaker 3: 41:23

You know, gruesome, you know, uh, Gore

Speaker 1: 41:26

Stuff like that on a person's body. You certainly don't want to show that, right? You don't want to be provocative for the sake of being provocative. You want to show more about what happened so that we can see it because if you hide it, then it feels like something really bad happened. And you're a liar and you're dishonest because you're not telling us about it. And so that just compounds the anger and the animosity as it should, other than us just seeing it so that we can dissect it and then begin to heal if that needs to happen. And people, look, I say this all the time, justice delayed is justice denied.

Speaker 3: 41:57

We need it. The longer that they push this stuff out, you know, it's, it's, it's problematic

Speaker 1: 42:03

And people are seeing it. There are evidentiary problems with it. There are all sorts of other issues. We saw this with the Ahmad Arbery case when they waited three months to try to sweep this stuff under the rug, and that's not acceptable anymore. When this stuff happens, police departments need to have a rapid response team. They need to take responsibility for the public relations side of this stuff. Otherwise, we're going to see what happens. Ben Crump and other people in that camp are going to seize the narrative and make it their own. What's up vivo. We got to Veeva. Hey, if you missed our, uh, our, uh, interview Viva and Barnes were on the show on Friday. Very awesome conversation had a great time with those gentlemen and they have been rocking and rolling all over the place. They had a live stream yesterday, which I caught the better part of good show. So go check them out. Veeva is on YouTube. They're also on locals at Viva Barnes, law.locals.com, which is right next

Speaker 3: 42:52

Door to

Speaker 1: 42:54

Watching the watchers.locals.com.

Speaker 3: 42:57

We're like neighbors on the same street. Hey Veeva. Hey Rob. All right. So

Speaker 1: 43:02

Viva's in the house. We've got Ryan last up on this

Speaker 3: 43:04

Segment says, how

Speaker 1: 43:06

Do we defend the intent and ideals of the police departments as institutions, while holding individual police officers accountable for an action? Seems we are in a catch 22 situation where we can only achieve one of these accountable for their actions. Yes. So, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a good question. I think that it is with transparency. I think that is the first step we have to see what's going on inside these law enforcement departments before we can really start crafting some solutions. And I proposed a lot of them. I proposed, you know, sort of, uh, uh, elimination of some of the disincentives for being law abiding. So for example, qualified immunity, I have a big problem with, I've got a big problem with, uh, police unions. There are these sort of backend deals that are created a lot of the time where police records will be expunged or eliminated out of their personnel files as a part of the city contract with the police union. So they just sort of purge their records from time to time. All of that stuff has to go, how can you have an institution that has good intentions and good ideals? If they're covering for the malcontents, for the people who are, uh, the opposite of those ideals, you can't. So you have to open this up. You have to give some transparency, got to be aggressive with the bad cops. The people who were keeping the bad cops around are the unions. So something needs to be done about them as well. So great questions. All of those came over from watching the Watchers dot locals com. If you want to support the show, that's really the place to do that. You can download a copy of my book. You can download a coupon code for the existence systems course, which is available now@robertgriller.com, a little bit of a payment portal issue it's being fixed right now, but just bookmark that. And you can get it later in the week. So a lot of great stuff is happening over on locals, great people. And, uh, we really appreciate the support. So check that out@watchingthewatchersdotlocals.com. All right. And so we're going to change gear a little bit. The Supreme court of the United States is right in the middle of oral arguments this week. And there is a one case that's catching everybody's. I want to show you the schedule from the Supreme court docket. You're going to see here that today, Monday, April 26, we had a couple cases two in the morning, one in the afternoon, tomorrow on Tuesday, April 27th, we have a couple more coming down the pike, nothing really worth commenting on though, until we get to Wednesday, then you're going to notice this one down here.[inaudible] Neu area, school district

Speaker 3: 45:28

Versus B L.

Speaker 1: 45:30

All right. And what does that stand for? B L stands for Brandy levy. She is a young girl. I'm going to use her name because of course it is public because everybody's talking about this case. You can take a quick look here. This is over from the Washington post, and you're going to notice here. It says a cheerleader, Snapchat rant leads to a momentous Supreme court case on a student on student speech. So we're talking about what can students talk about? What can they say? What can they not say, whether they're on campus or off campus, can they express themselves or are they limited by some of the rules of the school's very important case and a very important concept that's happening all around this country. People are very concerned about the art institutions of higher learning colleges. We're talking about, you know, uh, corporations, we're talking about critical race theory. We're talking about a lot of interesting developments taking place across education. And so the question becomes if students speak out and the school wants to slap them back, wants to penalize them for standing up and saying something, is that allowed? Is that a constitutional thing? Are the schools

Speaker 3: 46:35

Highlighting each student's individual rights under the first amendment to free expression?

Speaker 1: 46:41

Court's going to tell us so let's dig in and figure out what's going on here. Very interesting case. So the high school cheerleader

Speaker 3: 46:48

Was relegated

Speaker 1: 46:49

To the JV squad for another year. So she's a cheerleader. You can see her over here. Again, this is all public on Washington post, and she is sort of, you know, posing and being involved. In this case, she had a fleeting bit of frustration because she

Speaker 3: 47:02

Was, she didn't make varsity. She

Speaker 1: 47:04

Posted a photo with her appraised middle finger, and another word that begins with F F school F softball, F cheer, F everything. The 14 year old Brandy levy typed into Snapchat one spring on a Saturday. Okay. So that's very important. What data this happens Saturday. Are you in school on Saturday? No, you're not like all snaps posted to a Snapchat story. This one sent to about 250 quote friends. And it was to disappear within 24 hours before everyone returned

Speaker 3: 47:35

Canceled Pena school on Monday. So she

Speaker 1: 47:39

It's on Saturday Snapchat. If you use it, you it's sort of disappearing posts. So you post these stories and send people images or videos, or, uh, you know, little, little bits of content, and then they will expire automatically. So if you get a text message, you just kind of hang onto those pictures. You save on, they stay, they stay in your message app, whatever. And with Snapchat, you can't do that. It just disappears. So

Speaker 3: 48:00

Girl posts on Saturday disappears within 24 hours take you all the way around to Sunday. Is there a school on Sunday? Not that I were called, which means that this all happened.

Speaker 1: 48:13

Off-campus she wasn't even on campus because school was not in session. The story was gone by the time Monday rolled around and everybody went back to school, but 250 people had already seen

Speaker 3: 48:23

It instead, an adolescent

Speaker 1: 48:26

Outbursts and the adult reaction to it have arrived at the Supreme court where the case could determine how the first Amendment's protection of speech applies to the off-campus activities of the nation's 50 million

Speaker 3: 48:37

Public school students.

Speaker 1: 48:39

Much of the speech from students is off-campus. And increasingly online drivers said, when I talked to school administrators, they consistently tell me that off-campus speech, but devils them and lower courts desperately need some guidance in this area. That shouldn't be a surprise as cell phones have become an extension of almost every teenager's hand and social media preferred mode of communication. And for the past year, many students have not gone near a school campus with their quotes speech happening in their homes during zoom classes. So you've got this weird now sort of overlap, you know,

Speaker 3: 49:09

And you've got people kind of in school from their houses. So does the

Speaker 1: 49:16

Principles of school, does your behavior protocols that if you travel to school, right, you can do certain things and you can't do certain things. When you step onto campus, you give up a little bit of your freedom or you can't stand up in the middle of class and start shouting

Speaker 3: 49:29

[inaudible] without repercussions, because you don't have unlimited free

Speaker 1: 49:32

Speech on a school campus. Right. You're sort of in an agreement there that you're going to give up some of those things in exchange for getting the education that you're receiving from that school district. And so the Supreme court has been involved in this before. They've had a lot of thoughts on this and not a lot, quite frankly, but, but they've ruled on these cases, you know, can you stand up in the middle of college and say, uh, you know, no war for oil or something like that. Right. And you know, there's, there's, there's rules there and it's typically about disturbing and, and those types of things. So the question now is now that we are, we are in COVID era and we have a lot of students who are not even going to campus anymore. Many of them are actually learning from home. Is there some extension of the school's guidance of their protocols into your home? And if you do something outside off of campus, outside of the school classroom, school environment, she posted this on Snapchat. She didn't post this in the middle of a class, right? This was something totally external to anything that she would do in school. Can the school penalize her for that speech? Let's find out first amendment does not quote for schools to ignore students, speech that upends the campus environment, simply because that speech originated off-campus says the school, which upheld the school's decision to kick levy off the cheer squad. So she got booted off there and the school said, listen, you're going to have all the free speech that you'll want, but there's still repercussions for the things that you say here on campus. If you can just go off campus and say, whatever you, anything, any, you know, whatever you want without any repercussions, how can we uphold the campus environment on campus? Here is Brandy and her father talking a little bit more about this?

Speaker 4: 51:14

Well, when I was four, that's how everyone did it. Everyone just always posted everything on social media. And I myself feel like it was easier to do it over social media than it was just to like walk up to my parents and say, Hey, I'm this and that. But I mean, I've gotten some really harsh messages, but everyone has their own opinions. And I'm just, I don't really worry about it too much.

Speaker 5: 51:39

Uh, I, I was more concerned as to what led to the Snapchat. Like I was more concerned of the emotional situation that Brandy was having at the time, more so over the use of a profane word, instead of taking Brandy in the seat of guidance, counselor, to talk about her feelings and situations, they just compounded her emotion by what they did. They took away something that was her only break for peace. And she lost that. If, if they're restricted from doing that, you know, expressing themselves on how they feel us as parents may not know our children are having any emotional problem.

Speaker 1: 52:26

So yeah, so, so the parents are saying, Hey, you know, she's a 14 year old girl she's pumped full of hormones. She didn't make the varsity team she's pest, right? And she gets on Snapchat F this F this F this F that, and we've all felt that way, right? And some of us are in our thirties and still feel that way. So she, you know, she's just popping off on Snapchat school says, all right, while you're booted off the team then, and family decides to S to Sue school says, now we're allowed to do that. You know, we have an obligation to maintain a safe campus environment. If people are running their mouth outside of our purview, we can actually impact that student's participation in school. The story continues from the Washington post says whenever, wherever students speech originated, schools should be able to treat students alike when their speech is directed at the school and imposes the same disruptive harms on the school environment. So this is a school speaking school boards brief as well as drivers book title refers to the foundational Supreme court case regarding students' speech. It's called tinker vs de Moines, 1969 decision held that students and teachers do not quote, shed their constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression at the school house gate. Meaning as soon as you cross the line into school, you just don't say, well, I'm just going to put up my first amendment rights here are going to hang that up. Free expression, free association, assembly, petition for grievance, hang all of those things up. Sure. Now tell me about, uh, women and other cultures and how, you know, the patriarch will go, go ahead. All right, fine. Right. You don't do that. You bring it all in, you carry it in with you. Now, once you bring it in, there are certain rules and certain things that, uh,

Speaker 3: 54:08

That, that impede

Speaker 1: 54:10

Your ability to be disruptive within the classroom. So tinker also held that schools have broader authority over students. Then the state generally does when restricting speech that authorities can discipline students for on-campus speech that causes, or is likely to cause quote, material and substantial disruption of school functions. Court ruled seven to two in favor of Mary Beth tinker, because it said the black armband she wore to protest the Vietnam war was not disruptive. School wanted to say you can't protest Vietnam. She said, sure, as sure as hell I can't, I have free speech in this country. I'm going to wear this black armband. I'm going to walk it right on in here and sit down and protest this war school said, no, you can't do that. Supreme court said, she sure as heck can, because it wasn't a material or a substantial disruption of the school's functions in a half century. Since that case Supreme court decision have been few and far between justices have upheld school disciplinary action regarding allude speech by students, student newspaper, that operated at the direction of school officials and a nonsensical sign with a seemingly pro-marijuana message. Bong hits for Jesus held by a student at school activity. So all of that could be regulated Levy's case cases different. It can certain speech far beyond the schoolhouse gate made online on a weekend unconnected to a school event at all. This may seem like a very narrow case about a minor temper tantrum on Snapchat, but it is about speech anywhere and everywhere by students of all ages said Franklin Mont director of the freedom of information at the university of Florida, because it is somewhat rare for the justices to take a student speech case. They are writing broadly the standards that will apply for two or three generations. Lamont said they are writing the standards for all forms of speech across all media.

Speaker 3: 56:02

Ooh, SI, SI.

Speaker 1: 56:05

That is, that's why we're talking about this. It says, I was just feeling levy said I was just feeling really frustrated and upset at everything that day, besides the snap in which she and her friend posed with middle fingers extended. She sent another love how me and another student get told. We need a year of JV before we make varsity, but that doesn't matter to anyone else. She signed off with an upside down smiley face sent to about 250 people said, I didn't think it would have an effect on anyone. And it didn't really, but one person took a screenshot and showed it to another. Who happened to be the daughter of one of the cheerleading coaches? Uh, Oh, some cheerleaders complained about Levy's message. And the coaches decided to suspend her from the squad for a year. Coaches said her snap violated the team's rule. She'd agreed to including showing respect, avoiding foul language and inappropriate gestures and a strict policy against any negative information regarding cheerleading, cheer leaders or coaches placed on the internet. Brandy's parents, Larry and Betty Lou appealed to the athletic director, the principal and the superintendent and the school board to no avail. Then with the help of the ACLU, they filed a federal lawsuit district. Judge agreed that the suspension from the squad violated the first amendment, noting the Brandy speech was not disruptive. So they're using that old standard, right? Under tinker, they're saying, Hey, the armband wasn't disruptive. Now, if you went in there and you started throwing, you know, bricks and saying, you know, whatever, you know, and, and, and the occupation. So I'm like, that's a, that's a disruptive thing to do. So you're not allowed to do that here though. It was just an armband. Similarly, in Levy's case, this was just a Snapchat post. So when the, when, so levy was booted off of the team, ACL you, along with the parents file, a lawsuit goes up to a district court. They're saying, Hey, reinstate her. She should not have been booted off this thing. You violated her constitutional rights because she has a right to free speech. He was just speaking her mind. Wasn't on campus. Wasn't disruptive, had nothing to do with school whatsoever. Therefore, what you did was a breach of your obligations as a government entity, as a state actor, you violated her free, her free speech. Bring her back. District court agreed, says, yeah, you're right. She wasn't disruptive at all. Bring her on back. So what did the school do? They appealed it. They took it up. So they went up to the third circuit court of appeals, acting on the school boards appeal. The circuit court went even further than the district. Judge, judge, Cheryl and Krauss said, Tinker's grant of authority to school. Administrators does not extend to off-campus speech. So this third circuit just came back out and said, Hey, Hey, it doesn't have, it. Doesn't have anything to it's off-campus fair game. She can say whatever the heck she wants. Cause it's not on campus. So the third circuit actually expanded it. Not good for the school school said, Hey, this district court ruling is hard against us. We want to appeal it. And the court of appeal said, Oh yeah, it's about to get even harder there, buddy. Boy, because now it doesn't apply to anything that happens off campus. What do you think about that? Well, they turned around and said, well, we don't like that either. So we're going to take this up to the Supreme court. That's where we are. So it says her opinion at the third circuit defined that as speech that is outside school owned, operated, or supervise channels that is not reasonably interpreted as bearing on the schools in premature,

Speaker 3: 59:25

The court was mindful

Speaker 1: 59:26

Of the challenges that administrators face to quote, manage the school environment. In the digital age, we are equally mindful. However, that new communicated technologies open new territories, where regulators might seek to suppress speech, they consider inappropriate uncouth or provocative. And we cannot permit such efforts no matter how well-intentioned without sacrificing precious freedoms, that the first amendment protects judge Thomas AMRO on the third circuit, disagree with his colleagues regarding off scamp campus. Speech said it would have been enough for his colleagues to simply have ruled in Levy's favor because her speech was not substantially disruptive. So now you see we're talking about standards

Speaker 3: 1:00:06

Sort of, is it, is it

Speaker 1: 1:00:08

The disruptive standard? Seriously, substantially disruptive. If a student says something that meets that threshold, they can be sanctioned and penalize for that. But if it's not substantially disruptive, then they're, then they're clear. That's one standard. The other one is more of a physical distinction. If you're on campus, maybe some of that can be regulated. But according to judge the other judge, if it is something that's off campus, maybe now your fair game school district told the Supreme

Speaker 3: 1:00:35

Court that allowing

Speaker 1: 1:00:37

The third circuit's ruling to stand would be dangerous. Since the Dawn of public education, the school said schools have exercised authority to discipline speech that disrupts the campus or harms other students, whether that speech originates on campus or off the district supported in the Supreme court by the Biden administration. Oh no. Oh no poses. A number of

Speaker 3: 1:01:00

Problems. The students,

Speaker 1: 1:01:02

The student who publishes answers to the test, the player who undermines the coach with an avalanche of tweets about his play, calling the disruptive student across the street

Speaker 3: 1:01:10

With a Bullhorn. What do you do with those people more

Speaker 1: 1:01:14

Seriously? The laws in DC and at least 25 States require schools to address off-campus harassment or bullying that substantially disrupts the school environment.

Speaker 3: 1:01:25

The brief States, students

Speaker 1: 1:01:27

Who encourage classmates to kill themselves, target black classmates with photos of lynchings or text the whole class photos of fellow students in compromising positions do not limit their invective to school.

Speaker 3: 1:01:38

Ours is pretty good points there, right? What are you supposed to do about that? What happens if off campus online, you have two boys or two girls

Speaker 1: 1:01:52

Each other on Twitter, and you have a bullying session where they're all bullying each other and they're all dunking on one particular student. What are you doing?

Speaker 3: 1:02:01

It's tough.

Speaker 1: 1:02:03

Big issue. Coalition of groups concerned about cyber bullying filed a brief filled with examples of such tragic results, including another cheerleader to a two hour drive away who took her own life. After online harassment, third circuit opinion said because Levy's did not raise those issues. It was reserving for another day. The first amendment implications of off-campus students, speech that threatens violence or harasses others. So now we're talking about two different types of speech. If it's, if one version is just a general

Speaker 3: 1:02:37

Opinion, the other is directed potentially at somebody, somebody else, two different types of things.

Speaker 1: 1:02:43

Each two different standards may apply. The issue comes before the Supreme court seems to pride itself on protecting unpopular speech. As Lamont wrote in slate, the Roberts court has reliably said, the first amendment requires us to tolerate all manner of unpleasantness,

Speaker 3: 1:02:59

Even

Speaker 1: 1:02:59

Includes anti-gay hate speech, lying about military heroism or selling videos of graphically violent dog

Speaker 3: 1:03:06

Fights. Judge Roberts

Speaker 1: 1:03:08

Called himself probably the most aggressive defender of the first amendment

Speaker 3: 1:03:11

On the court, which I

Speaker 1: 1:03:14

Like that about him. But he wrote the Morse versus Frederick decision in 2007, which upheld school administrators decision to discipline the student in the bong hits for Jesus case. Robert's court has been noticeably hesitant to vindicate free speech rights when it comes to public school students. So many people are asking themselves, what is he going to do now? Uh, but I really, uh, we'll see if it matters, who knows that the court accepted a review for the case in which the student prevailed. All right. So this is the, what the docket looks like. So you can see here, this is the main issue that they're going to be asking themselves. Oral arguments are scheduled for Wednesday of this week. So it's coming up here very soon. The issue, whether the tinker case, which holds it public school officials may regulate speech that would materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school, whether it applies to students, speech that occurs off campus.

Speaker 3: 1:04:02

So off-campus speech, yes or no. We're going to see,

Speaker 1: 1:04:07

See what they say. I want to show you what the briefs look like here, uh, briefly, uh, show you the briefs briefly. We've got here. This is my Hanoi's area school district, the petitioner. This is in the Supreme court of the United States and they are petitioning the Supreme court. They are appealing it. Then we have the respondents down here. We have BL a miner by and through her father, Lawrence and Betty Lou Leni. They responded and they are now on appeal from the third circuit. We've got a number of different people here. You can see the attorneys and this is the introduction. I'm sorry, this is for, uh, this is the, this is the petitioner brief. So this is the school's brief. So the school is the author of this document. And here is just a quick paragraph from the introduction says, this court should not replace a centuries worth of school practice with a territorial approach that is doctrinally, rudderless, counterproductive, and irrational confining school's authority to on-campus students, speech, which would gut the scores of federal and state laws, which prohibit off-campus speech that materially interferes with the school environment or effectively denies other students and education. And we noticed we're going to skip down here to the bottom. Paragraph says students do not check their first amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate, but the first amendment is not a territorial straight jacket that forces schools to ignore speech that disrupts the school environment or invades other students' rights, just because students launch that speech from five feet outside the school house

Speaker 3: 1:05:35

Gates mean it's, it's,

Speaker 1: 1:05:37

It's not a bad point, right? And when I was in high school, I, uh, I went to an all boys school and we had some of these rules in place. Now I don't know that it was actually, you know, written in stone, but certainly there was a cultural thing there. You know, if you did something sort of,

Speaker 3: 1:05:54

Of outside of the rules,

Speaker 1: 1:05:56

Problems for that, and people got in trouble for their off campus activity, and I'm not so sure that that was necessarily a bad thing, but that was when I was in high school. Uh, the, I think the educational system is quite different these days. We have now the respondent's brief. This is from Ms. Levy and the families. And we see here, we have David Cole with the HCLU and another attorney with the ACLU and another attorney with the ACLU. So the ACLU is really behind this. And I want to show you this because there is some serious weight behind Brandy. A lot of people are really lining up in order to make sure this goes one direction. It says here, this case is about free speech rights of young people outside of school at church during weekend protests at home, or as in this case at a local convenience store with a friend on a Saturday afternoon, outside of the school environment, young people have the right to find their voices without being unduly chilled. Their parents have the right to manage their upbringing and others have a right to hear what they have

Speaker 3: 1:06:56

To say. Petitioner seeks

Speaker 1: 1:06:58

To change that it would take tinker vs Des Moines, or this court has never gone. And its view Tinker's role, which permits schools to punish speech. If listeners might react, disruptively would become not just something young people must endure at school, but a constant feature of their lives. It would subject young people to tinkers vague quote, disruption standard 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, deterring them from saying anything that school authorities might deem controversial, critical, or politically incorrect, and therefore disruptive. Petitioner's only limitation that the speech quote be directed to the school and a reasonably likely to reach it is defined so broadly that it would encompass all speech to another student, no matter its content and all content. That is school-related for young people whose contacts are primarily classmates and from school affairs are a frequent topic that is no limit

Speaker 3: 1:07:50

At all. So it's, it's awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:07:52

So an interesting point, right? What happens if you're a student now and you don't like the next presidential candidate and you get on Twitter and you say this guy's a moron, this guy,

Speaker 3: 1:08:00

I was an idiot. And uh, one of your professors sees that and they say, well, my gosh, this is offensive to me. And

Speaker 1: 1:08:08

I feel triggered. And I think this is dangerous speech. And I'm concerned that other students in my classroom might see this. And if they do, uh, it, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna know what to do with myself because I am so out of my wits on this stuff, can nap professor impose some sort of penalty on that student for saying something that might be disruptive to those other students? It sounds like a very, very, very dangerous slippery slope there. But fortunately there are a lot of people who are highly interested in the outcome of this case. I want to show you just a quick little snippet of the docket. So take a look at this. This is color coded. It comes over from the SCOTUS blog.

Speaker 3: 1:08:48

And you'll notice here that it's color-coded

Speaker 1: 1:08:51

As I mentioned. And so you can sort of see

Speaker 3: 1:08:55

Where the

Speaker 1: 1:08:55

Activity is. So back on October, 2020 back before that August 28th, 2020, uh, the school filed a petition for a register shear Rory, then October, we have a brief, we have the Pennsylvania school boards association and the Pennsylvania principals association. You see this color here, this light yellow, that means they're supporting the school and this other one here, national school boards association, this yellow light yellow means they're supporting the school. Then we have all of these light greens, which means they're not really supporting anybody. They're kind of just a neither party. We're just wanting to make the court know about our opinion. We have a Amicus curiae of national school boards association, the Massachusetts national education and support of neither party. We have national association of pupil services.

Speaker 3: 1:09:45

We have a lot of people in support.

Speaker 1: 1:09:49

Neither party filed the American center for law and justice. Then you'll notice all over here in the dark green. These are everybody. These are all the people that are

Speaker 3: 1:09:57

Supporting the student. These are all the people supporting Brittany Levy.

Speaker 1: 1:10:01

We have parents defending education, Liberty justice center, life legal defense foundation Alliance, defending freedom and Christian legal society. And the list goes on and on and on. So you'll notice it's like this dark green versus this light yellow, that's kind of the interest. Then we have all of these light greens that are sort of in the middle of the road, probably on the side of the student, but we don't know, actually these are a lot of schools as well. So, you know, they could be sort of either way, but it is a very important case. A lot of people are very interested in this. We'll see what happens. Oral arguments are scheduled for Wednesday. So now you've got a little bit of the backdrop. You're going to be ready to splice and dice those oral arguments like illegal expert. Let's take some questions over from watching the watchers.locals.com. First up is a Liberty or death says we just had a town hall organized by one of my classmates to discuss a dress code being put in place because quote, someone wore an offensive article of clothing during a class on zoom. I wonder who that could be. I wore my white privilege, a false ideology created to cultivate victimhood sweatshirt. I was the pariah of the entire year. They even circulated a petition to have me kicked out of law for being a racist. No, my sweatshirt, the announces racism, the woke left is everywhere at Liberty. You're a hilarious man. That's out of control. I love it. You're just, you're just poking. Just poke Pokemon. All right. Well, what are they going to do about it? You know, it's true. It's I don't even know what it, what, what they want out of that, but uh, okay, good for you, man. Wait way to a way to stick by your guns. I applaud that we have Sharon quit and he says, is there an age limit on freedom of speech? So I've never heard of it. Whatever happened to your home is your castle. Well, what happened Sharon is we gave all of that up to Facebook and Google and Twitter. And so they'll now they get to tell you what can come into your home and what you can say, what comes out of your home. And basically most of the things that you do in your life now are sort of relinquished to the bureaucrats elsewhere. We have Leroy T M D in the house what's up, Leroy says one segment in, and you have suggested a national database for body cam footage, national standards on relation body camera footage, and the national team to edit and release the footage. I'm not against the ideas in general, but what can we remove nationalize from a vocabulary? We don't need to give the feds any more power than they already have. Yeah. You know, it's just one idea. I agree with you actually, I'm not sure that the federal government can solve any of these issues, but it's one idea. It's one concept, you know, it's this, it's the idea that, you know, you, you build an infrastructure that is know that has standards on a national level that people sort of, uh, ascribe to. So it doesn't necessarily have to be run by the federal government. You know, I, I really disdain the idea of federalizing the police or law enforcement. I mean, I, I've been pretty consistent on this show that I think the answers to most of these things are local and that when we have people 3000 miles away from where I'm at trying to solve local problems here and they don't do a good job of it, they're terrible at it. And th th they, they try to do it though. They all sort of parachute in to wherever the local problem is and they don't solve anything. So I think most of this stuff should be dealt with locally. When I talk about sort of a, a national standard it's, it's more of an organizational standard, you know, if there was, um, like, like for example, we have testing standards, right? That, that everybody sort of aspires to. And so if we had something like that, you can call it like ISO certification, you know, these aerospace companies and things, when they are doing machining, when they're manufacturing parts for airplanes, they've got certain standards and, and credentials that they have to meet that have been agreed upon across the globe, right? We're gonna, if you're gonna fly a plane into our country, you got to meet these standards, same type of concept. If you're going to be a credentialed law enforcement in our S in our city, Mr. Chief of police, then you're going to, you're going to agree to provide the standards. Your law enforcement agency is going to provide body cameras within 24 hours. They're going to be uploaded to a public database. And all of your officers are going to be, you know, they're their, uh, personnel files, any disciplinary actions that were, let's say, involving integrity, violations, anything with, or, you know, uh, lying, anything sort of intentionally malevolence that's public record, just like mine, just like my lawyers, or you can go look me up on the Arizona state bar. You can see, have I been disciplined? Go take a look if you want, why can't we do that with police? And so it's these different standards that I think are, are just, you know, implemented that we can agree to when I talk about nationalizing it, no, it makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit. We have HLB says, how do you think reprimands for social media hate should be drafted, for example, via tick-tock there wasn't attempt to make a day for what? For rape,

Speaker 3: 1:14:45

What, but

Speaker 1: 1:14:48

Not infringe on free speech, especially impassioned hurting or outbursts

Speaker 3: 1:14:53

Humans.

Speaker 1: 1:14:56

Uh, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't know what the answer to that, to that question is. I mean, so, you know, we've gotten criticized about this, even on our channel, right on our YouTube channel. Your, you talk about free speech all the time and you sensor stuff, right? If somebody's, uh, on locals and they're posting something that is, I would say disruptive, right? Mafia, faith will sort of clean that up a little bit, because we want to have a dinner table conversation, right? We want to S we want to have our community feel like people are having a nice conversation around the dinner. We want polite activity. We want people conversing, uh, helpful, useful, interesting conversations, not people who are trying to sort of commandeer the dinner table. Those people, they got to go, and that content has to be removed, but, but those people still have a platform, right? They can, they can still, if they don't like are watching the Watchers community, they can start their own. They're not silenced from speaking their silence from being disruptive in our community. And so I'm not opposed to moderation, right? We live in a society where there is moderation, just in general, you go to a, a restaurant, you self moderate, you go and enter into a business deal with somebody else. Right? You don't say everything that's, that's truthful to you. So, you know, people have to understand that there's a difference there. We still live in a society. We still have to communicate with one another. And so just because I am somebody who believes in free speech doesn't mean that, uh, I, I say you can just come in and say, whatever the hell you want, do whatever coming to my business, just, you know, do cartwheels and, and shout racial profanities all over the place, because you have free speech and I'm a free speech person. No, that's not how that works. There are, there are things rules around the margins that we all agree to and adhere to, or, or should. And so that I think is necessary. And so if certain platforms want to go that route, I think that's right.

Speaker 3: 1:16:34

Yes.

Speaker 1: 1:16:37

Good argument for that. But when you have what we're seeing, where it's just a total cancellation across the board, when the president doesn't even have a platform anymore, that's a whole different, separate can of worms. That's a whole separate conversation. So I'm, I'm pro reasonable moderation in order to facilitate a conversation. I am anti canceling and eliminating people from the forum entirely. And I think there's a pretty big difference. There we have Nadar, bla Sierra says, Robert, if my own government can't control my speech, then no one can, the school doesn't have more power than my government. Simple Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, that my friends is the first amendment. And it's pretty clear prohibiting the free exercise or abridging the freedom of speech. Well, school's trying to do that. They don't get to do that. I like your analysis in the dark. We have Jeremy[inaudible] says school administrators, in my opinion, are nothing more than low-level politicians. They do not need to have the right to infringe our God-given rights. They need to go away defund the schools.

Speaker 3: 1:17:48

We're going to

Speaker 1: 1:17:48

Have to defund a lot of stuff. Cause I don't think we can afford anything anymore. Todd trout says when the proper punishment just be a bar of soap in her mouth, in essence, the punishment needs to fit the

Speaker 3: 1:17:58

Crime. Isn't that? Isn't that what is really wrong? Well, I think that, you know, I think that when people speak out, society has a tendency to offer corrective advice.

Speaker 1: 1:18:11

Okay. If this girl spoke out and was a big problem, obviously she got booted off of the

Speaker 3: 1:18:16

Cheerleading squad, but let's say she did,

Speaker 1: 1:18:20

Right? Let's say she was on the cheerleading squad still. And her friends were, you know, a little bit mean to her. Her coach was disappointed with her. They brought her in, they had a conversation with her. They could have corrected that behavior. Oh, why are you upset? Well, that's okay. Look, a lot of people don't make the JV or the varsity team at this young of an age. Here's our remedial plan. We're going to do this. We're going to do a thousand reps of this. And you're going to lift that and run over here and, you know,

Speaker 3: 1:18:43

Flip that and whatever, that's a better, you know,

Speaker 1: 1:18:47

And a better option in my opinion than just booting her off the team. So, you know, I think that there's more power. There's more room for us to have a meaningful dialectic. If we open up speech, if we have people talking, if you just tell students, uh, no, you can't say anything about that. Right. And, and to be honest, right. When I was in law school, when I was in college, I was not like Liberty or death is okay. I was sort of keep my head, you know, uh, even keeled a little bit just because of the D the danger there. And there really is. There really is some danger for people who are in a certain political demographic, especially in law school, because it's extremely liberal and, you know, woke times 10. It's kind of ridiculous. But, and that was when I was there, which was some time ago. Right. I don't even know what it's like now. So, you know, it's a, it's a sort of a balancing act and we're, we're also trying to figure out what that is. But as far, as far as I have seen in recent months,

Speaker 3: 1:19:45

It has gone way

Speaker 1: 1:19:46

Too far in one direction. And that is the opposite of free speech. It seems to have been, uh, highly, highly limited on the backs of a lot of the big tech companies and others Fox says, heck the one a never used to protect you from state local governments until recently let alone public schools. I certainly hope this doesn't get incorporated against citizens. I'd like the ability kick people off my own property.

Speaker 6: 1:20:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:20:13

Uh, yeah. Yeah. I'm all good. Thank you, mom. We have be brave says, would this case be any different if she was cheering at a ball game and let loose with her profane opinion, I don't see much difference. So I would think so. Right. Cause she would physically be on campus and that would be disruptive to the people there now. That's it depends how the court rules on this. We don't know, is it going to be a physical location? Is it going to be a different standard about disruption? What's the court going to say? We're going to find out soon. Nadar bless here says if one of my tax dollars goes toward that school company, whatever, then it has to respect my rights as an American citizen. I like that. We have Hugin. Munin says the answer to most of the online bullying is pretty simple. Just unfriend those people and turn off the computer or do something else. People have the right to say bad things about you. You have the right to ignore them and live your life. Ooh, that's that's good. That's good stuff right there. Let me read that one more time. This is from Hugin Menin. The answer to most of the online bullying is pretty simple. Just unfriend those people or turn off the computer and do something else. People have the right to say bad things about you. You have the right to ignore them and live your life. Good stuff. Ooh, that's good. That's powerful. I like that. We have leafy bugs says unbelievable. That SCOTUS took this up. The appellate ruling is obviously correct. The speech in question is obviously an outburst of teenage angst is preposterous to say that it was disruptive to the school community. I'll bet. The only disruption that it causes due to the school's petty and vindictive pursuit of the matter through the courts. Good leafy bug. I agree with you, right? And it's look what it's turned into. It's a national story. Now, the school's in the middle of this, uh, all, all, all for free speech, man. We gotta fight for this stuff because it's a slow whittling away of it everywhere you turn. So I applaud the student. I applaud the school. I applaud the not, not the school plot, the father for taking on the school, we'll see what the Supreme court wants to do about it. And all of those questions. Once again, came over from watching the watchers.locals.com. If you want to support the show, that's the place to do that. You can ask questions, leave comments, a lot of criticisms, whatever you want to do over there. And we would love to have you. So go check us out, watching the watchers.locals.com. All right. And our last segment of the day representatives Juul. Joan is, uh, wait, let me do that. One more time. Representative Juul Jones was recently arrested for a DUI facing a number of criminal charges. Now we're going to go through this story. And the reason being is because he's a representative, he is a, uh, house of representative member over in Michigan and he is facing, uh, he's in some hot water. Now, a lot of the time people get DUIs and it's kind of an easy thing, right? It's, it's a, it's a traumatic thing. It's not something that anybody wants to go through. It's it's awful. And it can be very, very draining and exhausting most of the time anyways, but this one went a little bit bad because first of all, this guy was a house of representatives member. And he started to throw that weight around a little bit. When the cops came up to him and started to inquire about what he was doing on the side of the road, in the ditch off of a freeway, he started to kind of want to puff himself up a little bit and say, I want your badge. I want your names. I want your ID numbers because I'm calling the governor big Gretsch, Rona, and I'm going to lay down the law. You guys should not be arresting me or harassing me. So this whole thing, as you can imagine, got bad quickly when a little bit sour. So let's take a look at what's going on here. So we can dive into the story. During arrest lawmaker threatened to call. Whitmer told troopers, he ran their budget. The police report says while he struggled with troopers after a crash earlier this month in which he was accused of driving drunk state representative told Michigan state police troopers he'd called the governor, said he had oversight of their budget. According to a police report. He said, I don't give an F bro. When I call Gretchen all need y'all's ID, badge numbers, and everything said, state rep Juul Jones, according to the report, which the Detroit news obtained on Wednesday, he also said, it's not going to be good for you. I run y'all budget, bro. According to the trooper on the scene, bearing a license plate with the word elected written across it Jones black Chevy Tahoe, drifted erratically in and out of lanes and rumble strips along interstate 96 on April six, before he pulled off onto the shoulder and rolled into the ditch, according to an MSP report from his arrest. Now, as I mentioned, right, you know, people get DUIs all the time. Doesn't make them bad people. It doesn't mean that they did anything, um, that that should justify, you know, the end of their life, the end of their existence, the termination of their relationship with their children, the severance of their rights, their jobs, you know, their careers, whatever. I have a lot more empathy for people in those positions. I think that largely a lot of people are just hurting. They're in a lot of pain. That's why they're drinking to that degree. They've got some pain, some trauma that they're trying to drown out with alcohol and punishing them is one component of a much bigger equation. I've said this many times here, it's, it's not possible to punish the pain out of people. So when I see people like this who are acting erratically, who, you know, somebody who is an elected official, who is, you know, out doing these things, my first instinct is to have some empathy for them to say, well, maybe we'll give this guy the benefit of the doubt. We all our own issues, our own trials and tribulations sometimes. Yeah. Some one, one particular vice just gets the better of us

Speaker 3: 1:26:09

And, and approach

Speaker 1: 1:26:11

This story with some of that humanity. But what really just irks the hell out of me is when people in positions of power, like this guy, an elected representative, like this guy gets involved with the police and immediately starts throwing around their weights. This happens a lot. A lot of our elected officials do this. A lot of our police officers do this. Prosecutors, judges, Paul, everybody does this and we call it the blue shield or the blue line. If you're inside the power structure, you get a little bit more protection than, than, than the next person, somebody outside of the power structure, which is why when they make it so transparently obvious that they're just, they're sort of, you know, uh, playing on their elected position. They deserve to get skewered a little bit. So we're going to continue to do that. Here is

Speaker 3: 1:26:57

Juul Jones. He's an American politician,

Speaker 1: 1:27:00

Very young, okay. This guy is young born in 1995, age 25 or 26.

Speaker 3: 1:27:06

Here's a picture of him in 2017.

Speaker 1: 1:27:08

He's an American politician from Michigan served on the city council of Inkster. Michigan was elected to represent the 11th district of the house as the youngest representative in state history.

Speaker 3: 1:27:17

He's a member of the democratic

Speaker 1: 1:27:20

Party. So two troopers arrived at the scene. They said the 26 year old Inkster Democrat was combative and attempted to flash a badge at police. Instead of his ID, eventually Jones was taken to the ground. Stun gun was used twice and then pepper spray. His officers attempted to get him into handcuffs. Jones was booked overnight in Livingston County, released, released the next day pending lab results. Last week, he was charged with four counts of resisting and obstructing a police officer operating a vehicle with a high blood alcohol count operating while intoxicated, reckless driving possession of a weapon. While under the influence of alcohol, his lawyer, Allie Hammoud said he and his client were reviewing evidence and would refrain from commenting ahead of Jones's preliminary examination, his blood alcohol content. According, according to the report was 0.19 legal limit is 0.08. So that's pretty high according to DUI standards. So for those of you not in the no DUIs, typically we'll scale up in Arizona. We have four different tiers of these. We have what's called impaired to the slightest degree, which means any, any level of impairment, any amount at all. It doesn't matter if it's over or under the legal limit. If you're impaired to the slightest degree, that's enough for a DUI. Then you have the legal limit, which is the 0.08. Then we have what's called an extreme DUI, which is a 0.1, five and above. And we have a super extreme DUI, which is 0.2, zero and above. That's the highest misdemeanor level, a DUI that we have. We don't have any higher thresholds than 0.20. And so this guy was pretty high. He was at a 0.19, which is almost there. It's almost at the super extreme, which means it was quite high EMS. And troopers said Jones appeared intoxicated at the scene of the crash. EMS said he attempted to show them a badge, try to interfere and push responders while they were treating his passenger. According to the report, Jones tried to show officers a badge. And when they asked him for an ID, he shook his head, his arms quote, as if he were about to do something, whatever that means when he refused to provide an ID, trooper said they attempted to restrain him and brought into the ground. He refused to reply with comply, with commands, to put on handcuffs and a stun gun was used twice and he was pepper sprayed in the eye. Third law enforcement officer from Fowler Ville helped to get Jones' left arm into a cuff loaded. Glock was found in the cup holder. Jones's vehicle later refused the blood alcohol test, but police obtained a search warrant. So that's kind of a bad move on. His part. Jones is serving his third term in the house member of the national guard. Army reserves. Auxiliary officer in Inkster in the legislature is democratic vice chairman of the house, military veterans and Homeland security committee. So there'll be some questions about what the, what the Congress does with him here is, uh, the, the body cam video, nothing too gruesome here. I'm going to give you the standard generic content warning on this, but nothing, nothing, nothing really bad, right? Nobody shot killed just kind of standard, um, aggressive arrests happening.

Speaker 7: 1:30:47

[inaudible] representative mentioned his position,

Speaker 1: 1:31:36

The legislature, and all right, so we're not going to play the news, but uh, but you heard him say, aye, look, I'm going to call Gretchen. I need, I need your IDs, badge numbers, everything I'm calling Gretchen. I run your budget. You're all in deep trouble. Now. Now the guy's young, right? Obviously very drunk. So, um, and not, not excusing his behavior or justifying it, but he's a young guy. Doesn't know what he's doing. He's going to pay the price for this, for sure. Uh, he's being charged with a crime, several of them, in fact, and it sounds like the prosecution is going to be moving forward, full steam ahead as it should, which is the good thing. So we have a bad politician and we have some good police officers who are not giving him any special exemptions for being part of the power structure, which is a good thing. Take a quick look at some more information over from Detroit free press says here after Jones drove the vehicle into a ditch, his unidentified passenger required medical attention Jones became confrontational with emergency medical technicians and police producing badges. 40 caliber Glock handgun. This has the blood alcohol is a little bit lower to 0.17 at his Friday arraignment. So this is from a couple of weeks ago at the 53rd district magistrate Jerry Sherwood released Jones who has been free since the day after the incident on a$15,000 personal bond, which is w which is pretty high from a, for a, a DUI case. But remember he asked, he also has some resisting arrest charges, which is why that is higher. So anytime you're sort of seen to beat resisting the system with resisting arrest, or if you're, you know, assault on an officer or something like that, the judge is going to consider you to be more of a flight risk, because there is some indication that you are already adversarial against the system, or if you're already willing to push back against police or resist arrest, well, maybe you just have a problem with authority. So maybe you're going to resist come into court. So that's why his bond is a little bit higher than you might expect to see otherwise, meaning he did not have to post any money that has been on a personal bond. So he didn't have to post any money. Ordered him to abstain from alcohol, illegal drugs, recreational marijuana submit to random drug and alcohol testing, surrendered, all weapons, except those that he needs for the national guard. His attorney said Jones is presumed. Innocent Jones is an auxiliary police officer in Inkster

Speaker 3: 1:33:47

And a deacon and his church. So this guy's a police officer in Inkster, auxiliary police officer, wow,

Speaker 1: 1:33:56

Most serious felony charge, resisting and obstructing a police officer carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison. I doubt he sees anything even remotely close to that probably sees very minimal jail time. Jones is separately charged with resisting and obstruction. His attorney says he's going to continue to faithfully serve his constituents. After the hearing he posted over on Instagram Jones, who stood beside Hamoud at who office for the video arraignment is in his third and final term in the state house has not been available for comment. He posted a message to his Instagram account last week in which he expressed confidence that God will protect him. This last week has literally been the craziest week I've ever had as a civilian, but because of his religious faith, even now in the midst of so much confusion, I find peace. So, um, yeah, the, uh, Gideon D the Sandro spokesman for the house speaker, Jason Wentworth said no decision has been made about what discipline Jones might face in the legislature while the outcome of his case is pending. And of course they are very disappointed. So as they should be, we have my Fox in the house taking some questions, says, neat, legal question. I've been pondering in DUIs. Is it an adequate defense to claim that you are so impaired that you could not have reasoned that you could not have reasonably have known how impaired you were that wouldn't exclude men's Raya like mental and competence in other crimes. It's a great concept, man. It's a great idea. But unfortunately, voluntary intoxication is not a defense. If you do it to yourself, that's not a defense. If you are intoxic, if somebody else intoxicates you, then it might be a defense. So if you're at a bar and somebody puts a roofie or spikes your drink with something, or if somebody forcibly is making you, you know, consume something in one regard or another, or gives you something, you know, an edible of something and you think it's something else, and it's not, that could be a defense, right? Very rarely is that successful because oftentimes there is some element of voluntary consumption, right? You may not have wanted to, uh, to take the, you know, the brownie that had some of the extra stuff in there, but you didn't want the brownie that had some of the benign stuff in there. And now they, they, they put a little bit more in there. And so, you know, you, you, you wanted to ingest and consume something. So therefore there is some criminal liability that connects to that. So it needs to be involuntary. If it is voluntary, you don't get to get hammered to the point of getting yourself so drunk that you don't remember what happened and then X, and then claim an exemption for that. But it's a good question. It's something that the courts have asked themselves and flushed out the Darla sear says this police department. Sure. Didn't have any problem about releasing this footage. Politicians are the worst.

Speaker 3: 1:36:38

Politicians are the worst.

Speaker 1: 1:36:40

You know how many times I've said that in my life verbatim, like those four words, politicians are the worst. Uh, the worst Joe Snow says, will you please ask your Illinois resident viewers to send me their email addresses?

Speaker 3: 1:36:55

Sure. There you have it. Folks

Speaker 1: 1:36:57

Send them over to Joe Snow. I'm seeking spectators to apply pressure via numbers on my CC list. And on my daily emails to my state representative, Fred Crespo, Illinois 44, trying to get my rep to support the repeal of the, uh, freedom of information act, firearm, owner ID. Oh, maybe that's what it is. Firearm owner ID act. Well. Yeah. So port Joe, snow that go over on Joe, hop on to locals as you're on there right now, tell the community what you need. If you want to support that. Cause I, I do not want to get in the way go support. Joe Snow sounds like, sounds like something I'm seeking to apply pressure on my CC list, trying to get my rep to support the repeal of the firearm owner ID act. I do not support firearm owner IDs. So yeah. So go support Joe Snow. I endorse that. All right. If that is what it is, which I have no doubt, no reason to believe that it isn't so great questions from locals.com. Thank you so much. If you want to support the show and be a part of the next one, you can go over to watching the watchers.locals.com, sign up, support us there and join in that. We've got some people we want to welcome to the great community. Look at, Oh my gosh, we all these people we want to welcome. We've got Rowan cloud. Welcome to the party. We have little Philly welcome Susanna Academy. Susan saw South San Academy. Welcome to you. Tools for me too, is, is now a part of the community. The real lit Wyoming strong. We have re we'll re 57 quartzy. We have cubic zirconia in the house to a all day, every day, which is second amendment all day, every day is in the house. Dilla doom, ILEC Dilla Duma lick is in the house. Michael underscore our, we have DB moron. We got Lydia Terry 2002. Carrie is in the house. Not her mother is also joining the program. We've got granola stew in the house and Ash Digger. Welcome to you. We've got a lot of people signed up. We have Luke ago to welcome to you. 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