Brianna Longoria was driving in Phoenix when she was pulled over for running a red light on December 29, 2024. The officer who conducted the stop, a woman by the name of Annette Hannah, pulled her over claimed that she had red, bloodshot, glassy eyes, a sign of marijuana intoxication. Accompanied by her partner, Annette Hannah, they put her through sobriety tests, a breathalyzer, and then arrested her for DUI, saying there were signs of impairment. Brianna had just gotten married the day before, and had to cancel her honeymoon in order to use the money for her legal defense. The arrest also caused her issues with her employment as a nurse, and she lost her driver’s license for 6 months.
She blew a 0.00 breathalyzer. Later, blood tests would show no drugs or alcohol in her system. None. You can beat the charges, but you can’t beat the ride.
Later, her attorney requested body camera footage, which would show that the light was green, so there was no probable cause or RAS for the traffic stop. The officer performing the stop was assigned to the city’s DUI unit, and her body camera caught this:
Her partner, officer Mary Methany: “Triple zeros. Just like I thought.”
Hannah: “They’re going to kick me off squad if I don’t get a DUI. But I seriously pulled like so [unintelligible] …”
Metheny: “No. No. There’s nights where I don’t get any. You’re fine.”
Hannah: “But I’m like, I can’t just conjure one up. I have tried.”
Metheny: “You can. You can.”
Hannah: “I hung out on Seventh Ave., by those bars.”
While Longoria was being arrested, her husband was talking to another police officer who said even if Longoria’s blood alcohol level was 0.0, “the city can do whatever they want to do with those results.”
The police department investigated themselves and found no signs of wrongdoing, and released this statement:
The Phoenix Police Department does not have DUI quotas. DUI enforcement assignments are based on operational needs, and officers assigned to impaired‑driving enforcement are expected to take action when their observations and training lead them to believe a driver may be impaired. Officers are required to base enforcement decisions on observed driving behavior, indicators of impairment, and the totality of the circumstances.
Qualified immunity needs to go. Officers need to carry malpractice insurance so the taxpayer doesn’t have to fund this sort of open corruption. Any department found to have quotas, whether they be written or defacto, should result in the lead officer of the department losing their jobs and any law enforcement licenses.
This video is truly terrifying. I found it while researching an entirely different and unrelated post. This cop is the scariest one I have seen. Listen to the way he talks. He is treating that man like a THING, an object. I have literally met serial killers, and he sounds just like one of them, IMO. Imagine for a moment, being his prisoner. You are in his power, he can do whatever he wants with you, and judging by the behavior of the other cops, he will get away with it. Now think about how you would act towards him while you were in his custody. You bet your ass you would do what it took to survive. Yes, sir, no, sir, I’m sorry sir. Otherwise, there is a pretty good chance that he will kill you.
I know the video is a bit long, but it’s worth your time. Truly chilling.
As one of the comments to the video said, “Cops don’t become psychopaths, but there are plenty of psychopaths who become cops.”
In this case, the FBI actually investigated and prosecuted him. I don’t know why, because I don’t have access to the trial, but a jury found the cop not guilty of wrongdoing.
The other thing that really disturbs me, is that the other cops (both at the scene and in the jail) just stood there as this guy did this. As far as I am concerned, that makes each and every one of them “bad cops.” If anyone wants to tell me that I shouldn’t say that since the jury found him not guilty, then I don’t want to hear a word when some criminal walks on a technicality or because a jury found them not guilty.
I saw the video shot by the police officers’ own body cams, and I can judge for myself when I see wrongdoing. I don’t need a jury to tell me it’s OK.
When I was in the military, I once had a commanding officer (Captain, O-6 type) who told us that if he had 100 enlisted men with 100 video cameras who said a junior officer had committed a criminal act, but the officer denied it, the Captain would have no choice but to trust in his officer and assume that the enlisted men and their video recordings were wrong.
I disagreed with that statement then, and I disagreed with it in 2023.
In August of ’23, a handful of coworkers and I watched as a cop tortured one of the patients in our emergency room. After we jointly filed a complaint, we were all told that the supervisor had investigated, and the officer involved said that it didn’t happen that way. All of us, we were told, must have misunderstood what we all saw, because we don’t understand police procedure. Besides, the dude who was tortured was not a nice guy, even though he was in jail for a misdemeanor and had an otherwise spotless record. I was so disturbed by this, that I wrote a post about it.
That’s how cops investigate. Cops investigate themselves and find they committed no wrongdoing. It happens all of the time. I have seen it on more than one occasion. In my profession, I meet and see a lot of cops, a lot of scummy people, and a Venn diagram of the two groups would have a good amount of overlap. The prosecutors, judges, and the rest of the legal system need cops in order to keep their jobs. My guess is that the entire system is playing team politics: half of them on one side, half on the other. Justice is lost somewhere in the middle.
I don’t know why the jury let him walk. Maybe they didn’t see the video. Maybe it was heavily redacted. Maybe the prosecutor deliberately tanked the case, I don’t know. I do know what I saw.
I know that some cops try to go right. I also know that, put on the spot, a cop will nearly always side with other cops, even over and above their own families. That makes all of them bad to one extent or another. I get it- you can’t expect a cop to arrest his mother or wife, they’re human with human weaknesses. That’s all the more reason why we can’t treat them as if they are above the law.
It looks like they are about to try again. They even had a brief talk about how to yank open that second door when she opens the inner door.
Don’t open the door. There are no exigent circumstances, they can’t legally enter your home without a warrant. Tell them through the doorbell cam to fuck off and come back with a warrant.
Honestly, there is a certain point when you are willing to find out if the local police have level IV plates.
Police have two ways they can talk to someone in the public: consensual or seizure. A police consensual encounter is a voluntary, non-detention interaction where an officer approaches a person to ask questions or for identification. The person is free to leave, refuse to answer questions, or decline requests at any time- to include refusal to provide ID. It does not involve commands, force, or blocked movement.
A seizure is where a person isn’t free to leave. Police can use force to keep you there, they can search you, demand your ID. Noncompliance with this is considered obstruction or resisting and is illegal. The person being questioned still has the ability to refuse to answer questions, or refuse to answer them without a lawyer present. This is why asking police if you are free to leave is so important. This tells you if you are in a consensual encounter or have been seized.
If the police want to talk to you, they can ask or they can seize. In order to seize, they have to have probable cause that you are or have committed a crime, or they have to have a warrant. If you are in your home, a warrant is generally required, if they don’t have exigent circumstances. Those include the belief you are destroying evidence (e.g., flushing drugs down the toilet), or there is something going on that is an emergency (say you are murdering someone in the home). Police cannot make a warrantless, non-consensual seizure inside someone’s home just because they have probable cause. They generally need an arrest warrant (unless exigent circumstances apply). This is important.
Now to the case at hand:
Two years ago, three men were involved in a fight in a bar in Saint Cloud, Florida. One of the men was reportedly armed with a handgun and had left the scene. The other two individuals who were in the fight contacted police: one of them refused to give a statement, and the other (visibly intoxicated) man did give a written statement claiming the third man displayed a handgun. Both of the men who spoke to the police at the bar were rather vague on details about the fight or what started it.
The next step you would expect an investigator to do would be to, well…investigate. You would think that the cops would contact the man, ask him to come in and answer a few questions, or perhaps even send a cop or two over there to ask. After all, he isn’t under arrest, they don’t have a warrant, and the contact at this point is consensual. Or supposed to be.
The cops immediately assembled a tactical team and had a meeting where they discussed the methods and tactics they would use to take him into custody. They surrounded the house by posting two cops at the rear of the home to prevent his escape, the cops out front had a K9, bullet shields, and NFA long guns with suppressors. They called him on the phone and asked him to step outside to answer some questions.
The Raid
What happened next was captured on body camera video, you can see the video below. They held him at gunpoint and ordered him to the ground. Even though his hands were raised, they kicked him to the ground, used the K9 to bite him because he wasn’t going down fast enough, and used quite a bit of force for a consensual encounter.
Any reasonable person would agree that they are not free to leave at this point. This is a seizure. They avoided the requirement for a warrant by luring him outside using a friendly tone and a request to just “Answer a couple of questions.” Since police tricked him to come outside specifically to avoid the warrant requirement, courts tend to scrutinize that. This trick is called constructive entry. This was never intended to be a consensual encounter, as evidenced by their own meeting and plans to take him into custody.
There was no reason to rush over there and arrest him. The incident was over, and there was plenty of time to secure a warrant. There were no exigent circumstances, and therefore no exception to the requirement to get a warrant. This doesn’t look like a casual “knock-and-talk” but more like a planned arrest operation without a warrant, which courts scrutinize closely. Payton v. New York ruled that police cannot do indirectly what they’re forbidden to do directly—i.e., they can’t avoid the warrant requirement by tricking or forcing someone out of their home.
House surrounded by armed officers
Officers positioned to prevent exit
Suspect called and told to come out
Show of force (guns, numbers) suggesting no real choice
Use of force when subject was compliant and not offering active resistance
In my mind, there is little doubt that this man’s constitutional rights were violated, both in the arrest without warrant, and in the manner the arrest was carried out. There was no reason to use force on a man who had come out voluntarily and was offering no resistance. Not one of those cops mentioned “hey, maybe there is a better, more constitutional way to do this.” This, in my opinion, destroys the “few bad apples” trope.
To make it even worse, it turned out that this man was the victim and the two intoxicated men had attacked him. The prosecutor in the case dismissed all charges, saying that the case was “unsuitable for prosecution.” He has since filed a lawsuit against the city and its police department for violating his civil rights. The cops will almost certainly hide behind qualified immunity claims.
There is a lesson to be learned here.
Don’t talk to the police.
I’ve said this before- don’t talk to the police. Ever. There is no such thing as a friendly chat with cop. I will refer you to an old post of mine on the subject that contains a video titled “Don’t talk to the police.” Don’t talk to the cops, no matter what. They aren’t your friends. They aren’t there to help you. They are there to make a case to arrest someone, and they will get the arrest that requires them to do the least amount of work they can. At best, they are there to find reasons to take you to jail, at worst they are there to use their cool toys on you- whether that be a machine gun, a K9, or just a good old fashioned beating.
Most cops are pussies and cowards. We see that time and again- they will use overwhelming force on those who pose no threat, even going so far as to toss grenades into a baby crib, but will cower outside with their machine guns and body armor while children are being killed by an armed murderer.
A cop calls you on the phone and wants you to come out and answer questions, ask them if they have a warrant. If the answer is no, you tell them you don’t want to answer any questions or speak with them until you have an attorney. Offer to come down to the station with your attorney to answer questions, and tell them your attorney will schedule the meeting. Whatever you do, don’t open the door. You have a doorbell camera for a reason.
Open that door, and this just might happen to you. Ever since my incident in Orange County, Florida in 2001 where a Deputy Sergeant threatened to kill me when I presented him with my concealed weapons permit during a traffic stop, I don’t inform cops of shit.
The cops may not have enough to arrest someone, but you talking will give them what they need. If they DO have enough to arrest you, there is nothing you can say that will talk them out of it. Refuse to talk to them, don’t open the door, and go about the rest of your life.
Imagine that you are in a car wash. A coworker comes up and you exchange greetings, then both of you continue washing your vehicles. An off duty cop claims that he saw the two of you make an exchange of a “significant” amount of a white substance in a baggie, whether pills or some powder, he doesn’t know, but he saw it. The cop claims that is probable cause (meaning that what he saw is probably a violation of the law) and demands to see your identification, but you refuse. Then they declare that what the off duty cop saw, combined with the your refusal to cooperate justifies the police detaining, searching, and arresting you. That’s what happened to Jake (or Jason) Kidder in Michigan.
The coworker is there, he identified himself and confirmed that the man was his coworker, and that they had exchanged greetings. The coworker was never searched, nor was he ever asked about a baggie of white things. Mr. Kidder’s vehicle was searched for over an hour. In the course of events, no drugs were found. No baggie was found. Nothing was found to corroborate the story of the off duty cop. They arrested Kidder at gunpoint anyway, then he received a body cavity search at the jail. During the search of Mr Kidder’s vehicle, which lasted over an hour and during which they even dismantled his dashboard, nothing was found. The police insisted that this must mean he hid the drugs up his ass, so when he was arrested, the did a body cavity search. Still no drugs or baggie were found. The DA went ahead and filed charges, even though no drugs were ever found.
That didn’t matter to the court system: According to local court records, Kidder faces multiple felony charges: resisting, assaulting, obstructing a police officer, and alleged possession of meth and ecstasy. Kidder denies these drug charges and insists no drugs were found in his truck. Kidder has filed a lawsuit against the officers and the department for wrongful arrest, search without cause, illegal seizure, and excessive force. He claims that officers had no legal basis to stop or search him and that they violated his Fourth Amendment rights.
It’s important to note the cops muted their body cameras during a significant portion of the encounter. As far as I am concerned, this should be considered tampering with evidence. There is no legitimate reason that I can think of to justify this during an encounter.
Probable cause means, considering the facts as known, it is more likely than not that a crime was committed. An off duty cop, claiming he saw a baggie of an unknown substance that was never found, is considered evidence that:
What he saw was drugs
What he saw was a crime
all despite the fact that he couldn’t even accurately describe the bag or its visible contents. You make the call- did the off duty cop’s claims rise to the point of being sufficient to indicate that it was more likely than not that a crime was committed, and thus deprive Mr. Kidder of his Constitutional rights?
The entire encounter is here, but it’s over an hour long. Note the “Back the Blue” sticker. I bet he doesn’t have that any more.
Local residents freaked out, saying that he must have been up to no good, since he was carrying those items and was in the same general area as a sitting congressman.
The cops held him for hours before releasing him without charges. That doesn’t matter to the cops, they kept his vest, knife, and gun, and are going to use a risk protection order to strip him of his rights. Keep in mind, he wasn’t breaking any laws.
This is why I have been, and remain, opposed to so-called “red flag” laws.
In a move that signals just how much of a fascist tyrant he is, Trump signed an executive order reclassifying marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III on Thursday. Schedule III drugs are things like Ketamine, Testosterone, and Codeine. That sets in motion a number of things that are important. The most obvious of these is that users of medical marijuana are no longer unlawful users of the drug, which also means that those with a medical marijuana card are no longer prohibited from buying a firearm, and can now legally put no on a 4473. It also means that BATFEIEIO will have to revise and rewrite their form 4473 questions.
Republicans are incensed because police unions have long opposed such a move, as busting people for weed is a huge source of police employment and a great way to conduct warrantless searches: “I smelled weed.” As evidence to support their ire, Republicans made the following points:
Reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III drug will send the wrong message to America’s children, enable drug cartels, and make our roads more dangerous
According to a recently published fifteen-year review of medical research, marijuana has no real medical value, and 30% of medical marijuana users have an addiction to the drug
Under Schedule III, pilots, truck drivers, and other safety-sensitive professions will not be tested for marijuana.
Marijuana is already imperiling safety: over 40% of fatal car crashes today involve THC. Rescheduling will exponentially worsen this crisis
First, let me say that I am one of the only people that I know that has never even tried the stuff. I have no interest in it, and I just never felt the need to try it. My only oppositions to marijuana are practical ones.
I hate the smell when it is smoked. It reeks. I don’t care if they legalize it, as long as I don’t have to smell it. Make it an edible, or make patches. Do that, and I won’t care.
Pass limits beyond which someone is considered impaired, and come up with a test that can reliably determine if someone is beyond that limit. I don’t want someone flying my plane or surgeons operating on people while they are impaired.
Now that that is out of the way, let’s address the Republican claims:
America’s children aren’t sitting there saying “Oooh, Trump said doctors can now prescribe weed. I think I will go out and smoke it now.” Ridiculous. Anyone who wants weed gets it now. I know that it’s anecdotal, but I would say that half of the people under the age of 30 who come to the ED test positive for marijuana, and probably 1 in 5 who are over 30 do as well. The patients I don’t test smell like weed a good bit of the time, too. Your policies aren’t doing shit to prevent people from using.
Half of the states (almost- it’s 24 now) have already legalized marijuana in some form or another. The Federal government is just catching up with what the states are doing, and what the citizens obviously want.
Marijuana DOES have medical uses. The fact that studies are showing that it doesn’t is a reflection of science being for sale. The government pays someone to conduct a study on marijuana to prove it has no legitimate use, and what do you know, the preexisting opinion of the study’s sponsor is confirmed. Far too much of what we call “science” is actually paid propaganda. Most “scientists” are actually whores who sell the weight of their credentials to the highest bidder.
Truck drivers, pilots, and the like can still be tested for weed as a Schedule III drug. They are tested for intoxication on things like alcohol (no scheduled at all), Schedule IV drugs like Xanax, Ativan, and Valium, as well as other Schedule III drugs like Ketamine and Codeine. This is just a stupid and downright untruthful argument that I classify as fear mongering, no different than “every traffic accident will result in a gunfight.”
In my several decades as a paramedic, I can say that nearly every traffic accident occurring after midnight involves an alcohol impaired driver, and we aren’t making alcohol illegal. If fatal accidents involve a driver with marijuana in their system 40% of the time, I ask how many people have marijuana in their systems. Correlation doesn’t imply causation. I could easily say that 60% of people who die in a traffic crash eat sandwiches, but that doesn’t make sandwiches the cause of traffic deaths. Keep in mind that current testing for marijuana doesn’t test for intoxication, it tests for presence. Because they are fat soluble, the metabolites of marijuana stay in your system for up to 90 days. That doesn’t mean that you were intoxicated at the time you were tested, which is my second point, above.
Overall, I think this issue is a loser for Republicans, and I support the action Trump took here. I just wish I didn’t have to smell that stuff everywhere I go.
A middle school in the Orlando area was placed on lockdown after a student was seen carrying a clarinet by an automated weapons detection system, which decided the child’s clarinet was actually a gun. My thoughts here are that your automated weapons detection system sucks. That isn’t how the principal of the school saw it, however.
A student was walking in the hallway, holding a musical instrument as if it were a weapon, which triggered the Code Red to activate. While there was no threat to campus, I’d like to ask you to speak with your student about the dangers of pretending to have a weapon on a school campus.
What danger was there, actually? None. No one was hurt. No one could be hurt. The real danger was that your system doesn’t work correctly, and it caused unnecessary panic. Not only that, but just like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, it creates alarm fatigue in that people will be less likely to believe future calls for lockdowns when they remember all of the times that they were forced to hide because of stupid nonsense like this.
The left loves to call us fascists and Trump a dictator, yet I keep seeing more and more evidence that the left was engaged in the systematic destruction of the Constitutional protections that we are supposed to have here in the USA. For example:
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has been conducting a Congressional investigation, and has uncovered FBI documents showing that President Biden’s administration was engaged in intelligence gathering operations through the use of illegal interception of the electronic communications of at least eight different opposition leaders. That’s right- the FBI was spying on Republicans.
The FBI targeted the following Members of Congress:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.)
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska)
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.)
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.)
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)
Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.)
Tell me again how Trump is the one acting like a dictator. Keep in mind that Nixon was about to be impeached, and resigned from office, for doing far less than this.
