welcome back to the civil rights lawyer channel do you remember this guy this is former Mount Hope West Virginia police officer Aaron Shrewsbury who pulled over my client for speeding and within about a minute of the stop already had my client in handcuffs sucker [Music] in June of last year I first posted this video footage showing the dash cam video as well as the cell phone video that this police officer had attempted to delete apparently but failed the video footage was her covered I posted on YouTube the criminal charges against my client were dismissed and from my understanding this police officer was fired so fast forward a year later we have now filed two as of today two federal civil rights lawsuits against this former police officer and against the town that he was working for and the crazy thing is is that this police officer that you see was decertified decertified by the state no longer able to be a police officer anymore for lying for falsifying a document and this small town for whatever reason sort of went to bat for him and got him re-certified to work for their little police department and this is what we ended up with so two Federal lawsuits filed today one for this stop and one one for the beating of a young guy out of Ohio named Nathan Nelson and I'll tell you about both of them first let's look at this footage again this was my client's dash cam footage that showed his actual driving immediately prior to his traffic stop now officer Shrewsbury and his subsequent police report in the charging documents he claimed that Not only was Mr Beckett's speeding but he saw him recklessly weaving through traffic and that finally he caught up to him and was finally able to get him stopped but we have this footage and you be the judge of that whether it shows Mr Beckett recklessly driving and weaving in and out of traffic oh thank you foreign so Brian's driving appears to be perfectly normal but here's what officer Shrewsbury said in his police report I was conducting an aggressive driving Patrol within the city limits of Mount Hope Fayette County West Virginia traveling Southbound on U.S Route 19. now obviously they're not within this small town of Mount Hope West Virginia they're just on this adjacent four-lane Highway that really has nothing to do with the town using my front fixed in-car radar I observed a gray Honda traveling at a high rate of speed Northbound then I used my radar to observe the vehicle traveling at a speed of 82 in a posted 65 miles per hour speed zone I activated my lights and siren and pulled through the median to catch up to the vehicle for a violation of West Virginia state code 17c 6-1 so here now you will see officer Shrewsbury passing and then we'll take a look at the dash game footage again and here's the footage from the rear view of the dash cam as the police officer comes up from behind him but again here is what officer Shrewsbury wrote in his police report as I was catching up to the vehicle I noticed the vehicle weaving through traffic recklessly I was able to pull behind the vehicle and get it stopped just past the intersection at Clinton on Route US Route 19. as you can see this is completely false Not only was there not any traffic but the vehicle was not weaving at all much less recklessly foreign thank you so as you can see from the moment the police officer comes into view of the rear dash cam video he doesn't even leave the right hand lane there's no weaving at all there's no reckless driving at all rather what you're going to see are just lies in the form of trumped-up charges and retaliation for what's about to occur here at this traffic stop one other important fact here is that Brian like everyone else in that area they're well aware of this town's speed trap in on this four-lane highway so that's why he's filming not only with dash cams but also he pulls out his cell phone and he sets it up in a stationary position inside his car and begins filming the interaction and that is in part what is going to cause the retaliation from this police officer take a look foreign [Music] [Music] notice that at no time during this interaction did Officer Shrewsbury even ask Brian for his license and registration or proof of insurance he immediately had a beef about the window which was a non-issue there is no law in West Virginia that says that you have to roll your window all the way down for a police officer there appears to be no reason for it to have been done here it was a speeding um it was a speeding traffic stop he'd never even asked for the license in in other documents which could have been passed through the window but he immediately had a beef about this and he clearly had a beef about Brian filming him so he immediately threatens to arrest him and note that when he asks him to get out of the vehicle Brian does get out of the vehicle then he's immediately put in handcuffs and he's arrested for obstruction disorderly conduct speeding and also he was charged with reckless driving then he calls for a canine to come search the vehicle and they found nothing illegal while Brian sat handcuffed in the rear of the police car and then officer Shrewsbury comes back to the car now he's going to retrieve Brian's cell phone to presumably delete the video now when he eventually got his cell phone back the video had been deleted and he found it in his recently recently deleted folder I mean go figure not the smartest tool in the shed also the videos on the SD cards in the dash cams were also deleted when the car was eventually returned to Brian those ended up being recovered on the Cloud so remember that when this police officer wrote this police report he thought he had deleted the footage and it wasn't until much later as the prosecution was underway that the videos were presented to the prosecutor who immediately asked for all the charges to be dismissed and the court did dismiss all the charges noting that there was no evidence to prosecute a review of the evidence does not support prosecution of the case and that was from the court and all the charges were dismissed sorry man I was arresting a [ __ ] guy for being a goddamn [ __ ] coverage so that's the very end of the cell phone footage which the officer attempted to delete you can see that he turned off the video that's where it ends and then eventually when my client got his phone back it was security locked and that video was deleted again he found it in the recently deleted folder now this segment is important because one of the claims that we included in the lawsuit was first amendment retaliation here officer Shrewsbury is telling some unknown third party who he's talking to on the phone really the reason why he did what he did because he thinks this guy is a blank blank blank this is retaliation for this guy filming him this guy not wanting to roll his window all the way down which apparently many times hurts police officers feelings because they like to think that they're like this sheepdog protecting the public when in reality much the public is afraid of them expressions of fear or criticism against from police officers or two police officers as well as filming them is protected First Amendment activity and when police officers beat you up or arrest you or maliciously charge you in response to that in retaliation to that then you can sue them for First Amendment retaliation and that's what we did here is he basically told this guy why he was doing what he was doing and this guy apparently wasn't surprised at his friend's Behavior or co-worker whoever he was and he he basically cheered it on he said I love it so this is a case where having video footage that was able to survive even the police officer attempting to delete it save this guy and the authorities weren't going to do anything about it they were going to prosecute him they weren't going to help him until this video footage Not only was surfaced but until it hit Youtube and people were outraged by it and speaking of First Amendment retaliation we filed another civil lawsuit today against this same police officer against this same town on behalf of of a guy named Nathan Nelson who was a young man from Ohio who was just traveling through this same area I also did a video on this there's no video footage that exists but it really is an egregious case this happened before this traffic stop back this is from August 15 2021. basically there was an altercation multiple police officers and agencies were called to the scene but this guy Nathan was arrested for there was misdemeanor possession of marijuana and I think it was disorderly conduct anyways he's in handcuffs Nathan is expressing his criticism and his displeasure at this police officer so he's handcuffed and officer Shrewsbury then says to him if you don't shut up I'm going to take these handcuffs off and do one of those Old West Virginia ass weapons then apparently after more words were exchanged officer Shrewsbury turned abruptly and punched Nathan in the face with his closed Fist and that punch broke Nathan's jaw in two places and dislodged the tooth and then afterwards for some unknown reason instead of getting getting him Medical Care officer Shrewsbury just placed him in the back of somebody else's patrol car from an entirely different agency and this other police officer later finds this kid who'd been beat up had his bra had his jaw broken and he was bleeding just handcuffed in the back of her police car and she ended up taking him to the hospital to get treated now those criminal charges against Nathan were eventually dropped but really it's an egregious case and that's an excessive force case but why did he do it why did he punch him because he couldn't take the criticism he couldn't take what he perceived as disrespect so he was going to use his badge to punch this kid who's much smaller in the face who's handcuffed to teach him a lesson a good old West Virginia ass whooping so I'll put both of these complaints so you can read all of the details on the blog at the Civil Rights lawyer.com and if you want to follow along on these cases you can subscribe both here and at the blog at the Civil Rights lawyer.com remember freedom is scary deal with it foreign foreign