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| Sgt Johnson had a new sweetheart, but was still married. |
- Zero Authority to Impound and Tow the Vehicle
- A Tangled Web of Sex, Booze, Cops, and Public Defenders
- Hailed as a Saint, But Had a Girlfriend on the Side, and Don't Mention the Divorce About to be Final
This whole incident of June 29th is a disaster. Two cops dead, two men with ruined lives, all over unpaid taxes on a car. Totally senseless, totally unnecessary, and sad to say, totally illegal in the first place.
Oklahoma Statutes, Title 47-Chapter 74-Section 1115.1 lays out what happens when a vehicle with expired tags is pulled over. Other statutes lay out the grace period of 30 days, the fines that add up per day, the cost of the ticket for driving with expired tags, and the cost to impound and store the car. We are talking about five or six hundred dollars in some cases, over four hundred in most cases, and the people have to pay the registration fees. In this case, it was an old 2007 Chevy so the taxes would have been around $300 to $400 had the guy followed the law and registered the car after buying it from a car dealer with a paper tag. Once towed, he was looking at $1000 or so to get it out after paying the registration fees.
Worse, likely the guy was struggling like all of us were in April of this year, on short hours, if not out of work entirely like many. Despite that, he begged the cop to just write him the $211.00 ticket and let him go home.
But the rookie cop had a bone and damned if he wasn't going to chew on it some. While running the drivers name and DOB there is no doubt he found out he had a dirt bag on his hands, a felon with a history of drug possession and there is little doubt that the cop wanted to search the car but needed justification or probable cause. Well, we are talking about a traffic stop and zero probable cause to search the car or impound it Section 1115.1 states that tags MUST be expired 90 days or more before there is a duty to tow the car and even then, it says “may”, not “must”. Digression is given to the officers as it should be.
Yet the date on the tags showed an April 23rd expiration, only 66 days expired, not 90 days.
This was an illegal stop. It was a car jacking. The cops lacked jurisdiction. Jurisdiction refers to the authority to enforce a law, not just the geographic location the crime or offense was committed in. The cops had the right, indeed the responsibility, to write a ticket, but they had zero ability to tow a car with 64 day old expired tags. Nor could they arrest the driver on that charge. Arresting outside jurisdiction sometimes allows the evidence to be suppressed. Whether it violates the Fourth Amendment revolves around the cops having probable cause, even if they arrest you for something that should be a citation you won't win a civil rights case but that is just SCOTUS giving some protection to cops.
However, there will be state statures and constitutional provisions regulating arrests, then again, Ware wasn't being arrested. They had no probable cause, he was asked to get out of the car so that the car could be towed. Now we have what might be a huge problem. If the court finds that the violation of Ware's rights were substantial, all evidence including the body camera video might well be suppressed and Ware and his friend walk free.
But past the unnecessary killing, there is the question of breaking the law to try to punish a “bad” person. The seizing of private property when state statute doesn't allow seizure. And torturing a man to the point that he pulls out a gun and kills cops. Then there is the lying going on by both Tulsa PD and the Tulsa County Prosecutors. That is the largest danger to all of us and our family members.
The very day of the shooting Tulsa County D.A. Steve Kunzweiler and various Tulsa police department officials described the video of the two cop shootings in a very self serving manner. Yet Kunzweiler then petitioned the court ex parte, without the defendant's knowledge or response, to suppress the body cam and patrol car video footage. A few days after the court sealed the videos the probable cause affidavit was filed containing this statement: “After Sgt. Johnson is down from being shot, Ware stands over him and fires three more times into Sgt Johnson.”
Pretty horrible, right? What a callous act, pumping more rounds into already down and incapacitated man while standing over him. Or it would be if it actually had happened. Immediately after charges were filed the Tulsa PD went into self protection mode, spreading that falsehood and another that claimed after Ware pumped three more bullets into Johnson and then Ware slowly walked away. Another falsehood.
But why would the cops and prosecutors lie about such easily disproved things as the number of shots fired, where Ware was when the final shots were fired, and paint him as a cold and merciless killer? Simple, to build up sympathy for the wounded officers and to paint Ware as a vicious, premeditated, cold blooded murderer. That pollutes the jury pool months in advance of any trial, making any chance of Ware getting a fair trial less and less the more the lies are repeated. And why not? They had arranged to hide the video evidence from the public.
Yet on July 16th ADA Kevin Gray who is prosecuting Ware backed away from the probable cause affidavit, stating that the probable cause affidavit was not written by his office but by the Tulsa PD. Yet despite this knowledge the prosecutors released the probable cause affidavit to the public and allowed the media to spread the two lies.
Another interesting bit was that the charges were amended four times before any drug charges were filed. One could understand one update, but four amendments before the drug charges were added? No one had anything to plant in the car for that long? Had to wait for some drugs to be seized or something? The reality is by that point the police and prosecutor already realized they were in trouble, they had no valid probable cause to search the car because they had no valid cause to tow the car as the tags were not yet expired by 90 days. Keep in mind that searching a car on a traffic stop is not done unless a drug dog hits on the car or there is other probable cause. They never brought a drug dog and nothing in the probable cause affidavit mentions anything that gave them probable cause to tow the car.
But back to the video. Tulsa police chief Franklin used a news conference to claim this: “The officers went down and the driver slowly walked away.”, this supposedly was Franklin's description of what the three videos had shown.
Ware's court appointed attorney, Kevin Adams, filed a supplemental motion to his motion to strike the suppression of the three videos to prevent the public from seeing them. By this time Adams had seen the videos and know the truth about these two matters. Not only that, but Adams describes a brutal and shocking attack upon the driver. Here is a screen shot from the filing:
Officer Zarkeshan also mutes his body cam microphone which is proven from listening to the video and by watching the patrol car video where he is seen muting the body cam. Why would someone take the time to mute their body cam while allegedly fighting a suspect? Only one reason, because he knows he is looking really bad at that point.
The description of the video in the defense lawyer's motion is grim and troubling and why is it necessary to scream obscenities at the man?:
At this point Ware has yet to fight back in any way and is begging the two officers to stop attacking him.
Then Officer Johnson kicks Ware in the groin for the first time while screaming obscenities, about this same time a car driven by a friend of Ware slowly drives by and Ware begs his friend for help.
Keep in mind that the video time mentioned is from three different video camera sources, two body cams and one patrol car cam. They aren't synchronized. But after the second kick to the groin area Ware has decided to defend himself:
So the allegations that Johnson was shot execution style with Ware standing over him pumping rounds into his body is a lie. So is the description by Chief Franklin saying that Ware slowly walked away after the shooting, portraying a cold blooded killer when in fact it wasn't until Ware had been stomped in the nuts twice that he finally decided to defend himself. And five seconds between the first and fifth shot... having to shoot one cop, then locate, aim, and shoot Johnson, then then turning back to engage the first cop, then back to engage Johnson who at this time is on the ground, propped up on one elbow and reaching for his gun. As both cops were on either side of Ware, that is a lot of back and forth, no time for aiming or being deliberate, just a man panicking and defending himself from an unlawful arrest.
The motion continues to show that Ware was ten to fifteen feet from Johnson when he fired the last shot.
Adams next goes on to prove that Chief Franklin lied when he claimed that Ware slowly walked away after the alleged execution style shooting.
Next Adams goes over what might be the real reason that Kunzweiler is desperately attempting to keep the video locked away from the public; the fact that he faces an election on November 8th 2022. With the pandemic locking the courthouse down and interfering in just about everything it is very possible that this case will drag out for years before it goes to a jury.
Next, lets look at the probable cause affidavit. There are a number of problems and outright lies being told in this sworn document.
First is the date of the expired tag, April 23rd,2020. May 23rd is 30 days, June 23rd is 60 days, June 29th is 66 days, 24 days short of the amount of time that allows a cop to tow a vehicle for expired tags. Even then the statute says “may” tow, not must tow.
Second, Ware was said to not have any ID on him. Not true. Ware had papers in his car, bill of sale, proof of insurance, and his drivers license number on a receipt from a business. He gave his name and date of birth honestly.
Next, the sworn affidavit claims that Ware was fighting to prevent being taken out of the car. And admits that the writer had viewed the videos before writing the affidavit. No mention of the two groin kicks or more than one pepper spray to the face.
Next was the claim that Ware filed three shots at each officer, then stands over Johnson and fires three more bullets into the prone officer while “standing over him” and then runs to a waiting car. Nine bullets in all, not the five shots proven by the videos. With Ware ten to fifteen feet away, running backwards, and firing a single shot as Johnson attempts to draw his weapon to return fire. The affidavit admits that the confrontation lasted around three minutes. Three minutes of abject torture and abuse for no legal reason with the last five seconds containing all five shots fired.
The Lieutenant that signed the probable cause affidavit has been caught lying, embellishing the facts, and the prosecutors would have watched the videos themselves before filing charges. They can claim that it was a rogue cop that embellished the story but it was their responsibility to fact check. Under the Giglo ruling, this Lieutenant will now have to disclose getting caught in this lie every time he testifies, effectively eliminating him from testifying in any trial from this point on. But that is not enough, he and the prosecutors have collaborated to taint a jury pool yet they claim the defense is trying to try the case in the media after multiple media interviews and press interviews.
And then things get even worse. On July 10th the Tulsa public defender office filed a motion of conflict of interest. Not only had Sgt. Johnson been alleged to have been hanging around with a lot of the public defenders and drinking with them in off hours, Johnson was also alleged to be screwing one of the public defenders, Stephanie Collingwood, and had been for some time. Yes, Saint Sgt. Johnson, devoted husband and father of two kids, had a girlfriend he was with after the divorce filing months earlier. FD-2019-2509 filed on October 28th 2019, filed by none other than Sgt. Craig Johnson.
Was Johnson was abandoning a six month old child along with a seven year old and his wife of nearly 15 years? Or at least Johnson's petition said so. Mrs. Johnson's petition said they had been married nearly 20 years and that one of the children was born in 2012 and the other in 2009. I mean forgetting your marriage date is one thing but five years and is the child eleven years old or six months old? Later in the file we find a temporary order that claims the 2009 birth date of the child and we did find a reference to the 2005 marriage so perhaps Mrs. Johnson just thought it was 20 years. The wife is awarded $758.24 in monthly child support and temporarily half of the $1200 per month mortgage, car insurance, and costs of children's activities. Sgt Johnson keeps his over $6200 a month salary minus a pittiance in child support and Mrs. Johnson gets to raise two kids on her $3000 a month salary plus the small amount of child support.
And this divorce was a done deal. The child support computation papers were filed and signed, all the parenting classes completed. A few days later a revised child support computation was also filed, also signed by both parties. Mrs. Johnson was almost a free woman it seems and Sgt. Johnson was in a hurry as it had only been less than three months.
Yet Sgt. Johnson was a saint according to fellow officers and the media.
Mrs. Johnson has made out like bandit though. Nice pension, health insurance too no doubt, courtesy of a man that was kicking her butt to the curb for a younger woman. In return she has to play the grieving widow till the public eye is distracted by another shiny object.
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