Heavily armed and armored Chattanooga police officers munch on breakfast at Tienda Quetzal restaurant as part of a “get to know your officer” front porch lineup. (Photo CPD on Facebook)
The men and women who serve in police departments and sheriff’s departments in southeast Tennessee have their necks on the line.
Will their bosses realize the new legal exposure that these oath-bound people face in service to city or county when they enforce the state transportation code at Tenn. Code Ann. § Title 55?
By David Tulis / 92.7 NoogaRadio
The threat is in the form of an informed citizenry whose men and women are unwilling to accept abusive treatment along the roads and highways of Tennessee as they have for years, without apparent remedy.
Today these people have in their arsenals of liberty a new weapon against abusive and illegal policing. The danger to the officer today is that a routine traffic stop, in legal terms, may be an act of oppression under the Tennessee oppression statute or under common law tort or nuisance.
That means that a traffic stop, once a routine service for public safety, may now recoil and bite the officer because it is a violation of the law, an actionable and oppressive deed.
‘Notice’ arrives on scene
The danger is relatively new, thanks to the arrival of a liberating document called transportation administrative notice, which I have prepared and published broadly (online and as a member of the press on radio) and also published narrowly (personal delivery to government entities subject to constitutional government and statute).
TAN make a distinction between travel and transportation, and shows plainly that under Tennessee statute, the officer has authority for a transportation stop only if the person behind the wheel of the stopped car or truck is involved in transportation.
If that person is a private user, and not involved in transportation, he is not liable for performance under the main rules for statutory construction.
TAN, a bright light in a murky area of law that rarely lawyers read, seeks to weed out from the employment list those officers and deputies who are acting as sovereign individuals, acting under color of law, and without warrant, against an innocent person, depriving that person of his constitutionally guaranteed rights of property in free movement, which is also understood to be “communication.” This officer, once his department has been notified, is legally liable to his victim.
Thanks to the notice to his employer, the officer can no longer claim his main defense of years past — that of intentionality and knowledge. The officer cannot say “I didn’t intend to hurt this person’s free exercise of the right of travel as recognized in statute and constitution,” nor can he say, “didn’t know he had such a right under the law, and I didn’t know that there is such a thing as a traveler; I assumed everyone was a driver or operator.”
What have police chiefs told officers?
It will be shown, as a matter of law, that he and his superiors acted in bad faith in not enforcing the statute along its lawful track, but slopped over into the area of free and private human activity on the people’s roads.
The matter of concern here is for the individual man or woman who is at the street level. Is he being told about the notice? Does he know that his department has been notified about the distinction in the statue between transportation and travel? Have his superiors made a good-faith effort to obey the law? Have they made a good-faith effort to reduce their activities pursuant to the law? Did the department obtain legal advice about the law to confirm that the notice is, indeed, making true claims about Tenn. Code Ann. § Title 55 and U.S. Code 49?
Who are the travelers?
If his employer does not take heed of the notice, the deputy is entirely exposed, and unless he is media savvy and pays attention to what happens to the digital world, he will be blindsided by the lawsuit that will come against him in his personal capacity when he arrests and jails a free traveler, exercising his rights.
There are many travelers on the roads today. Probably half of the Immigrant population is on the road without a driver license. They are exercising their rights to travel in the American system of law and. Many black people also do not have driver licenses, nor insurance nor other proofs of commercial activity. This figure of “half of African-Americans” is based on many inquiries among black residents of Chattanooga. Many of them have licenses that are suspended, revoked or expired, Keelah Jackson and Cameron Williams among them.
Transportation Administrative Notice creates new cause of action vs. cop
There’s no harm, I believe, if they travel the roads on a revoked license IF they are not involved in for-hire activity, called in the case law an extraordinary use of the people’s roads. I would not advise them to do that, as my idea is to always obey every law that applies to you. But if a person has a revoked license and simply finds it necessary to travel in a car or truck, this person has a defense under administrative notice.
He tells the officers, “Sir, I am traveling under transportation administrative notice, and I make no statement, and maintain all my fourth amendment rights, and hereby assert them.”
So as transportation administrative notice becomes more widely known, a larger percentage of the population of people on the road will be aware that they can defend their movement thereon without exercising a taxable state privilege under the purview of the uniform administrative procedures act.
Taking local responsibility amid legal disjointure
Will chiefs and sheriffs think personally about their longtime staff people? Will they regard their families, their estates, their lands and houses, and the furnishings and savings of these men and women? Will they take a personal interest in the future prosperity of their employees’ children and grandchildren?
Will these high officials and law enforcement recognize that they have to act in the direction of reform because no top-down solution will come in this abuse practiced everywhere and assumed by virtually everyone in the state as normative, legal and “just the way things are.”
An activist judiciary in Tennessee has created a disjointure between policy and law. The policy is close enough to the extortion statute in state law as to constitute extortion, I suspect. Current traffic stop enforcement statewide is custom, not law, and if it violates a law, it is a potential crime.
The lawyers guild allows the states to prey upon the citizenry. That guild contains lawyers on the pleading and brief-filing side, and those who sit in black robes and who control juries and decide cases. The bar as a whole is enfused with cash from the raid by the police state against the people within its borders. The state is at war with a free traveling public, and pretends that no right of communication by movement exits.
Will chiefs of police such as David Roddy in Chattanooga, Robert Simpson in Red Bank, J.R. Reed in East Ridge, Sheriff Jim Hammond of Hamilton County respect their fellow officers and apprise them of the slight change in the legal landscape that affects their purses and well-being? Do they care? Or is their allegiance tied up elsewhere, in fantasies about policing and in a wish to protect a deep state status quo?
TAN is a lococentric reform that starts in a single city, town or county and will eventually spread across the state. As I have described elsewhere, it creates a sanctuary city whenever the mayor decides to quit disobeying the law.
Support this blog and vote for my 1 p.m. weekday show on 92.7 NoogaRadio by going to GoFundMe and making a free gift. I am grateful for your interest in my ministry and your support of my effort to bring godly reform and constitutional obedience in Chattanooga, Hamilton County and places beyond by being a member of the free press.
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If I were to make an application for the TCA Title 55 drivers license would I would attach an exhibet A to the application. This attachment state that I am not making this application as a privilege to use the roads and highways and streets, avenues, or any other place a car or truck can be used for traveling. I will only make this application as a private individual retaining all Constitutional immunity. See Article eleven section sixteen of the 1870 Tennessee Constitution. This includes, I will not be making this application consenting to a privilege license for the purpose of traveling. If the safety commissioner and the administrative law of Tennessee will accept my application under these conditions notify me within seven business days by registered mail so I can complete and sign the application under normal procedures. John
I will be including a couple other things in this exhibit that I will not be making known at this time.