Chattanooga city attorney Phil Noblett receives service of three administrative notices intended to inform city police arrest practices to make them align with state and federal law. Assistant city attorney Kathryn C. McDonald is witness to the proceedings. (Photo David Tulis)
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2025 – Phil Noblett is the patrician city attorney for Chattanooga and meets me in the conference room outside the secured door of the city attorney’s office across the street from city hall. I am here next to a large table to serve him a subpoena in a lawsuit against Hamilton County.
More significantly, I am putting the corporation under administrative notice regarding police abuse via “traffic stops” and false arrest.
➤ One is the right of ingress and egress which I explain to Mr. Noblett is the right that attaches to men and women because they live on land and have a right to go and from their property or abodes without blockade, interruption or obstruction. This document is styled “Administrative notice[;] Affidavit on right of ingress, egress from abode, soil in Tennessee,” citing 15 Tennessee court cases on right of way.
Noisily, it begins: “This right of ingress and egress attaches to the land. It is a property right, as complete as ownership of the land itself.” City of Memphis v. Hood, 208 Tenn. 319, 324, 345 S.W.2d 887, 889 (1961)
Quick take ———————————-
— Detailed legal notice is like warning of a lawsuit
— Traffic arrests are almost always rebuttable presumption of engagement in transportation
— Noblett denies private travel a priori
The ingress-egress right, I intone to Mr. Noblett and Kathryn C. McDonald, “is the right of movement based on soil, abode and land, your right to leave your house and return unmolested, unblocked, abrogated is something that’s important as recognize in the constitution and the statutes on travel and traffic.”
“The city violates” this right, “and possibly will violate my rights in this direction. I travel. I use the road for private purposes in the exercise of my rights not regulated and not in privilege.” I have one car bearing a department of revenue metal plate, “and I have another I travel freely on.”
“Umhm,” Mr. Noblett says, listening.
“And I’m expecting that my tag, which says ‘HAVE RAS,’ will invite soon an officer to arrest me. RAS is reasonable articulable suspicion. He’ll say, ‘You’re committing a crime by not having a plate,’ which of course is not true. If you are using the roads for hire under titles 55 and title 65, carrying cargo and passengers for pay, for private profit and gain—”
“Right,” he says. I push on:
— you have to have a valid tag of registration, and you have to have a valid license. You may also have to have insuranc on your person. But if you’re using it to go to church, or to visit granma, or enjoy our American liberties, there is no obligation to enter into commerce. And your department has the rebuttable presumption that every user of the road is commerce. Every user has to have a valid plate.
“Sure.”
This Tulis family car lacks a plate for being involved in the transportation industry. It asks if the officer has RAS, or reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime. I trust city attorney Phil Noblett will put officers on aware about the people’s powerful right of ingress-egress they lack authority to obstruct. (Photo David Tulis on TikTok, Smartest guy with a bow tie)
This Tulis car has a plate from department of revenue allowing the automobile to be used as a motor vehicle — meaning, in transportation industry, for hire, for private profit and gain. (Photo David Tulis)
I continue:
Every user does have to have a valid plate, which is evidence of the privilege having been obtained, if that is what the person is doing. If that person is carrying passengers for hire — that is to say, guests who pay to be transported from Point A to Point B — that person had better have a plate that’s current. And he’d better have a valid driver license. He absolutely should, because we all know driving is a privilege.
“Well,” Mr. Noblett says,
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on your assertions here in that regard based upon what we understand state law to be that at least a police officer does have the right to at least make sure there is some sort of tag on the vehicle that is licensed to operate in the state. There is also requirement in a lot of areas that those vehicles are able to operate safely on the roadway *** to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people along the roadways.
He says, “I don’t know about stoppings, and random stoppings don’t usually occur unless there is reasonable articulable suspicion of someone doing some sort of criminal act and that’s what I thought our officers are taught.”
“They’re also taught that travel and private movement is a criminal act.”
“I don’t think it’s taught to be a criminal act.”
I’m going to insist.
RAS is reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime. So the blue lights cannot come on unless there is a belief that, by training, the officer discerns that here is a criminal in his green RAV4. My green RAV4 has a vanity plate on it, a simulacrum plate of Tennessee’s. It says — my vain claim is — “HAVE RAS.” So you have to have RAS to stop me. And I will press the issue.
“I don’t think they should be stopping you because of your plate. They should be stopping you if there is a violation that they have observed.”
“There has to be a crime.”
“Well, rules of the road, in that regard, I know you disagree with that —”
“Rules of the road are subject to UAPA,” the uniform administrative procedures act.
“Not all of them, no.”
“Reckless driving, no. Because that is a clear crime. That is a breach of the peace and a disorder.”
Paper offenses, I say, are not arrestable. “I was arrested for a damaged taillight, and that is not a crime, even though the taillight statute makes reference to a misdemeanor. That is only in extremis. I have a right to have the matter heard administratively, since it is under license.”
Referring to my lawsuit against Hamilton County for false arrest, I tell Mr. Noblett,
[Deputy Brandon Bennett] had no evidence of commerce. He demitted that he had evidence. If he’s going to stop a person under the pretense of commerce under 55 and 65, he’d better obtain the evidence in the encounter, if he can, of commerce. That would be bills of lading, contracts, things like that. Your officers are not trained to look or to ask. This is a problem. Yet, they still criminally arrest people and charge them, ‘driving on suspended,’ ‘driving on revoked.’
I indicate administrative notice from 2018 “will come into play if I’m arrested.”
Says Mr. Noblett, “At which time we told you at that point in time we disagree. *** Mr. Reisman and I sent you a response on that.”
“Yes,” I reply, “You said, ‘show me the cases.’” The cases are in the notice, giving sufficiency for my claims for liberty.
The service affidavit that is part of Tennessee transportation administrative notice, putting parties served on notice about limits in the law and limits in their ability to seize and harass the people. Page 1 of TTAN is nearby.
➤ I hand Mr. Noblett the “Administrative Notice On Authority to Regulate Transportation, Travel on Tennessee Public Roadways.” It has been subject to notorious publication via classified ad in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, a newspaper of record, and is a public document at the Rhea County register’s office. I have reported its claims exhaustively as a radio reporter on Copperhead Radio, Hot News Talk Radio, NoogaRadio Network and Eagle Radio Network.
The 21 pages I hand him constitute a “courtesy copy” Mr. Noblett might want to review since service Feb. 20, 2018. The city employs nearly 500 cops ready to violate the Tennessee and U.S. constitutions.
Does his statement disagreeing with the law contained therein blunt the notice, or secure the city in its ignorance of the law and the court cases?
➤ A third notice is “Administrative notice on limits of arrest power in Tennessee under ‘public offense’ rule.”
Admin-Notice-Arrest-by-officer-without-warrant-
“I’m putting you on notice, and the city,” regarding warrantless misdemeanor arrest, I tell Mr. Noblett, adding,
That’s important that people’s rights be respected and that the limits on arrest be regarded by the officers.
Under the public offense standard of warrantless arrest,the officer can’t just scoop up people and take them to jail on misdemeanor allegations unless their offense is in the nature of a public offense or threatened breach of the peace. If the offense is not a “public offense” the officer must make investigation, release the person, go to the jail, draft an arrest warrant citing the criminal allegations, get a judge to sign the document, and leave the jail with what is the arrest warrant — his complaint judicially approved with magistrate ink.
To my reference to “redcoat warrant” and “on-sight arrest,” Mr. Noblett demurs, “I’m not sure what those are.I’m not familiar with that.” He says city cop training is required annually and officers have POSTS requirements they have to meet.
City officers and deputies, I tell him, routinely seize people on the street without a warrant when the law requires a warrant, that is because they confuse public offense and offense.
I tell him that POST under subpoena has no materials on arrest, “so how can you approve a department if you don’t have the source material?” I say. “There seems to be a very powerful neglect of training.”
I realize you may think this is no difference at all. But if the public offense standard is upheld and correctly taught deputies and cops, the constitution is respected, and the rights of the people. That means a 50 percent or 60 percent drop in arrest rates. Respect for this law will effectively end traffic stops.
Citizens are routinely killed, beaten, tased, thrown to the tarmac, abused, searched and harassed without a second thought. So my distinctions that seem tiny on paper are a huge deal.
What this means for our campaign to end Jim Crow is that in most every traffic case the officer has to make an arrest under a warrant. He has to make his “investigation,” let the person go and then he has to go to the jail where the magistrate works. He drafts the warrant (a criminal complaint), swears it’s true that a crime has been committed and then go and find the person and arrest him under a warrant. My taillight may be busted, but the cop is not going to take the trouble to charge me with a “criminal offense” for it, as Deputy Bennett did Nov. 22, 2023.
It is my belief that administrative notice to a municipal corporation or a county denies agent claims for qualified immunity when they violate constitutional rights in a police encounter. That is because it expands the circle of what the officer “reasonably knew” about the law at the time of the arrest and makes it more difficult for the officer to say he didn’t intend or know his actions were illegal.
Why play word games with bought and paid for attorneys, promoting a fraud for the purposes of corporate revenue? A crime is damage to People or their property, like the crime of assault.
Reckless driving itself is not a crime unless there is some evidence resulting from that activity of damage to people or the property of people, AKA “private property” (actually owned by some one of the people). “Reckless driving” could be a crime IF there is some damage from the driving.
Even with some damage in evidence, there are two elements of the alleged crime that will require some evidence to prove. There has to be evidence of “reckless,” and there has to be evidence of “driving” (commercial activity).
Of course, such evidence is not required in the kangaroo courts of the municipal corporation.
This is why police, deputies and state troopers are trained to assault people and make criminal complaints against them (without any evidence of “driving”) to open the shakedown of innocent citizens, attempting to go about the harmless activities of life, in a peaceful way.
False arrest is the first thing that happens where these assaults take place on a daily basis.
The municipal corporation is not chartered by the people for purposes of assaulting and violating the people. Attorney doubletalk be damned.