With no warrant, Brandon Bennett, a Hamilton County, Tenn., sheriff’s deputy, gets set to arrest me exercising my right of ingress and egress from my house, obstructing the public road as if he were a bandit. (Photo David Tulis)
Sheriff Austin Garrett will face a federal judge in Chattanooga who is being asked by lawsuit to conpel Hamilton County to obey the arrest warrant requirements in the state and federal constitutions and at T.C.A. § 40-7-103, warrantless arrest by officer. (Photo HCSO)
“I object to these proceedings,” I tell a sheriff’s deputy who handcuffs me Nov. 22, 2023, though telling me I am not under arrest. (Photo David Tulis)
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Friday, Nov. 22 – Radio investigative journalist David Tulis is suing Hamilton County and Sheriff Austin Garrett for exposing deputies to legal peril in their refusal to uphold arrest warrant law, according to a federal complaint.
“Because the sheriff refuses to obey black-letter law and get arrest warrants when required, we live in a despotism so deep the county is like a swamp,” Tulis says. Deputies such as Brandon Bennett — whom Tulis is suing in his personal capacity — are “exposed in their properties and estates personally under policy ignoring the warrant rules in the constitution and state law.”
Bennett arrested Tulis for a damaged taillight before dawn Nov. 22, 2023, enroute to his Hixson studio, spiking his radio show.
“What really gets me,” Tulis says, “is how little the county commission and sheriff care about their employees. If the commission and the sheriff really cared about staff people they wouldn’t put them in harm’s way by forcing them to make arrests on their own personal authority. My arrest was by Deputy Bennett on his own personal authority, and he kidnapped me. The county ordains that every deputy put the onus of liability on himself or herself in making warrantless arrests. That’s why the warrant requirement is so important. It protects the government employee. And it protects you.”
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Tulis identifies Sheriff Garrett’s program of arrest-on-sight general warrants as “Redcoat warrants.” The reference to Redcoat warrants hearkens to days prior to Americans’ war for independence when the king’s soldiers were able to arrest colonists without a judge’s signature. The state constitution at article 1, sect. 7, forbids general warrants, saying they “are dangerous to liberty, and ought not to be granted.” ‡
The 41-page complaint asks the U.S. district court to forbid general warrants and seeks a master to supervise return to compliance with the law.
State law allows for warrantless arrest for felonies and a list of wrongs such as stalking, auto crash scene DUI and “public offenses.” A public offense is not just any alleged crime, but one in the nature of an affray, riot, disorder or breach of the peace, the complaint says. Tulis argues that a damaged taillight is not a public offense, and so could not legally have been the basis of an on-spot arrest.
Tulis dubs his program of suing public officials as “a mercy and fighting ministry serving the Lord Jesus on behalf of the weak and the poor.” The Shields of Shame anti-corruption channel on YouTube headlines the Bennett arrest as “Nice and Nasty.”
