Putting Protesters on Notice With Fair Warning

If you resist lawful orders, you’re going to jail. Let me be very clear about that. If you block an intersection or roadway in Brevard County, you are going to jail. If you flee arrest, you’re going to go to jail tired because we are going to run you down and put you in jail. If you try to mob rule a car in Brevard County, gathering around it, refusing to let the driver leave, in our county, you’re most likely going to get run over and dragged across the street. If you spit on us, you’re going to the hospital and in jail.

If you hit one of us, you’re going to the hospital and jail and most likely get bitten by one of our big, beautiful dogs that we have here. If you throw a brick, a firebomb, or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains at because we will kill you, graveyard dead. We’re not going to play. This has got to stop. You’re watching what’s taking place out there. You’re seeing police officers that are being attacked, being spit on, being put in harm’s way just for doing their jobs.

You’re seeing ICE agents that are being targeted for doing their jobs, and you’re seeing obstructionists that are doing all of this standing in the way of law and order. It’s a pretty strong statement. Yeah, Sheriff Ivey. I think Sheriff Ivey was there at the first conference that you were at, Sheriff Lee. He looked familiar, yeah. Yeah, he’s been to several of them, but he was at the first one that we had in Vegas in January of 2012. That’s right. He’s been a real good friend and supporter ever since. And look, folks, this wasn’t a huge constitutional issue right now.

Obviously, there’s some constitutional issues that come into play here. But he was giving a legitimate, fair warning that what’s happening in other places is not going to be accepted or acceptable by his department and his deputies. And I think that’s really good leadership. And did it come on too strong? We could argue about that for a little bit. But he wanted to make sure people understood, and he put the protesters on notice with fair warning. Sheriff Lee, what do you say? That was, he’s correct. In Michigan, when you get jury instructions on a self-defense case, and people understand, we have rules for making an arrest.

And all of a sudden, that arrest turns into a self-defense for that officer. He’s got the same right to protect himself as anybody else. He’s a human being. He won’t get that. And our jury instructions say, at the time you have acted, you must have honestly and reasonably believed that you’re in danger of being killed, seriously injured, or forcibly sexually penetrated. It’s that simple. Seriously injured. Any injury where you could get periods of unconsciousness, stitches or sutures, permanent disfigurement, broken bones, that’s what serious injury is. That’s the reasonable threat of it. So you got that brick, you’re going to whip it at my officer.

You’re telling me you can’t break bones, knock him unconscious with that thing? You can get shot for that. Molotov Cocktail? Are you kidding me? Oh, yeah. You command one of my officers Molotov Cocktail, yeah, I expect that person to be shot. So, yeah, the self-defense for those officers is the same for anybody else. There’s no government institute that can take that away, or no human institute that can take that away. Right. Well, have you been involved in some protest events during my police career? We did get an officer that was hit by a rock, and he was severely injured.

And it took him a few days. He spent a few days in the hospital. And so if rioters and protesters are going to… Well, first, if a protester is going to turn to rioting and violence, they’re no longer a protester. They’re a criminal. That’s way different. And I have, especially as sheriff, I have defended the right of people who didn’t even live in my county, the Earth First protesters, who were there protesting the Vatican and the University of Arizona building telescopes on our mountain. It was labeled by the Sierra Club and the Earth Firsters. It was labeled as the number one environmental concern in the world, right in small little Graham County.

And so I still look back at it as totally miraculous that no one got hurt. We only put a few people in jail here and there. It was very minimal. And there were literally hundreds and hundreds of people who came into our county of the hippy persuasion. And this was like 1993, 1994, 1994, right in that timeframe. And it lasted a year and a half. And when things really got tense between the sheriffs and the other police departments involved and the other law enforcement from the federal government and the University of Arizona and the security from the Vatican, what did I do? I challenged the protesters to a basketball game that happened at Eastern Arizona College where I graduated in 1975, the very year that I married my wife.

And so my wife and I got married just a few days after my graduation. And yes, instead of beating them and bringing in the dogs and all this other stuff that happens, these types of things, we played a basketball game. [tr:trw].