10/31/14 – Antonio Buehler – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, this is my show, the Scott Horton Show, and our next guest is Antonio Buehler.
He's the founder of the Peaceful Streets Project at PeacefulStreets.com.
And he was recently acquitted on charges of failing to obey a police officer just two days ago.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm good, thank you.
I appreciate you joining us.
So, a pretty big deal here.
Correct me if I'm wrong, this is really the incident that made an activist out of you in the first place, right?
You're some guy at 7-Eleven, you see some cops out of line, then they get even worse out of line directed toward you.
And ever since then, Peaceful Streets Project.
Is that about the sum of it?
Yeah, that's about it.
If it wasn't for that first incident, I never would have pulled out my camera and I never would have concerned myself with police abuse.
All right.
So, it's a hell of a start there and a hell of a vindication of your actions that night as well, too.
So, take us through it.
The jury agrees with your side, so I don't need a more objective source than you.
Tell the story, please.
The story of what happened that night?
Yeah, sure.
And all of it.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I was a designated driver and I was just taking my buddy home and we were running out of gas.
So, I pulled into a gas station and while we were there, we observed two Austin police officers yank the female passenger of the car.
They pulled over out of the car, threw her to the ground, twisting her arms behind her back.
We had been watching what was going on, so we knew she hadn't committed a crime.
We knew that she hadn't acted aggressively towards anyone.
So, we knew that this was a textbook assault.
And I asked the cops what they were doing.
And she immediately said, yelled, help me, please.
And the cops threatened me, worry about yourself, worry about yourself.
And then when she started begging me to film, I took out my camera and I tried to take pictures.
And because of that, one of the police officers then assaulted me and ultimately charged me with a felony crime of spitting in a cop's face.
Which took it to this point nearly three years later when they tried to get me on the last charge, the last of the three charges that they tried to get me on, which was a lowly class B misdemeanor for failure to obey a lawful order.
Because the grand jury had failed to even indict you on the spitting charge, right?
Well, yeah, they tried to charge you with assault there.
So, it's called felony harassment of a public official, but I don't think that they failed to indict me.
Oh, well, you know what I mean.
From the DA's point of view.
Yeah, I think it was a well-coordinated event.
The district attorney didn't want to deal with this because they knew it was such an absurd case and they didn't want to have to have it on their hands.
Oh, I see.
So, they also wanted to take care of the Austin Police Department and the city of Austin.
They still wanted to see me have something hanging over my head, something that would help prevent me from filing a civil lawsuit against the city.
So, they hit me with that class B misdemeanor and that's what took two years and nearly 11 months to finally get into a courtroom.
I see.
Okay.
So, that's an important distinction to make there.
All right.
Now, so, let me ask you this.
Your blog here, it says that the order that he gave you was illegal because what he was doing to the original victim, Norma Pizana, was illegal in the first place.
Can you break that down a little bit?
If she had, say, for example, and I'm completely making this up for hypothetical sake.
If she had, for example, spit in the cop's face and so then him being a bit more aggressive toward her in detaining her would then be legal.
In that case, it would have been a lawful order for them to tell you to back off?
Not quite, but that's what we argued.
The way that the ordinance is written here in Austin is that as long as the police officer tells you something, you have to obey.
And then an affirmative defense to that is, well, if the law, if the order was unlawful, then you don't have to obey it.
But we had to prove that to the jury.
And so, it was unlawful for many reasons.
One is the assault to Norma.
Two is, you know, they were infringing upon my First Amendment rights.
They were infringing upon my Fourth Amendment rights.
So, there were actually several layers of why it was unlawful from the police officer's perspective.
Okay.
Yeah.
Good point there.
And now, so what about Norma?
Did she ever get any, you know, responsibility on the part of these cops?
Any justice?
Yeah.
So, I think that that's, I'm glad you asked that because the system is so corrupt and broken that people are congratulating me on not getting convicted of a crime that everyone, including the police officers and the prosecutors, know I didn't commit.
And in Norma's case, she doesn't live in Austin.
She lives in San Antonio.
She's a full-time mom and she has a full-time job.
And for her, it was easier for her to say, you know what, if my lawyer can just get these dismissed in exchange for like eight hours of community service, I'll do that.
And that's what she did.
So, technically, I mean, the prosecutor grilled her on the stand, the victim of police abuse.
He grilled her on the stand for taking a plea deal.
And the reality is, is that most people just don't have the time and the resources to fight it like I did.
And so, she never got her justice, really.
And this decision on my case was the closest that she got.
But the prosecutor tried to make it seem like, oh, well, you must have pleaded because you did it and you deserved what you got.
Yeah, exactly.
That's what they did.
And it was absurd.
And the reality is, is that the state just throws so much resources at convicting innocent people.
But they've also been throwing so much resources into the schools to convince people that they have to obey authority.
And anyone that the state goes after must therefore be guilty, whether they're terrorists or whether they're, you know, like people who just want to live free, you know, be free of like government regulations.
You know, you know, the the government convinced the society that those people must be in the wrong.
And then that just plays out in the jury.
And we had we were very lucky.
We had six jury members who I think showed a high level of courage and they refused to be bullied by the prosecutor.
But there's a lot of things about my case that made that possible.
And most people just aren't as lucky as I am in being able to not be convicted of crimes they didn't commit.
Now, you know, and speaking of the jurors, you know, I read and I think it was in the Austin Chronicle story, a story that one juror was dismissed because he told the judge he was afraid of both sides, which on one hand, I mean, it seems silly like that he would be afraid of anyone on your side thing.
Although I guess, you know, just very generally speaking, tensions are high and that kind of thing.
So maybe if somebody believes very strongly, they would do something very strongly or something.
But what's much more, I mean, that's silly to me, but understandable kind of in a way, not really knowing what he's dealing with.
But what's more notable to me there is that the guy has no compunction whatsoever, as well as telling the judge that he's afraid of the police and what they might do to him if he let you go.
And so therefore, he didn't want to have to make that choice because he'd have to be afraid of the APD for the rest of his life.
Yeah.
And so he actually didn't say that he was afraid of both sides.
He said that he was afraid and he didn't want to state why he was afraid.
And the reality is that he just sat in a trial.
He was there for both days of testimony.
And he heard that the cops threatened and retaliated Norma against Norma for standing up for her friend.
And they did the same to me.
And then they threatened to arrest my passenger, Ben.
They threatened to arrest the guy across the street and they ended up threatening and firing the police officer that crossed the thin blue line.
And so I think that it was completely rational and reasonable for this guy to be afraid of his safety.
He never said who he was afraid of, you know, but when they had upwards of 12 police officers in the courtroom throughout the course of the event, I think that's obvious who he was afraid of.
Yeah, I see.
So, yeah, that was that was definitely misreported.
That would mean that screwed that up.
That was the story I read.
And I believe it was the Chronicle that had the both sides quote there.
But, yeah, I mean, it's absurd to think that he would be afraid of you or any of your supporters, you know, when obviously your entire shtick is all about peace.
And even in the name of your website and everything else, you can clearly see it's not you had violently resisted these cops or anything like that at the time.
But now we got to take this break.
We'll be back with more with Antonio Buehler.
He was acquitted for standing up to the cops, filming them, abusing this poor lady over there at 7-Eleven at 12th and Lamar.
And and he's the founder of the Peaceful Streets Project.
That's PeacefulStreets.com.
Hey, all.
Scott Worden here for the Council for the National Interest at CouncilForTheNationalInterest.org.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Worden.
I'm talking with Antonio Buehler.
From PeacefulStreets.com.
And we're talking about his recent acquittal in court here on a misdemeanor charge of failing to obey an officer.
It's a jury of six and they found in his favor.
And now two more things at issue here.
First of all, real quick, Antonio, could you please speak again to the numbers of police officers who showed up in court on this?
And how intimidating you think that may or may not have been to the jury?
You mentioned it in reference to that juror wanting out of there and apparently being scared of these cops.
I wonder if you think that was really the purpose.
And then secondly, please go on and on about the officer that crossed the thin blue line, as you said, and took the stand on your behalf explaining about the rules for when you can and cannot detain when a police officer may or may not detain.
And or arrest someone.
Right.
Yeah.
So there were at least 12 police officers there.
We counted at least six who were in plain clothes and all of them were confirmed as police officers.
And then there were at least six who showed up in uniform.
Two of the police officers that were there were assistant police chiefs.
So these were pretty high up.
I mean, just at the most senior, most level of the Austin Police Department.
And so they they spent tax dollars putting these senior police officers in the courtroom for a class B misdemeanor.
I do believe that it was to intimidate the jury.
I don't think it was to intimidate the jury to this, to the extent that there would be harm that would befall the jury.
But I think it was to intimidate the jury into believing that that that the state was right and that it was an important case for the state.
And that's why they were there, because it was essential that that they get their so-called justice.
I think that was more of a show of force, not to threaten with violence, but to threaten just psychologically.
But to threaten them that it would be their fault if the police, our wonderful, heroic police, were undermined by their failure to win this one.
Yeah, and it's remarkable the the amount of resources they threw into this class B misdemeanor with a maximum $500 fine.
Not only did it last four days, almost went into a fifth day, you know, five minutes, then go into a fifth day.
But they also had eight city prosecutors in the courtroom during the trial.
So there was a city prosecutor who was pushing it, Matthew McCabe, and then he had an assistant city prosecutor who was in there probably about half the time.
But then another six city prosecutors, including the lead city prosecutor, also spent significant time in the courtroom.
So they were really stuck in the courtroom.
And they this was probably the biggest misdemeanor case that Austin has ever seen, especially from from their position.
That sounds like you did the yogurt shop murders or something.
Right.
Right.
I think that there were more prosecutors here and police officers than there would have been in that case.
Ironically, of course, I wasn't there for that.
So that wasn't a direct challenge to their authority.
This is so they could charge with the highest level felony they would have on that.
Right.
And what we know is that they've tried to get me on four different felonies.
They tried to get me on the city and cop state.
They tried to get me on racketeering charges.
They tried to get me on child endangerment charges.
And they tried to get me on online impersonation charges for different felony charges.
The Austin Police Department has tried to get me on all because I stood up to them committing crime.
Man, I want to get back to the racketeering thing and that in a minute.
That sounds fun.
But tell me about this cop that took the stand for the defense.
Yes, his name is Jermaine Hopkins, and he is actually a police officer that I had been critical of in the past.
He had done something that I disagreed with.
And so I called him out publicly for it.
But when he got disciplined, I also acknowledged the fact that in Austin, it seems that the only people get disciplined are, you know, police officers that they view are expendable.
And they very rarely go after police officers who commit really offensive crimes.
And so I also reached out to him and said, hey, I recognize the pattern as well.
And lo and behold, I guess as he was fighting with the police department over an EEOC complaint, he just started to dive deeper and deeper into my situation.
And he realized that I really had been screwed over by the Austin Police Department.
And he decided to step forward out of concern for my civil rights.
And and the day that he told his supervisor that he was going to testify at my trial, the day after, actually, he was terminated.
So today is actually technically his last day on the police force.
Wow.
And now they got to have rules about stuff like that.
Is this in direct violation of them or not?
Do you know?
Oh, yeah, it is.
And he has he has I think he has an amazing suit against the city because they have done numerous things that have been illegal with regards to, you know, employment, civil service laws.
They they they have not paid him overtime.
They they actually told him that they weren't going to pay him for the time that he was at the courthouse for my trial.
So, yeah, he's he's he has a real good case against them.
They've been bullying him just like they've been bullying a lot of other people.
And what they do is they just try to find where their strength is and how they can try to tighten the screws on people.
And for people who are not within the system, they do it through trying to get us on criminal act that we didn't commit.
And for people within the system, you know, they go ahead and play a political game.
Yeah, man.
You know, I think this is such an important story.
This absolutely ought to be national news here.
There are so many aspects to this that are, you know, maddening, but also just interesting.
You know what I mean?
For example, the way, as you say, all the cops and prosecutors showing up to participate in this thing for a Class C misdemeanor.
That alone means that there ought to be a Newsweek article about it.
There ought to be a 2020 episode about it.
What the hell is going on down in Austin, Texas?
Yeah, I think Austin, Texas is a very unique city.
It's very vibrant.
It has an amazing array of talented people flowing into the city at all times.
The economy is extremely strong.
There's all kinds of alternative lifestyles are embraced here.
And so in a lot of ways, Austin is seen as this, like, wonderful, you know, new age or progressive, you know, economically vibrant city that everyone wants to be a part of.
But then once you're in town, you realize that there's a very, very old, established good old boys network.
And it's very backwards in a lot of ways with regards to the establishment.
And the police have a situation where they have a lot of money to play with.
And they're in a very safe city, the safest big city in the entire country with a very unique demographic mix.
All the blacks and Hispanics are pushed out to the edges of the city.
And and the police basically have free reign because because almost everyone here has come to the city from elsewhere.
There's very few people who are really invested in the workings of the city.
So it's all run by the establishment and they're able to basically get away with whatever they want.
Yeah.
Well, you hit on a lot of true things there, man.
I wouldn't know where to begin.
All right.
Let's go back.
We still got three minutes here.
Let's talk about some of these bogus charges.
They tried to charge you with endangering a child with racketeering.
What in the world?
Yeah, they're just desperate.
They've had a task force that's been dedicated towards me.
We've seen some of their internal memos.
Memos.
They have celebrity, you know, personnel who they have to be concerned about when they arrest and like how they address the media.
And so they have one section which is UT athletes, one section which are professional football players and basketball players.
They have one section which are politicians.
And then I'm the only one with a section that's named by name.
Like there's a section for Antonio Buehler.
And under Antonio Buehler, there are 24 cases, whereas no other section had more than maybe eight.
And so they've had senior officers who've been dedicated to me.
They've been monitoring everything for me, my location, my online presence, my statement, every single YouTube video that I put out.
And one of the things that they've been doing is they've been trying to find ways to get to arrest me.
So I posted a satirical post.
Everyone who read it knew it was satirical, it was obviously a satire.
And so they went ahead and they tried to have me arrested or indicted on a felony online impersonation charge, which was absurd.
The racketeering charge, if you recall, we gave out 100 video cameras to people at our first summit for people to go record the police.
They claimed that I brought cameras and gave them to people so that they can go out and commit crimes by interfering with police officers during investigation.
They tried to get me on racketeering.
They're desperate.
Now, how how far did that argument go in court before the judge said, get the hell out of here?
Yeah, fortunately, none of them actually were indicted.
You know, so every single one, I think the DA was smart enough to say, we don't really want to be stuck with the cops.
Keep coming to him with this stuff.
Yeah.
And you know, and they were they were able to get me on misdemeanors.
That's that's sort of the compromise.
Peacefulstreets.com is the website.
Thanks so much for your time.
Really appreciate it.
All right.
Take care.
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