The road winds through this small town with a posted speed limit sign of 35 mph. There was a small red pick up truck directly in front of us that sped out of sight as he apparently was going much faster than the posted speed limit.

After rounding a very sharp blind curve I noticed there was that small red pickup. He must have spotted the cop and nearly stopped since we caught up to him. Then came darting out on the highway with siren and lights. After the curve we were over pulled to the side of the rode almost in front of the Truitt's Cave entrance.

The red pick up truck with Missouri plate continued on of course. The cop comes to the window with the Traffic Offense Fine sheet and hands it to me stating he clocked me with his radar for 47 in a 35. I told him he may have clocked something like the red pick up in front of me at 47 as my wife had map in hand looking for a road that goes west back to Oklahoma side. I told him again that I felt there is something wrong with his radar and then he said I looked like I was going faster than "normal". I said I don't know what his "normal" looks like but I certainly wasn't doing nearly 50 mph in his little town. He then said am I getting "abrasive" with him. I said you can call it what you want but I don't appreciate being accused of going a lot faster than I actually am. He ignores anything we have to say and asks for my license and insurance, I undo my seat belt to get my wallet I am sitting on and he yells out that I don't have a seat belt on. I, my wife and her sister said back at him what is he blind because I just took it off in front of his eyes.

He says he never saw it on me and then he goes back to his car to finish writing up the ticket. While he is writing up the ticket I remembered I have my camera with me and begin to shoot pictures and video. When he comes back I have it in video mode and ask him to repeat whether it is a small city hall or a county courthouse for appearance. He says city hall and walks away never even bothering to offer to assist us with what roads may be around. He was only interested in generating the bogus revenue for the small town.

Update 4-10-7

I called to confirm the court date - turns out the officer put down the wrong date too. The clerk said the once a month court date they have is on Thursday 4-19-07. Here is a letter received today after I alerted the clerk that the date was wrong on the ticket. They gave an extra 30 days now, isn't that noble of them?

 

Update June 2007

We had to go back to the town two more times.

The first time they said the solicitor wasn't present so we would have to come back.

The second time we went back the officer wasn't present. Normally cases are supposed to be thrown out but they said we had to come back a third time.

Third time we went back the Judge said I could see the solicitor to lower the case to not go on my driving record since 47 in a 35 is over 10 miles over and considered a major violation and would result in drastic raise in my insurance rates.

We saw the solicitor and he changed the ticket to a broken taillight bulb and we had to pay $200 which is more than double the original $92.50 they wanted.

 

Update June 2012

State of Missouri shuts down Lanagan Police Department for bogus speed ticketing

They weren't even supposed to be ticketing on Hwy 59 as it is a State Highway that they have no jurisdiction over.

They put on my ticket Poplar & Main trying to say the ticket was on the city streets but we were never on their city streets, they pulled us over on Hwy 59 as the video clearly shows.

It took five years later but posting this finally paid off.

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Publication:McDonald; Date:May 24, 2012; Section:News; Page Number:1

Police Chief, Officer Arrested

LANAGAN ARRESTS RESULT OF INDICTMENTS ISSUED BY GRAND JURY

By Rick Peck McDonald County Press rpeck@nwaonline.com

The city of Lanagan was left without a police department Friday following the arrest of its only two police officers.

Chief Larry Marsh and Offcer Michael Gallahue were taken into custody by the McDonald County Sheriff’s Department based on indictments recently issued by a McDonald County grand jury that was impaneled in February. Marsh was charged with five counts of forgery while Gallahue was charged with two counts of the same crime, a Class C felony, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Three of the counts against Marsh state that in August, September and October of 2011, Marsh issued citations “referencing a non-existent Missouri state statute or ordinance ‘307.000’ so that it purported to have been made with different terms.”

The other two counts charge that in 2009 and 2010 Marsh “altered an annual racial profiling report which had been submitted to the Missouri Attorney General’s Office so that it purported to have a genuineness that it did not possess.”

Both of the counts against Gallahue were the same as the first three of those against Marsh, that Gallahue issued citations in August and October 2011 referencing a nonexistent Missouri statute or ordinance.

Among its duties, the grand jury was to review procedures of municipal courts, said Circuit Judge Timothy Perigo at the time the grand jury was impaneled. McDonald County Prosecuting Attorney Jonathan Pierce presented evidence to the grand jury gathered during a Missouri State Highway Patrol investigation into city operations. The highway patrol investigation followed on the heels of an audit by the Missouri State Auditor’s Office. The office gave the city a “poor” rating for its performance of its accounting practices and municipal court procedures.

In a report presented to the citizen’s of Lanagan in March 2011, Deputy State Auditor Harry Otto discussed a variety of problems with the city, including several with the police department. Otto said the city was in violation of the “Mack’s Creek Law,” a state law which limits the amount of city revenue coming from court fi nes to a percentage of the city’s overall revenue.

Otto said Marsh submitted data to the state claiming that all vehicle stops were made on city streets (which are not subject to the Mack’s Creeks Law). Otto said that in October 2010, audit staff advised Marsh that Highway 59 is a state highway, but Marsh continued to report it as a city street. Otto noted that in February 2011, Marsh again reported all vehicle stops were on a city street.

The Lanagan City Council voted Tuesday to suspend both officers without pay until the disposition of their cases. No court dates have been scheduled as of press time. The city is taking applications for temporary positions with the police department.

McDonald County Sheriff Robert Evenson said the sheriff’s department will provide law enforcement for the city until the police department’s situation is resolved.

 

 

ST. GEORGE — A car-mounted video camera — more commonly used by police than against them — captured a loud and threatening confrontation in this tiny St. Louis County community that left an officer on suspension and the whole world able to listen in.

The picture doesn't show much, but the audio part of the recording, posted on Google Video and YouTube on the Internet, brought more than 300 protest calls to St. George Police Chief Scott Uhrig.

"I was very displeased when I saw the actions on the video," Uhrig said. "My officers are not trained and taught to act like that."

He put Sgt. James Kuehnlein on unpaid suspension pending further investigation.

Uhrig said the officer's actions were not justified, and he insisted the episode is not representative of his department.

A voice identified as Kuehnlein's can be heard taunting the driver and threatening to jail him on fabricated charges.

The tape, made late last week, was from a camera running in the vehicle Kuehnlein approached, police said.

Brett Darrow, 20, of St. Louis, said he was the driver who recorded the exchange. He posted it online Saturday.

"I wanted everybody to see that this kind of stuff does happen," Darrow said. "I thought if I just go to the chief or whatever, it would just get swept under the rug."

Kuehnlein could not be reached for comment Monday night.

St. George, a municipality of about 1,300, sits along Interstate 55 at Reavis Barracks Road.

In the video, Kuehnlein, a St. George officer for about two years, approaches a young man who was sitting in a parked car about 2 a.m. in a commuter lot near Spokane and Reavis Barracks roads. Kuehnlein asks for identification. When Darrow asks whether he did anything wrong, the officer orders him out of the car and begins shouting.

"You want to try me? You want to try me tonight? You think you have a bad night? I will ruin your night. … Do you want to try me tonight, young boy?"

Darrow says no.

"Do you want to go to jail for some (expletive) reason I come up with?" the police officer says. Later, Darrow says, "I don't want any problems, officer."

"You're about to get it," Kuehnlein is heard saying. "You already started your (expletive) problems with your attitude."

After the officer notices the camera, he says, "I don't really care about your cameras, 'cause I'm about ready to tow your car, then we can tear 'em all apart."

After more than 10 minutes of interaction, Darrow is allowed to go.

Darrow said he was not trying to entrap the officer. He said he pulled into the commuter lot to meet a friend. When the officer asked him for identification, Darrow said he didn't immediately present it because he believes the officer stopped him without probable cause.

Darrow said he installed the cameras in his Nissan Maxima after past run-ins with police. He said he was involved in a physical confrontation in 2005 with an off-duty St. Louis police officer, in a case Darrow said was later dismissed.

Darrow said he plans to meet with Uhrig today to discuss the weekend incident.

Chief Uhrig said Kuehnlein stopped to talk to Darrow because police have received reports of thefts from cars in the area. But, Uhrig said, based on his viewing of the online video, the officer acted inappropriately when he threatened to make up charges, and used a disrespectful tone and inappropriate language.

"We don't do that," Uhrig said. "Someone either violated the law or they didn't. You don't say, I'll lock you up and then come up with why afterward."

St. George — A young St. Louis man who videotaped a police officer's angry taunts during a traffic stop, and later posting the footage on the Internet where thousands of viewers have watched it, said Tuesday he wants the officer fired.

Brett Darrow, 20, met with St. George Police Chief Scott Uhrig for more than an hour Tuesday afternoon and also filed a formal complaint against the officer, Sgt. James Kuehnlein.

During the meeting Darrow asked to see the videotape from Kuehnlein's police car. But according to Uhrig, that footage, inexplicably, is nowhere to be found.

"That's the million-dollar question," Uhrig said. "Our policy says any contact the officer has with the public has to be on tape."

Darrow had pulled into a commuter lot at Spokane and Reavis Barracks roads at around 2 a.m. Friday, when Kuehnlein approached and asked him what he was doing. When Darrow questioned why, Kuehnlein launched into a series of taunts and threats.

"The attitude escalated when he thought I was questioning his authority, but I was just trying to figure out what he was doing," Darrow said Tuesday. "I was really scared. He was up in my face, spit coming in my face."

A camera in Darrow's Nissan Maxima captured the incident. Darrow, a St. Louis Community College student, said he put the camera in the car about a year ago after getting a speeding ticket.

"I got a ticket I didn't feel like I deserved," he said. "I was thinking tickets, not this."

In the footage, Darrow can be heard citing his Fourth Amendment rights — his reasonable expectation of privacy — to Kuehnlein. He said Tuesday he's familiar with the law, through "reading statutes, reading constitutional law, reading case law. It's just something I'm interested in."

He said he was not trying to entrap the officer.

Kuehnlein could not be reached for comment.

After the incident, Darrow posted the footage on the Internet, where news of it spread quickly. He maintains he did not contact news media and had no idea the matter would get so much attention.

"I didn't mean for it to be what it was," he said.

Darrow said he was in the lot at that late hour because he had just left his cell phone at his girlfriend's house, and the two decided to meet there to hand off the phone because the location was convenient.

Kuehnlein has been an officer with the department for about two years, and had come from the Riverview Police Department. Uhrig said Tuesday that, perhaps, Kuehnlein was not accustomed to having someone question him as Darrow did, with a camera recording his responses.

"Most officers aren't used to being questioned like that," Uhrig said.

St. George, a city of about 1,300 people, sits along Interstate 55 at Reavis Barracks Road. Its police department has four full-time officers and three police cars. An officer can patrol every street in the city in about 20 minutes, Uhrig said.

Uhrig said he has worked hard to cleanse St. George of its image as a speed trap with a police department staffed by unqualified novices. He said he has implemented new, more stringent hiring policies and expanded the department's policy manual since becoming chief two-and-a-half years ago.

"We have a reputation for being traffic enforced," he said. "It's not true. My officers are told to enforce the law. I want quality, not quantity. I want the drugs, the impaired drivers. Those're the things that make a difference."

Uhrig said he would submit a report on the incident to the city's police review board and the St. Louis County prosecutor as early as this week.