you know the real problem with police in this country is in my opinion not any sort of
systemic racism it is a systemic lack of accountability but let me give you a
good story back on march 17th if you saw the live video i did with kentucky attorney chris wiest he
showed us a video of an excessive force case that he's litigating in the federal courts in kentucky
that showed clearly force being used by a police officer and clearly excessive force being used
and then he showed us videos from the depositions of the two officers involved where they denied
that any force was used and we sort of joked around about it at the time it's a great
video if you haven't watched it check it out and really like to do some more with them is as well
but he just texted me here a few days ago i think it was on friday and says you know what they just
they just criminally charged that officer for perjury and you know in in my probably 15 years
of of litigating police cases i can probably count on one hand the number of times i've seen
anyone charged with perjury especially police officers i have seen it happen before and this is
apparently one of the few instances but first if you don't recall the footage check out the video
this is actually surveillance footage from the horn back home in kentucky and you see
two police officers come in and they're led by mr hornback's father to where their son is i guess
there's a warrant out for him and then really within seconds you see them begin to use force
they put him up against the wall and pretty much immediately take him down without any indication
that he was fighting with them or attempted to strike them and look you see some punches you
see some hits clearly force is being used i mean that's undisputed right i mean we can all agree
that we see force being used on this video now mr hornback's father then leaves the room as this is
going on and he goes and he gets his cell phone and you'll see that he returns with his cell phone
now this is again surveillance footage that belonged to the family and it's fortunate that
they did that because again you'll see that he returns with his cell phone but when he comes back
he starts to i mean it's a little late but even though it's a little late and he starts to film it
i believe they ended up deleting that footage so they didn't know they weren't aware that
there was this surveillance footage in existence and that's important here
so they didn't know the footage existed and the next thing that happened was is attorney
chris wiese filed a federal civil rights lawsuit for excessive force and served
it on them and started the litigation process and usually you have to turn over all of your
evidence before you end up taking depositions but through basically brilliant strategy
um he ended up getting to take their depositions before he had to turn over his evidence and so
that made for the interesting situation where he got to question these police officers under oath
about what they did what they did not do and they still weren't yet aware of this video and
that's really an awesome situation that that is very difficult to set
up in federal court and i encourage you to watch the conversation that we had about this
in that earlier video that i'll i'll post the link in the in the description um but
he provided us with the the deposition footage where they were asked about this so here is the
the i believe this is the deposition of thomas zartorsky who was one of the officers involved
in this no i understand and i'm just trying to get to your recollection you indicated that you don't
remember whether or not he was taken to the ground right so i think that he was taken to the ground
do you know why i don't
when he was taken to the ground did you use any force on him no
did you ever strike him with any object no so that was the deposition footage showing troopers
trooper zartorsky and here is the deposition footage or at least a small portion of it of the
other trooper uh james cameron wright and you can hear chris wiest just setting this up beautifully
so that he can knock it out of the park afterwards you wouldn't have to but i'm not saying i did that
once you had him on the ground did you strike or hit him with a closed fist at all no sir okay
we're or any part of your body no sir okay and the reason that you didn't do that is that there
was no more force that was required at that point in time to have affected the arrest right
i he did not need to be struck with my hands or any impact weapon and also his mother
so let's take a look at that again did you strike him with a closed fist or with your hands
i believe that is right right there striking him he's on the right
striking him with his hands we clearly just saw it and let's look at zartorsky again okay as you
said here today is it your testimony that at no time did you strike him with an object no that's
correct right no time did you strike him with an object no yet there he was on the left hand side
striking him with an object well maybe that's just not an object he's hitting him with
what else could it be well it could be a thought maybe maybe he's hitting him with a thought
and now for the good news this link that chris had sent me from the kentucky center for investigative
reporting july 9 2021 this former kentucky trooper denied using force under oath the video says he
did a former kentucky state trooper has been criminally charged with perjury after denying
under oath that he beat a man with a flashlight in april 2020 now i'll post a link to this story here
in the description thomas zartosky was named in a lawsuit alleging troopers used excessive force
against alex hornback while executing a bench warrant the lawsuit also alleged that hornback's
parents recorded the officers beating him and that a trooper deleted the footage but a home security
video captured the incident okay so he was caught he was caught in a lie he was caught in a lie and
it appears that there has been accountability so apparently he's been fired as well
zartowski was deposed under oath in january for hornback's federal civil suit
hornback's attorney chris wiese asked if he'd struck him with an object or use any other force
no he said i did not use force on him uh the video shows that zartovsky and trooper james cameron
wright meet hornback in the family's basement hornback puts his hands on the wall then within
seconds right forces them to the door excuse me to the floor right punched him with a closed fist and
remember we we see wright doing it on the video i mean who are you going to believe uh you know me
or your lying eyes uh we see it happening on the video and yet we also hear him under oath saying
that he did not do it i'm not sure if if if he was charged maybe the article gets to that all right
right punch him with a closed fist zaratoski beat his legs four times with a flashlight
but a flashlight may not be an object it could be like one of those bill clinton things
like bill clinton might not believe that a flashlight is an object it could just
be something else like maybe a thing right then held the horn back on the floor for
about 30 seconds with his left knee on the back of his neck okay hornbeck appeared
compliant throughout the encounter that's absolutely true according to what i observed
all right more good stuff court records show that the kentucky state police internal affairs
department investigated sardours zartorsky for two incidents where he used force in the month before
hornbeck's arrest and if you watch the video where chris and i are discussing this he actually shows
us those other videos and you can kind of see since zartorsky was the one using the sort of
i don't want to say not maybe non-masculine kind of hit you see the exact same sort of
technique being used in these other beating videos maybe that played a role in why they were willing
to hold him accountable here i don't know in one incident he kicked the suspect's lower body while
he was on the ground and numerous other officers had gained control of him and the second a week
prior to hornback's arrest he struck a man with a flashlight eight times certainly he didn't strike
him with an object he struck them with a thing or flashlight eight times after right pulled him
from the car during a traffic stop usually where there's smoke there's fire not always
including one strike that investigators said came as the man was trying to stand up and comply
now good for investigators in kentucky investigators found two violations
conduct unbecoming and excessive use of force and suspended zartorsky
now that was in the earlier case despite the fact that he testified under oath just two months later
zartorsky said in his horn statement that he didn't recall the suspension now i believe he's
been fired as well i'll have to ask chris about this and maybe he'll come on and explain more but
what happened with the other guy i mean clearly he lied clearly he lied i don't see why zartorsky's
lie was any worse than wright's lie except for you know zartorsky had these these other incidents
caught on video so can this officer that was charged get qualified immunity no he can't
you know why because these are criminal charges qualified immunity does not apply as a defense
to allegations of criminal conduct or at least in a criminal case so that's not a defense there now
he could assert it in the federal civil rights lawsuit now but he's not charged
with perjury there that's not what's alleged though that will be an extremely useful fact
um that is true he's charged with excessive force so what's important in an excessive force case so
this is not a pretrial detainee it's basically somebody who's being arrested who's not already
in custody you look at the basic grand factors you know was this a dangerous person what was he under
arrest for was he actively resisting arrest or fighting with the officers so the video basically
i believe in my opinion will seal this up as we had discussed with chris before it shows that he's
not actively resisting or fighting the officers and in fact appears to be cooperative or compliant
now sometimes officers in those situations will say well yeah the video what the video doesn't
show is that he was tensing up or something like that but you know the the the video shows what it
shows and uh it shows two-on-one um a man who is presumed innocent he's in his own home his parents
are watching um he he undisputedly does not strike yet does not try to kick does not try to punch
any of the officers it doesn't appear he tried to spit on him or anything like that now what you he
may have been saying something a lot of times in these videos they're they're running their mouths
but you know that basically you can just about uh say what you want um you can say what you want and
generally mere words alone are not sufficient to warrant this sort of a violent response
um so i mean i've had cases where where there's all sorts of awful things being said but
you know you're not allowed as a police officer to lose your temper and violently
attack a person in response to any any any words that he said so it has to do with a basic self
defense sort of analysis you know was he did he pose a threat to these officers or anyone else
and if they thought he posed a threat then why is that was it because of his criminal history
or the crime that they were alleged crime that they were arresting him for or based
on something that happened at the scene so the the it's undisputed what they were arresting him
for it's undisputed what his criminal history was i don't even know all that but uh it's undisputed
really what happened almost undisputed because it's caught on video there's a u.s supreme court
case scott versus harris that says if law enforcement testimony clearly contradicts
what's seen on the video the court is allowed to go with what's on the video
because it's you know they didn't say this but it's you know more credible than
self-serving testimony from a police officer who's been alleged to have committed misconduct
and clearly that has been illustrated in this case where both of these officers lied
when they said that they didn't use force and this has nothing to do with system systematic racism
as you can see everyone appears to be the same race this is a problem that's been around for a
long time and transcends race ethnicity nationality and it has to do with just
living in the current police state you know that we've chosen to create for ourselves
where you know how many times have they gotten away with it and they've been able to lie about it
and uh you know fortunately here we have a rare case of accountability because there was a lawyer
who stepped in and forced the issue and did it in a really clever way so as to sort of
um kill two birds with one stone so to speak and i'm not just talking about the officers but
while he's proving excessive force also proving that these guys are liars and are committing
perjury so good on the kentucky investigators for at least taking action against this one guy and
i'm not sure about right the other one i'll have to ask chris about that but but uh he's he's on
video doing the same thing so we'll have to have an update hopefully in the near future on this
you