Off The Cuff Declassified examines the fatal shooting of Antoine Rose, a 17-year-old killed by an officer after fleeing a vehicle linked to a prior crime—three bullets struck him despite no weapons found. Legal precedent like Tennessee v. Garner (1985) and Pennsylvania case law justify the force, yet critics like D. Lee Merritt and residents dispute his threat level. The episode also dissects Trump’s 2018 executive order ending child-parent separations, exposing its reliance on Clinton-era laws that critics call "family prisons," while Sam Levine’s doxing of ICE agents—including undercover officers—goes unpunished despite life-threatening risks. Peter Fonda’s deleted threats against federal agents’ children contrast with Twitter’s swift action against Roseanne Barr for milder offenses, revealing a double standard. Ultimately, the episode questions whether justice or political optics drive these responses, exposing systemic inconsistencies in accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
Today, I'm off the cuff declassified, a controversial police shooting in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Police shot a young black man in the back, but might it have been justified?
Law enforcement expert Ben Manis joins me to discuss the detention and arrest process for illegal aliens.
We're going to debunk a lot of bad information.
President Trump signs an executive order eliminating those child-parent separations at the border.
Or did he?
Then, Peter Fonda gets a pass for disgraceful tweets that I believe would have gotten any conservative permanently banned from Twitter.
Protests in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania after the police shot and killed 17-year-old Antoine Rose.
Now, at first glance, if you don't dig into the fact pattern of this case, it looks bad.
You've got a 17-year-old fleeing a car stop, seeing a car stop, and a police officer, worn into duty only hours before, irresponsibly draws his firearm, shooting and killing this innocent 17-year-old kid, shot him in the back, slaughtered him in the street,
presumably for no other reason than he was driving while black and so terrified of the police that he was running away.
But that's not the fact pattern of the case.
That's the media's fact pattern of the case, but it's not the real fact pattern of the case.
Now, the usual suspects are out there, the Black Lives Matter crew, the National Action Network, Al Sharpton's people, they're all screaming and yelling and making noise.
We expect this after a police involved shooting.
We expect it.
There are people saying he murdered him in front of my face as demonstrations began outside of the police station in East Pittsburgh.
Signs and police violence now.
And people said they had videos of the incident.
But here's the problem.
Here's the problem.
They're not giving you the fact pattern.
Now, the family attorney, a guy named D. Lee Merritt, the Rose family attorney, said, quote, from all accounts, he was a generous, hardworking, and highly promising student.
Affirmations of his generosity of spirit and genuine good-heartedness have begun pouring in from all corners of the East Pittsburgh community where he lives.
Now, I'm not going to besmirch the dead, but the fact pattern of the case betrays the honor student narrative that, of course, is starting.
What is the fact pattern of the case?
Well, let me read this.
This is from Fox News, but there's a lot of local news.
Here's where the rubber meets the road, okay?
Investigators said Wednesday that the car stopped in East Pittsburgh matched the description of a vehicle being sought in a non-fatal shooting in a town a few miles away.
An East Pittsburgh officer who has not been identified was taking the driver into custody when two passengers, including 17-year-old Antoine Rose, ran off.
Investigators have said Rose was shot three times.
They said nobody fired a weapon at the officer during the stop, and the team did not have a weapon on him.
However, however, Allegheny Police Department Superintendent Coleman McDonough said, quote, an investigation revealed that the shooter in the original non-fatal shoot fired nine.40 caliber rounds at the victim from a passing vehicle.
The victim also returned fire.
Two firearms were recovered from the vehicle from which Antoine Rose fled.
The vehicle that Antoine Rose was sitting in had bullet holes in it.
Now, now.
Anything is possible.
But the likelihood in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, of two vehicles of identical make, model, year, and color having occupants.
that match the description of those who shot someone from a vehicle of that make, model, year, and color.
And that vehicle also has bullet holes in it from the return fire of the victim of the first shooting.
The likelihood of there being two cars like that driving around each Pittsburgh are pretty slim.
So the police officer had probable cause.
He pulls the vehicle over.
He goes to arrest the driver.
Two others in the vehicle flee.
Two others suspected of trying to kill someone.
Doesn't matter that the shooting was non-fatal.
Does not matter.
Now, Merritt, the victim's family, the alleged shooter shot by the police's family's attorney, wrote, he said, quote, we know very little about the circumstances surrounding his death at this early stage.
We must emphasize that rumors of him being involved in a separate shooting are unsubstantiated.
Not untrue, unsubstantiated.
We know that he was not armed at the time he was shot down, that he posed no immediate threat to anyone.
That isn't necessarily legally true.
And I'm going to read you the Supreme Court decision, which most likely justifies the officer's action in just a moment.
We know that he was not armed at the time he was shot down.
Also doesn't matter according to the United States Supreme Court.
That he posed no immediate threat to anyone, could analyze all that.
And that, significantly, the driver of the vehicle he occupied was released from police custody.
The officer involved in this shooting had just been sworn into the Pittsburgh PD roughly three hours before this encounter.
Now, a lot of falsehoods in that statement.
He was an East Pittsburgh police officer, not a Pittsburgh police officer.
And yes, he had taken employment with the East Pittsburgh PD recently and was sworn into that department, but he had been a police officer in neighboring departments since 2011.
The cop had seven years on the street.
Not a cop with a few hours on the street, but the media is not telling you that.
These facts, without more, simply leave very little room to justify the use of deadly force by this officer.
Additional information concerning the background of the offending officer and the facts available to him at the time of the shooting is needed as we determine the appropriate action in this matter.
Now, I will say this.
Typically, typically, these attorneys are screaming for the officer's head on a pike and the officer to be impaled on a stick in front of their police station.
This attorney is actually being pretty professional.
I got to give credit where he did.
Look, he's hired by the family to represent their interests.
But I think in that context, it's a very fair statement.
He's not vilifying the cop.
He's simply saying, right now it doesn't look good.
The reports of my clients, my client's son or nephew, whatever this kid is, being involved in the shooting are unsubstantiated.
He's not saying he's the greatest kid in the world.
He's not.
He's just saying, look, we don't know enough, right?
And it looks really bad.
And we're going to take some kind of action.
We don't know enough.
So in the grand scheme of attorneys that do this kind of thing, I got to give this guy Merritt some credit.
He's not out there trying to create riots, but they're starting to happen.
And you can see this predominantly African-American by crime.
Now, here's the problem for those saying the police tried to randomly kill or the police randomly kill this child for no reason.
The Peske Supreme Court case decided in 1985, argued in 1984, of Tennessee v. Garner, considered a 1985 case.
Now, let me read you Tennessee v. Garner's summary.
A Tennessee statute provides that if, after a police officer has given notice of an intent to arrest a criminal suspect, the suspect flees or forcibly resists, the officer may use all necessary means to effect the arrest.
Acting under authority of the statute, a Memphis police officer shot and killed a Pelle respondent, Garner's son, as, after being told to halt, the son fled over a fence at night in the backyard of a house he was suspected of burglarizing.
The officer used deadly force despite being reasonably sure the suspect was unarmed and thinking that he was 17 or 18 years old and of slight build.
The father subsequently brought an action in federal district court seeking damages under 42 U.S. Code 1983 for asserted violations of his son's constitutional rights.
The district court held that the Tennessee statute and the officer's action were constitutional, but a court of appeals reversed and it went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled.
The Supreme Court ruled, and this is the decision of the opinion of the court.
The case requires us to determine the constitutionality of the use of deadly force to present, to prevent the escape of an apparently unarmed suspected felon.
We conclude that such force may not be used unless it is necessary to prevent the escape.
And the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.
And that is, that is the crux of this case in East Pittsburgh, because Antoine Rose was suspected in a shooting.
It doesn't matter how it looks after the fact.
It doesn't matter how you feel about it, how I feel about it, how the Rose family feels about it, how the residents of East Pittsburgh feel about it.
All that matters is at the split second, the exact moment that that officer pulled that trigger, all that matters is whether or not in that split second, that fraction of a millisecond, that officer believed that the person fleeing posed a threat to the public.
And it is reasonable, reasonable to believe that a person sitting in a vehicle that just was suspected, a vehicle used in a crime, a shooting, and the person in the vehicle was one of the suspects in that shooting.
It is beyond reasonable for a police officer to think that person poses a threat to the police officer or to other innocents.
And that's why, according to the law, forgetting the optics, depending on how it looks, that this shooting appears to be justified.
Now, the court went on, and they wrote a lot in this case, because it really, this case is a very important case.
It gives the government the right to basically kill you if you're fleeing and unarmed.
And so they wrote other things.
Let me find you some other relevant points here.
The court wrote back in 1995, the use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable.
It is not better that all felony suspects die than they escape, where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others.
The harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so.
It is no doubt unfortunate when a suspect who is inside escapes, but the fact that the police arrive a little late or a little slower afoot does not always justify killing the suspect.
A police officer may not seize an unarmed, non-dangerous suspect by shooting him dead.
The Tennessee statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes the use of deadly force against such fleeing suspects.
It is not, however, unconstitutional on its face.
The court is saying that the Tennessee statute, that was the statute in question in this case, has elements that are unconstitutional.
And this is the very important part.
It is not, however, unconstitutional on its face.
Where the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force.
Now, remember, Antoine Rose and his buddies are in this car, shoot at a guy, the guy shoots back.
The officer had no way of knowing if Rose and the other guy fleeing were going to finish that guy off.
He had probable cause to believe another was in danger.
I'm saying he, because they haven't even identified the gender of the officer.
I read or I glanced over it, but I'll for the officer.
Okay, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force.
Thus, if the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm, deadly force may be used if necessary to prevent escape.
And if, where feasible, some warning has been given.
As applied in such circumstances, a Tennessee statute would pass constitutional muster.
And this then became the law of the land when the Supreme Court rendered its decision.
So let's think about that fact pattern again, right?
In this East Pittsburgh case, there's a shooting.
People call 911.
This is the make model and year of the car.
This is what the occupants in the vehicle look like.
The guy shot at, shot back.
There are bullet holes in the vehicle.
Short time later, police officer on patrol sees a vehicle matching the make model and description with suspects in the car matching that description, bullet holes in the vehicle.
The felony car stop now.
Remember the statute, right?
Statute says, if there is probable cause to believe that the fleeing suspect has committed a crime involving an infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm to another, so now the cop is pulling over this vehicle, believing that those within try to shoot and or shoot and kill somebody.
One is in custody, not being arrested, the other two flee.
Deadly force may be used, if necessary, to prevent escape.
Statute And Suspicions00:05:25
Supreme Court says it in black and white, in black and white.
And this is what the problem is going to be for the social justice warriors in this one.
A very, very big problem for the social justice warriors in this.
Because this police officer remembered his training from the police academy.
He remembered procedure.
He remembered constitutional law.
The law on this is clear.
Hopp didn't even have to know for a fact that Antoine Rose pulled the trigger on the other guy, the guy who shot back at the vehicle.
Hop didn't have to know that.
Supreme Court says the cop only, the standard of suspicion, we call the levels of suspicion, near suspicion, reasonable suspicion, probable cause, beyond a reasonable doubt.
The police officer only needed probable cause, which he had.
He had that.
He had a detailed description of the vehicle, bullet holes in the vehicle, descriptions of the suspect, two gun suspects, two guns in the vehicle.
One gun.
apparently matching the caliber 40 caliber used in the previous shooting.
And I'm assuming the officer could tell those weapons were fired.
You could smell it.
You'd be able to smell that.
You're training and experience as a cop.
You add all that up.
You add all that up.
And the officer's actions directly comport with Tennessee v. Garner 1985.
There's no debate about this.
There's no gray area about this.
The officer's actions comport with the statute.
They were entirely, entirely constitutional.
But the social justice warriors won't care about this.
They'll riot.
They'll burn their neighborhoods down.
And we don't know anything about the background of this Antoine Rose, the kid shot.
Now, look, it's always tragic when a 17-year-old is gunned down by the police.
What's even more tragic are the circumstances that kid put himself in.
Why was he in a vehicle that was shooting at somebody else?
Well, people in the vehicle.
Why was he in a vehicle with people that were shooting at someone else?
Or was he among those shooting at someone else?
We don't know.
But if he was, why?
Why?
And what led, what happened in his young life that led him to be with those kinds of people in that kind of environment?
What happened?
We don't know.
We have no idea.
But those are the questions that need to be asked before we start with the honor student narrative.
Now, people in the neighborhood are doing what you expect.
Quote, he shot that boy three times in the back while I was watching.
I already talked to the police and everything.
That boy was murdered.
He had no gun, nothing.
My kids was outside.
I told my kids to go in the house.
And I see them have the car pulled over and they shooting the boy, just running.
Didn't have no.
He just ran.
Running is not a death sentence.
That's why I'm glad they blocked the street off in protest because that cop murdered that boy.
He murdered him in front of my face.
Well, I don't fault this guy.
This is a guy named John Leach, neighborhood resident, because what he saw looked that way.
I don't fault Mr. Leach for not understanding the statute of Tennessee v. Garner.
I don't fault Mr. Leach for not knowing the facts of the case, for not having the information the police officer had at that moment, right?
Police officers had information on previous shooting, knew the car matched the description, bullet holes, suspect match.
Police officers had the training, seven years of experience, the training in constitutional law, knowing that Tennessee v. Garner gave him the legal authority to shoot a fleeing felon, knowing through experience on the street that oftentimes in what looks like a gang-related shooting or a personal beef-related shooting, those fleeing might be going back to finish off the other guy.
Optics only matter to a point.
Oftentimes they don't matter at all.
Oftentimes they don't matter at all.
And in this case, optics simply do not matter one bit.
What matters, the only things that matter, the only things are what led up to the car stop, what was in the officer's mind, what the officer believed when pulling that vehicle over, and what the officer, most critically, what the officer believed at that split millisecond he pulled that trigger.
And I truly believe, I truly believe that officer felt that those two fleeing suspects presented a grave threat to the public.
He remembered his training.
He remembered his case law, constitutional law, and he made a very, very tough, very, very tough split millisecond decision to fire his weapon.
I believe it was justified.
We're going to find out soon enough.
But I believe, reading all the facts of the case, I believe the shooting was legally justified.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that shooting a 17-year-old is going to haunt this cop for the rest of his life.
It's going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
I see right now, I sit here and bring you this.
This shooting to me appears to be legally, constitutionally justified.
So much going on this week in the law enforcement sphere.
Laws and Control00:09:20
We've got a lot of misinformation about the way illegal immigrants are detained or arrested.
Their children are separated.
We've got lunatics like Peter Fonda making threats against the son of the president of the United States, sons and daughters of federal agents.
We have White House officials being doxed, ICE agents being doxxed, their personal information being released on social media.
Here to make sense of it all as law enforcement expert, former federal and local law enforcement officer, my good friend Ben Manis.
Ben, thanks for being here this morning.
It's always good to see you, John Harry.
It's great to see you, my friend.
All right, let's jump right in.
I want to get into the misinformation.
Now, the president signed an executive order that basically reverses this policy of separating families at the border, but that's not going to be enough for the left.
We both know that.
They're going to be crying about something else in, I don't know, about 15 and a half minutes.
So for the audience's edification, let's you and I, two guys that work the street, talk about the process to detain or arrest and detain somebody, whether they be an illegal going into federal custody or an armed robber going into local custody.
Cut through, Ben, for me, because you explained it very, very nicely when we were chatting offline.
Cut through the facts, cut through the fiction and give us the facts.
So whether or not one person agrees with the fact that, you know, what is or is not a crime exists, if it is a crime, someone has to get arrested for it.
If they do get arrested for it, they're required to show up in court.
The problem with the immigration situation right now is for years they were doing this catch and release policy.
So when people were getting arrested, they were like basically saying, all right, show back up for your immigration hearing.
And they were sending them out into the country and they weren't showing up.
So when President Trump started his zero tolerance policy, the idea was, no, we're going to hold them and assure that they make at least the first appearance or two in front of an immigration judge, especially where asylum is claimed because everyone, you know, says, I have asylum issues, which should be reserved for physical danger or religion, not economic prosperity and corruption, which is the big problem in Latin America right now.
Right.
And Ben, asylum, and I thought the Homeland Security Secretary Kirsten Nielsen did a very good job at explaining that if you present yourself to a border checkpoint and seek asylum, you're not going to be removed from your kids.
Your family's not going to be separated.
That happens when you try to come across the border at night in between checkpoints, i.e. illegally.
Yeah, which is extremely dangerous for the kids involved.
Not to mention the fact that they don't even have to go to a border checkpoint.
If you're in another country, like a war-torn country, like when we're in Bosnia or what have you, you could literally walk into a U.S. embassy or constantly.
You can do it in your country, right?
Yeah.
So, you know, arrow lines in your hometown.
You don't have to make a 2,000-mile strife-ridden journey in precarious situations where, you know, your kid is at risk, which ends in, if it's in the Texas side, crossing a rapid river with your children.
Yeah, through cartel country.
So, I mean, when you think about the issues being conflated, and that's what we're really looking at here right now, if any person, if you were caught, you know, out on A1A drunken driving and you had your kid in your next seat, right?
That you would have to be arrested.
And that kid is not going into the cell with you because guess what?
Then that kid is exposed to the dangers of a correctional environment.
That's right.
So last night, President Trump signs an executive order to keep the families together, which is going to entail building.
We have to now figure out a way to create family detention centers.
Now they have to create a jail where people are all separate so that the kids can't get victimized, which is just ludicrous when you consider it was done to basically appease a media firestorm created by people who wouldn't care less.
And how we know about this is Michelle Bronet, who's the director of migrant rights and justice program for the Women's Refugee Commission, was quoted in NPR yesterday saying, you know, this executive order effectively creates family prisons, which we already know is a threat to the well-being of the child.
Well, you knew they were never going to be happy, but you know what?
Listen, let them go there because now the left is going to have to reveal their true colors that they don't want any illegal detained.
And I hope they go there.
See, I think this was smart politics on the part of the Trump administration.
I'm going to talk about it later.
You sign this executive order that you know won't hold up in court against the 97 law that says kids can't spend more than 20 days in detention with adults.
Then you, a federal judge vacates the EO and you throw it back on Dems and say, come up with a legislative solution.
This was your guy, Bill Clinton's 97 law.
I think that's the long game the Trump administration is playing here and that Homeland Security is playing.
But I guess that'll be seen once this gets in front of the federal judge.
Well, I want to point something out that is really important here, which is, you know, he's already offered, you know, in a legal bill, not an executive order, a bill that would become law forever.
He's already offered over a million people to get ambassadors.
Which is more than any of his Democratic predecessors.
Right, but he put poison pills in there.
It was a smart move, right?
They put poison pills in there.
But I think the president, I was talking about this yesterday.
I think the president could present that same bill to Democrats today.
They take it or leave it.
I gave you DACA, gave you DACA.
Yeah.
My wall's in there.
Take it or leave it.
That's your best offer.
He's got to pull the Michael Corleone and Godfather 2 at the Senator.
Almost nowhere else in the world outside the EU would a wall be a non-starter because you have to control your points of entry.
Look, every country in the world separates families and detains children.
We're the convenient scapegoat.
Canada does it.
Canada does it for months and months and years and years.
But it doesn't even have to be immigration-based.
If you simply take yourself out of the argument that you don't believe immigration should be enforced, which is ludicrous in its own right, because 17 years ago, when we were worried about terrorism because of 9-11, we were locking down our borders, you know, thinking there may be terrorists trying to get through our southern borders.
But let's leave that alone for a second and think: anyone, if you had someone lock their kid in a hot car and walk into a Walmart, you would want that parent arrested, right?
But anybody would.
This is silly.
This is silly what they're trying to push on us.
This is moronic.
If you go into a drug house and there's one parent there and the dad lives in another state and said, I left the mom because she was a drug addict.
I'm coming to get my kid.
The kid's still got to go to social services while the dad makes his way across the country.
You don't leave the kid at home and say, hey, kid, here's a bottle of water and a happy.
That's reckless endangerment.
But see, that's the point.
Point I'm making is we shouldn't, as a country, be creating laws and executive orders just to meet one political issue at a time because laws, like you and me know from enforcing them, are forever.
And a good example of that is, you know, you look at some of the state laws that are coming out.
New Jersey this week passed a gun law saying they're going to have universal background checks.
Well, guess what?
New Jersey already had that because there's no private sales that are legal in New Jersey.
So what are we talking about?
But you know, 17 people shot in Trenton.
That never happened, right?
Because New Jersey is driven by 20.
20.
Last I saw 22 injured, 17 as a result of being shot.
Yeah, I mean, that's the joke.
The joke is Trenton, you know, New Jersey has some of the highest gun laws in the world.
We're not like going that far off track, but the point I'm making is Governor Phil Murphy, who is an empty suit, he's all about left-wing talking points.
Well, he's John Corzine 2.0, a multi-millionaire, if not billionaire, Bullman Sachs guy, far leftist, run for governor.
We saw how Corzine went down in a blaze of glory.
Yeah, well, see, so he comes in, he says, I want universal background checks.
I want magazine bans.
It's already in different laws.
He's just creating new laws with the different labels.
Yeah, he wants his name on something.
That's all it is.
We're creating laws and executive orders basically to say, okay, you're right.
And as we could see by that comment from NPR, it's just not working.
We need to carefully consider our laws in this country.
We need to have honest discussion.
Let's switch gears.
I want to talk about this doxing.
Now, we saw, I mean, this is out of control.
The left is out of control.
Peter Fonda calling for people to surround the schools where the children of federal agents go to scare the children and families, calling for Baron Trump to be ripped from his mother's arms and put in a cage with a pedophile.
Let's forget.
Let's forget that that was a threat against the son of the president of the United States.
Peter Fonda should have been arrested.
Let's forget that.
Or at least investigated.
Most times they want to say that's better.
We do know that the Office of the First Lady notified the Secret Service and the Secret Service did investigate.
We know that.
And they will interview.
That's without question.
We know that.
Doxing And Undercover Work00:04:28
But he still has his social media account.
He still has his Twitter account.
How about that?
If you posted that, if I tweeted that, if I tweeted that, if any other conservative tweeted that, our accounts would have been permanently banned from Twitter.
Anthony Kumia is on his fourth Twitter account.
Yes, that's right.
Seriously.
Yep.
And what has he said that's anywhere near threatening the life of the president's son?
How about this?
Roseanne loses her job.
We talked about it before.
I'm not a big Roseanne fan, but the next day a woman not only calls the first daughter the C-word, but insinuates incest.
And she still has a Twitter account and a national show.
It's a double standard.
So tell me about this doxing.
There's this guy, Sam Levine.
He's out there doxing federal agents, putting their personal information up online, putting them and their families at risk.
Give me the facts of this case.
So Sam Levine is an adjunct professor at NYU.
He's also a guy who's a gamer.
He creates video games.
Sam created a database.
What he did was he had a program, Come, LinkedIn Profiles, Professional Profiles, and he created a database of 1,500 and change ICE agents, people who notified ICE as an employer on their social media accounts.
And I'm not talking social social like Facebook.
I'm talking LinkedIn, professional accounts.
And then what he did was he put it on Antifa pages on Reddit and other places that were hostile toward federal agents.
And, you know, I can't tell you how absolutely dangerous that is.
Not just for the fact that, you know, these are law enforcement officers, but Sam Levine and most of the people reporting like the border issue right now have no idea what ICE does.
And first things first, ICE is a parent agency.
In 2002, the agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and customs merged to create ICE.
Now they have divisions, DRO, which is detention and removal.
Those are the guys down on the border right now.
And HSI, who does everything from kiddie porn to the smuggling of nuclear weapons into this country.
HSI basically has the same mandate as the FBI.
HSI has a very broad investigative mandate.
It stands for Homeland Security Investigations.
Very broad mandate.
We've got CBP customs and border protection.
We've got the Border Patrol.
We've got immigration and customs enforcement.
All fall under the Department of Homeland Security.
You're right.
ICE people are the guys at the airport.
They're targeting the wrong people.
Well, to make it simple, if you think of like HSI, you think of anything being smuggled into the United States.
They were the old customers.
And these are, by the way.
They were the old customs agents.
If people remember them as U.S. customs, that became HSI.
But when they split the detention removal agents up with the HSI agents, guess what they were doing?
Fighting human trafficking and sex worker trafficking and basically modern-day slave trades.
So they're going to work with those guys on the sex offender work I did.
They are some of the most talented investigators out there and the most knowledgeable because like you say, a lot of the stuff originates offshore.
It was always their mandate.
I have two fraternity brothers on that job.
And I'll tell you something right now, John.
They don't work in a uniform on a border.
These guys do undercover work on occasion.
So now their name and picture is out in the world because here's the thing.
If you have a different name and an undercover identity and you're working in that capacity, LinkedIn isn't something often screened by the people you're under with.
Now they have a little database they could go to.
Yep.
Now this guy put lives at risk.
Will he face any repercussions for this?
It's a good question.
That's something I honestly want to see.
Now, first, will he face employment repercussions from NYU?
That's the furthest left place on the planet.
And he's an adjunct.
He's probably making a sharp three to five grand a semester.
Exactly.
That's not the biggest deal here, but we need to take a strong stand against this.
It's the same thing with Chelsea Manning.
Chelsea Manning went to jail because, not because she's sharing secret information, because the secret information she was sharing was the identities of foreign operatives.
That's right.
Reasonable Belief In Armed Suspects00:06:42
Put lives.
They got killed.
So, I mean, the first time someone dies over this stuff, it becomes serious, but I would like it not to become that serious.
I'd like people to take it seriously enough to bring Sam Levine to justice.
And it's the same things what we see with all these cameras on these cops these days.
When a cop is doing their job and their face is now on national TV, that cop could never work undercover.
Never worked undercover and rarely can work in those areas.
It's a great way to move into what I wanted to talk about next.
You're in Philadelphia, you're in Pennsylvania.
Caddy corner across the state, many miles away, but still in your state.
Great town.
Over in East Pittsburgh, we had a shooting of a 17-year-old.
And I talked about this in my first segment, but I wanted to get your opinion now.
Brief back pattern of the case.
Guy named Antoine Rose, 17, is in a vehicle.
Earlier, a vehicle matching the exact Make Model Year color description of that vehicle is involved in a shooting.
Occupants of the vehicle in which Rose was in allegedly shot at another guy.
That guy shot back.
When the East Pittsburgh police officer pulls over the vehicle in which Rose is in, he sees Mickbundle year color matching and bullet holes in the vehicle, as well as occupants matching the description of the shooters.
He goes to an effect, he does a felony car stop, goes to effect an arrest on the driver.
Two others flee, Rose being one.
The officer fires three times, hitting Rose in the back.
He kills Rose.
Uproar, riots, the usual suspects, Black Lives Matter, Al Sharpton, New Black Panther Party, all go in nuts.
Streets in front of the East Pittsburgh police station have to be closed.
Then you read Hennessy v. Garner, 1985 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Look at you.
It says, Ben, it is not, they talk about the Tennessee statute.
Court basically says the Tennessee statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes the use of deadly force against such fleeing suspects, such in that context being those suspects not involved in a violent crime.
Court goes on to write, it is not, however, unconstitutional on its face, where the officer is probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others.
It is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force.
Thus, if the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon, or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction with a weapon, or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm, deadly force may be used if necessary to prevent escape.
And if where feasible, some warning has been given, as applied in such circumstances, the statute would pass constitutional muster.
So to me, Ben, you got three guys in a car suspected in a prior shooting, non-fatal shooting, but a shooting.
They're running.
The cop says, stop.
They don't stop.
He fires.
I'd say his actions comport with this statute pretty much to the letter, with this Supreme Court decision, pretty much to the letter.
Yeah, so what the Allegheny County District Attorney and the Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro are going to take a very hard look at is: did that officer, who, by the way, unfortunately, it was only his first day off of field training.
No, it wasn't.
I just dug into that.
He's been a cop.
He's been a cop since 2011.
He was on this job.
He was transferred.
Yeah, he was on this job for a few weeks, and they just got around to swearing him in.
He was certified.
He just transferred over.
Guy's been on the job since 2011.
That was a good idea.
Thank you for showing that the media was wrong on this again.
Yeah, so this poor cop, you know, comes up on a scene.
What the DA and the Attorney General are going to take a hard look at is: did he reasonably, did he have the reasonable belief that there could have been weapons on those fleeing suspects?
So you had the bullet holes, you had the fitting of the description, you had the fact that it was a shooting.
They were fleeing.
That's right.
This wasn't.
If you're running from something that serious.
Yeah, this whole time shoplifting.
They didn't steal some sneakers.
If you're running for something that serious, you better put your hands up and say, I am not armed because that officer will have the reasonable determination.
Even if you're not armed, though, Tennessee v. Garner says the police can shoot because 100%.
They don't know if you're going to get a gun and finish off the guy that you shot previously.
No, that's absolutely right.
But what I'm telling you is that split section decision, he obviously didn't get into the car and search it yet.
Right.
He had three suspected shooters.
He didn't know they were armed or not.
Exactly right.
So when one's going to run, you have to treat that person like he's armed.
And that's what happens when you resist arrest.
And I'll tell you, in Pennsylvania, we've had some good case law in that matter.
In Philadelphia, a year ago, we had a situation where a guy was armed.
He was on an ATV.
Cop goes up to stop him because that's an illegal vehicle.
He runs.
He reaches for the gun.
I remember this case.
At this time, the officer, Philadelphia officer, shoots, but the weapon misfires.
When the officer takes his eyes off the target to rechamber his weapon, the suspect dumped the gun.
He didn't see it.
The body cam showed he didn't see it.
And that's why Attorney General Shapiro didn't press charges in that.
Sure, sure.
The point I'm making is: if you have a gun and you run and you reach for it, what do you expect is going to happen?
Hey, if you shoot somebody and you run, what do you expect is going to happen?
Exactly.
Ridiculous.
And it was even a case where a carjacking occurred the day after a Philadelphia officer was shot.
This is back in 2008.
But they made big news because the news helicopter caught a pretty vicious beating the officers were laying on the suspects when they finally got the car cornered.
And the DA at the time, Lynn Abraham, did not prosecute the officers.
And the reason was these guys just committed an armed carjacking and drive-by shooting.
The officers now had to stop these guys who were running and resisting, and they were in a car with weapons.
Cops could have shot them.
Look, I had a case like that.
We're running out of time, but I had a similar case.
I was sued for excessive use of force for wrestling with a guy, knocking him through a glass table, and he got caught up.
The judge summarily dismissed the claim.
He goes, the guy had a gun in his hand.
The judge said to the family, you're lucky they didn't shoot and kill him in your apartment.
And he dismissed the claim.
He said that that was the least of your worries that they broke your glass table and cut him up a little bit.
Thank you.
Yeah, exactly.
Parents vs. Kids00:04:29
It was like, we just shut our mouths.
Thank you, Your Honor.
And we left.
Ben, ran out of time, my friend.
It's always a pleasure.
Really informative stuff.
We'll speak soon.
Good talking to you.
Good to see you again soon.
Thanks, brother.
Take care.
I want to wrap up the show by talking about a couple of items of note.
I covered this a little bit with Ben Manis a little bit earlier in the last segment.
President Trump, of course, signed that executive order reversing the policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the border, illegal parents, parents that have done things, either crimes or came across illegally and put the child in danger.
And of course, it's going to cost us some money now to put these people together, the kids and the parents.
I don't have a problem with that.
But I think there's a longer game the White House is playing.
There's a 1997 law, as I briefly touched on with Ben, that says that children cannot remain in adult detention for more than 20 days.
And I suspect, usually pretty good with this kind of analysis.
I suspect the Trump administration did this for a couple of reasons.
Number one, they had to take the heat off of Homeland Security Secretary Kirsten Nielsen.
Now, we saw she was protested in a restaurant.
We've spoken a little bit about that.
These protesters went into a Mexican restaurant where she was having dinner, disrupted her dinner, screaming things at her.
We saw a congressional intern scream expletives at the president of the United States.
Well, it turns out that the person who one of the people from the Democratic Socialists of America who decided to insult the Homeland Security Secretary at dinner and drive her from the restaurant actually worked for the Department of Justice.
I'm not even going to say the woman's name.
I don't want to give her any more attention.
That indicates a whole new series of problems in our DOJ.
But I think that the game here with this executive order was to restore some goodwill toward the Homeland Security Secretary because I believe the president likes her, thinks she's doing a good job.
Optically, he had her right over his shoulder when he signed the executive order.
He turned around and he said, great job, good job or great job.
She's really back in the president's inner circle now.
But I think the longer game here, as I touched on with Ben earlier, is the president signs this executive order.
Someone is going to challenge it.
A very conservative group is going to challenge it in court.
A taxpayer organization that doesn't want to spend money on these facilities for parents and children is going to challenge it.
And presumably, a federal judge is going to say to the president, you can't sign an executive order that violates an existing 1997 statute.
So I'm throwing out this executive order.
Trump turns around and says, hey, I did what I could do to put these kids and their parents back together.
It was a Bill Clinton Democrat law.
Hey, Democrats, this is on you.
Here's my proposal.
It's the same one as before.
You get DACA.
I get my wall.
Let's put a provision in to keep the parents and kids together and stop talking about immigration.
And we start building the wall.
Democrats don't do that.
They are going to be, I don't think Democrats are going to win in the midterms.
I think Republicans are going to do great because people in their living rooms and at their kitchen tables and at the water cooler at work, chatting on their cell phone with their friends in the car, they're talking about the economy.
Yeah, they're talking about immigration, but they're really talking about their own bottom line, talking about the economy.
And so if the Democrats don't finally realize we're the minority party, we got to give on immigration here.
I think that it's a disaster for Democrats in the midterms, especially since Trump showed a willingness via executive fiat to put these families back together.
And I would love to see the Democrats pick this hill to die on.
I want to switch gears and talk about the disgraceful tweets by Peter Fonda.
Peter Fonda is issuing an apology.
Now, we all know that this apology is bogus.
We know that.
We know this apology is simply the result of him being told by Sony Pictures they're releasing a film to apologize.
If you haven't seen the tweet, I, ah, he deleted them.
I don't even want to read them.
He called for Baron Trump to be ripped from Melania Trump's arms and thrown in a cage with a pedophile.
He called for the schools where the children of federal agents go, DHS, ICE agents, to be surrounded and the kids terrorized and the parents made to live in fear.
He's a terrible, terrible, terrible guy, Peter Fonda.
I mean, you want to attack political figures, fine.
You want to attack Donald Trump?
Fine.
You want to attack the Homeland Security Secretary?
Fine.
You want to attack me?
Fine.
Peter Fonda's Terrible Tweets00:00:51
Attack any adult, fine.
But little children, calling for children to be put in cages with pedophiles?
What kind of sick individual is this?
Now, Roseanne Barr said something far less about Valerie Jarrett.
It was racist.
It was reprehensible.
Roseanne said she didn't realize it was racist.
I believe her.
But it did come off that way.
She lost her show, the top-rated show on television.
Conservatives make one off-color comment, one inappropriate comment on social media.
Their accounts are permanently banned.
Peter Fonda calls for the son of the president of the United States and forget that it was even the president's son.
Calls for a child to be abducted, ripped from his mother's arms, and raped by a pedophile in a cage.
He then calls for the children of federal agents to be terrorized.
Eh, no big deal.
He issued an apology.
Let's move on.
Twitter didn't even suspend his account for five minutes.