CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025 – A radio investigative reporter suing Hamilton County to end what he calls “systemic false arrests” has filed for a temporary restraining order to force Sheriff Austin Garrett to get arrest warrants as the law requires.
David Tulis of Eagle Radio Network says Garrett fails to account for the arrest warrant requirement in the Tennessee constitution and a state law that requires an arrest warrant for every alleged misdemeanor that is not a “public offense” or a “breach of the peace threatened.”
Tulis is suing the county over his arrest and jailing Nov. 22, 2023, on radio station business. He is demanding a permanent injunction and an order to reform arrest practices. He’s also targeting the criminalization of traffic law violations that he says are subject to the Tennessee Uniform Administrative Procedures Act, and not criminally prosecutable generating on-the-spot arrests. His lawsuit is part of a Christian ministry seeking to protect the weak, minorities and the poor from what he calls “oppressive usages and abusages” by police and deputies.
“If these people obey the warrant requirement and the limited exceptions law at T.C.A. 40-7-103, we will have as much as a 50 percent drop in arrests in Hamilton County,” says Tulis, who writes at DavidTulis.Substack.com and TNtrafficticket.us.
“For all of their nice words, good cheer, personal respect and smiles, Sheriff Garrett and the Hamilton County commission members flat out do not care about sheriff’s deputies, nor the general public. So it’s up to regular people like you and me to knock back their violence in seizing people without a warrant — they’ve gotten away with it for years. Where’s the outcry? It’s malicious. It’s bad faith, especially since I put them under detailed administrative notice.”
Tulis is suing a sheriff’s deputy in personal capacity to show that if the department skips the arrest warrant requirement, a false arrest tort becomes a personal liability for the deputy and his family.
“We live under an occupation,” Tulis says. “These are ‘Redcoat warrants.’ They’re ‘arrest on-sight.’ They’re also called ‘general warrants.’ Our wonderful Tennessee constitution absolutely forbids general warrants. The pretended ‘good people’ have gotten away with these abuses for decades. We know them, they know us; we see them at the grocery store. Their administration of the law is a judgment against us, a curse, a kind of earthly damnation. Our country is waking up.”
“I’m asking God to give Judge [Travis] McDonough wisdom in dealing with this case.”
