www.alexjonespodcast.com
Steven, how are you doing tonight?
Good, how you doing?
I'm doing alright. So for those that don't know the story, why don't you just recap
what happened to you a couple weeks ago and why you put this YouTube video out.
Sure, well basically I was just coming home from a business trip
doing some fire alarm work over in San Diego.
So I'm coming home on the Interstate 8
and I'm 75 miles east of Yuma in Arizona
and I pull into one of these Border Patrol checkpoints.
But let me say that this is 50 miles from Mexico
and I'm on a highway that goes from west to east.
So I'm not crossing any border, but I'm stopped at this checkpoint
and I've been through these things hundreds of times
and I pull up and a couple of Border Patrol agents
start hitting me with a whole bunch of questions
and I basically didn't answer any of their questions.
I just said, can I please go, am I free to go on my way?
And they were asking me, where are you headed,
what do you do for a living, that kind of stuff.
Well, when I didn't answer the questions they said, go to secondary,
go to the secondary inspection area, we're going to search your vehicle.
And I said, no, I don't want to go to secondary inspection area,
I want to go home.
And so basically at this point they bring out a dog
and say, well this dog alerted us
that you either have drugs or a human being in the trunk of your car.
I was driving like a 2008 Hyundai Sonata
and I said, well what does that mean, what did the dog do?
Did it bark, did it lift its leg?
They wouldn't tell me, they wouldn't give me any information
and they whisked the dog away and I never saw it again.
So anyway, I stood my ground, I refused to be searched without a warrant.
I said, if you have a warrant you can search me,
otherwise I'm not going to let you into the car.
Yeah, how dare you be safe and secure with the Fourth Amendment.
I mean, how dare you invoke your First Amendment right
to be secure in your persons and property.
I mean, it's there, go ahead.
Exactly, and so I didn't want to be interrogated
and I didn't want to be searched without a warrant.
And I invoked the Fourth Amendment, I brought up the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
And basically these guys said it didn't matter,
they had to search me, this and that.
Well, it was kind of a standoff that ensued
because I just sat there in my car,
they weren't allowing me to leave,
they said if I left then I'd be fleeing the checkpoint
and that's a felony.
So I said, okay, I'm not leaving until you tell me that I'm free to go,
that I'm not going to consent to be searched.
So I sat there and things went back and forth for over an hour.
Well, you know, throughout that hour I kept asking them to bring the dog back out,
they wouldn't bring it back out.
You know, I never saw that dog again.
And that's when another officer came up and he's like, you know, what's the problem?
And he said, officer, you know, they said that this dog
said that there was either drugs or a human body in my car,
why don't you have them take the dog out and see if this is the case?
And then they refused, correct?
Exactly.
Authorities in general in this country have gotten out of control,
they think they have godlike powers and they rule over you,
even when you're an innocent guy,
when you haven't done anything wrong.
And we're at the point of Stephen's story where
he's asked for the dog to come back out
so that the officer can see that, well, there might be a dead body
or drugs in the car and that just doesn't happen.
They refuse to take the dog out.
What happens next, Stephen?
Well, the one who asked to bring the dog out
was basically the Arizona State Police,
which is known as the DPS, Department of Public Safety.
They are the ones who showed up and I implored them
to get the dog back out there.
And the DPS officer seems that was reasonable.
He asked them, they wouldn't do it.
So he said, I was under arrest.
And I said, you know, he said, we're going to search the car
whether you like it or not,
so you might as well just let us in to search.
And I said, well, if you're going to search the car,
but I said, you know, I'm not going to give you permission to search this car.
I'm not going to open it up for you, you know.
So I said, you do what you got to do.
So anyway, I sat there and basically the officer goes to the passenger side window
and he starts tapping on the glass with a little hammer.
And I had also heard him say to the Border Patrol agents,
oh, we'll take it from here to where we got it.
We got it kind of acting like he was the only one who was going to do this,
him and his partner, that is.
Well, they're tapping on that passenger window for over a minute.
I didn't really understand why.
But they just kept tapping away at that passenger window.
Well, to my left there's three Border Patrol agents or so
kind of crowded around my door.
And they didn't have any hammers out.
They didn't have anything out.
They were just kind of standing there.
And one of them says to me, you know, cover your eyes,
there's going to be glass,
because I was expecting that passenger window to break out.
So I put my face in my hands.
You know, I put my hands over my eyes like they told me to do.
And as soon as I was in that position with my eyes closed,
hands to my face, both windows shattered.
The one that was just inches from my head
and the passenger window shattered simultaneously
and I was just instantly tased.
So the moment that that taser hit me, you know,
these two metal projectiles plug into me
and that 50,000 volts begins to flow,
well, I'm totally paralyzed because that's what the taser does
in addition to, you know, putting you in a lot of pain.
So I'm in extreme pain and I'm paralyzed.
I can't move anyway.
Well, all of a sudden, a hand comes from the left
and grabs my head and shoves it into the broken glass
that was left from the window that was just busted out
right next to me.
So my head is just shoved into that glass.
I can feel the glass shoving into my flesh.
And my face was just kind of held there for a while,
just pressed against that door for some extended period of time.
Well, you know, I'm jammed into that glass.
Next thing I know, the door swings open
and I'm rolled out onto the ground.
And immediately, somebody just steps on my head
and basically just held their boot on my head
for a long time.
And it felt like their full body weight on my head
and the electricity never stopped flowing throughout this,
just continual 50,000 volts.
And so because the way these tasers work,
there are wires going back to the taser, you know,
from these little metal projectiles
and they can just keep extending the length
of the electricity.
So in other words, they're continually tasing you
through this whole point.
I mean, they never pull them out.
You're already, you know,
they didn't ask you to put your hands behind your back.
They just beat you up, put their hand on the head,
they tase you, and then any time they feel like it,
they up the tase again.
They never pull them out of your chest or whatever.
Right. Well, I'll tell you right now,
there was not even a second where the electricity stopped.
It was just a continual flow of electricity.
Meanwhile, these things have killed people before.
Put your hands up, put your hands on the steering wheel.
They just immediately got violent.
So I'm laying on the ground,
somebody's standing on top of my head,
and I'm just continuously electrified
by this 50,000 volt taser,
and, you know, blood's gushing out of my head,
obviously, from where they shoved it in the broken glass.
And I'm just asking myself,
what do I have to do to get these guys to stop?
You know, I was just screaming in pain,
as any person would probably do
when, you know, experiencing this.
I'm just screaming in pain,
and, I mean, I'm just sitting there thinking,
how long are they going to do this to me?
When is this going to stop?
I'm not resisting.
I never resisted.
I never lifted a finger.
So why are they doing this to me?
And finally, I decided to stop screaming
because I thought maybe they're waiting for me to go silent.
You know, what are they looking for?
So then I got silent for a while.
I was just trying to figure out what to do
to get them to stop.
Finally, you know, the electricity stops.
The border patrol agent takes his boot off my head,
and I hear a chorus of voices yelling,
get up, get up, get up.
You know, they kind of stagger me to my feet,
blood gushing out of my head,
and they walk me up to the border patrol trailer,
and I caught a glimpse of my reflection.
It was just nothing but blood.
Well, you can tell by the injuries
after the fact that your face must have been covered.
I mean, folks, the whole,
I think it was the, what, the left side of your forehead
is just all cut up and bloody
even after you've cleaned up.
Oh, yeah, that was after the people
at the hospital cleaned me.
There was no photograph taken of me
until after the hospital had cleaned me.
They stitched it, and then they scrubbed it
for like over a half hour, just scrubbing on it,
and then they finally just said,
well, that's the best we could do,
because there was all this dirt and blood
just rubbed into my face, and like I said,
you couldn't see any of my face.
It was just a bloody mask, okay?
So they put me in this border patrol trailer,
you know, I'm cuffed behind my back.
They set me in like a desk office chair,
and, you know, they threw a bandage on my head real quick,
you know, because they had to,
to stop the bleeding, obviously,
and then they laughed at me, made fun of me.
Oh, you're not so tough now, huh?
Oh, you didn't think we were going to search you.
I guess we won this time, huh?
I guess we did get to search you after all, didn't we?
And guess what they found when they searched me?
Nothing, because I didn't have anything illegal.
And did they even apologize?
I mean, did they act upset that they didn't find anything?
I mean, you're the one that really wins this.
I mean, you take a beating from a bunch of thugs
for no reason other than they don't know the law
and they think they're tough guys.
And then they search your car, no bodies,
no drugs whatsoever, they still charge you.