He Was Strip-Searched and Jailed for Criticizing Cops. Now He's Fighting Back in Court.
In an apparent case of retaliation by humiliation, Jerry Rogers Jr. was arrested for speaking out about a stalled murder investigation.

In July 2017, Louisiana woman Nanette Krentel was shot in the head and left in a burning house. More than two years passed before anyone was arrested. That person, however, wasn't alleged to be the murderer. Rather, the sole arrest related to Krentel's death was that of Jerry Rogers Jr. His crime: criticizing the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office (STPSO) for its slow investigation of the case, which remains unsolved.
Naturally, Rogers sued the department for violating his rights. In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that his lawsuit against Sheriff Randy Smith, Chief Danny Culpeper, and Sgt. Keith Canizaro may proceed, confirming they violated clearly established law when they punished Rogers for his speech.
In 2019, the STPSO caught wind that Rogers had denounced the lead investigator, Detective Daniel Buckner, whom Rogers characterized in an email as "clueless." To pore over his messages, the police obtained what was likely an illegal search warrant, as it listed the qualifying offense as "14:00000," which does not exist.
Police then arrested, strip-searched, and detained Rogers. He was ultimately released on bond, and the Louisiana Department of Justice declined to prosecute the case. But the primary goal was likely retaliation by humiliation: Before Rogers was booked, the cops publicized a press release about his arrest. Canizaro testified that this was the only time he could remember the office following that order of operations. They also filed a formal complaint with Rogers' employer, another action that Canizaro said the STPSO had never taken.
Lawyers with the district attorney's office told police it would be unconstitutional to use Louisiana's criminal defamation statute to arrest Rogers; the statutory language protecting public officials from criticism was rendered unconstitutional decades ago. Despite this warning from prosecutors, officers not only forged ahead with the arrest, they also sought qualified immunity when Rogers sued. This required them to attest that no reasonable officer could have known that what they were doing was unconstitutional.
The 5th Circuit rejected their argument, and its ruling buttresses the notion that victims are entitled to recourse when the government retaliates against their speech.
But that recourse is not a guarantee. Priscilla Villarreal, a journalist in Laredo, Texas, was jailed in 2017 for her reporting. The government cited an obscure Texas law that makes it illegal to seek nonpublic information from a civil servant if the seeker has an "intent to obtain a benefit." The benefit, the police said, was that Villarreal could gain more Facebook followers. Judges in the 5th Circuit have ping-ponged back and forth on whether or not the arrest was unconstitutional.
The First Amendment guarantees the right to criticize police. The ability to exercise that right should not depend on how many Facebook followers someone stands to gain or how fraught their relationship is with local law enforcement.
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"The First Amendment guarantees the right to criticize police."
The second amendment "guarantees" the right to keep and bear arms.
Neither gets all that much respect from authority.
The 2nd amendment of the Constitution guarantee that a well-regulated militia have the right to bear arms. People like yourself who want to misrepresent what the second amendment guarantees always omit the part about a well-regulated militia.
And the willfully disingenuous misrepresent what "well-regulated" (trained) and "militia" (We the People) meant to the Founders.
So, do fuck off now.
Holy fucking shit, you are one stupid, evil motherfucker.
What an interesting tactic - claim that others are misrepresenting by doing precisely that yourself.
A militia of one
You do realize that with rights come responsibilities. Before you post, please be acquainted with coplaw, you know, the law of the land.
Monster 6969 shows why neither of those gets much respect. Plenty of people like him put police up on pedestals and want us common folk to grovel to them.
What would Brian Boitano do?
Had to google that shit.
Skate on a technicality.
You’re on thin ice with that one.
Please consider yourself upvoted.
Something wrong here. Bush courts regard the good-faith utterances of cops the way the Taliban receives the revealed word of Mohammed. What's wrong with prosecuting the malcontent under Louisiana statutes forbidding heresy and backtalk?
My sense exactly, With rights comes responsibility. You can't just go mouthing off and hurting the feelings of cops. You can't just go calling public officials clueless, or else no one would respect their authoritay. And we cannot have that. He's lucky that the wuss DA didn't prosecute, but this thug hiding behind the First Amendment got the process, so let's count that as a win.
It's fascinating how Reason operates by the same principles as typical progressive outlets trained in neo-Marxist approaches to social change.
Responsible journalists would describe large scale patterns, statistics, causes/effects, interest groups, libertarian analysis/perspective, motivations, and possible solutions.
Reason instead picks some instances of government malfeasance with the simple objective of generating maximum outrage.
You're not familiar with the psychology of humans, it seems. People go for stories over data. This, fwiw, is one of the prime causes of presentation suck. Presenters provide data, presentees prefer stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_narrans
I am very familiar with the fact that narration works for indoctrinating and manipulating people. Socialists, fascists, critical theorists, progressives, and neo-Marxists have used narration very successfully to persuade large numbers of people of all sorts of vile, irrational, destructive, and evil policies.
I’m saying that a self-proclaimed “libertarian” magazine called “Reason” ought to provide a rational, libertarian justification for its positions; after it has done that, it can still engage in propaganda if they like.
So, let's see, it's perfectly okay for agents of the state to abuse their powers as long as they only do it a little.
Trying to paint yourself as some kind of principled libertarian is beyond laughable.
QI is unconstitutional. Nobody voted on it, no Congress passed a law about it, no Constitutional Amendment was made regarding it. Why is it even a thing ?
Because the courts in the 60s created all sorts of rights that no cop could possibly have anticipated. It's grown into a monster.
Imagine people having the right not to be abused by crooked cops, madness!
That's a ridiculously tendentious response. Cops make honest mistakes, and I was just explaining where QI came from.
I think, from my previous posts, you can guess where I stand on things like this.
Qualified immunity has rapidly grown to cover far more than just "honest mistakes". No one who needs to be told it's not okay to tase or pepper spray someone who's already subdued and restrained has any business being a cop. Who the hell needs to have a formal court decision tell them it's not okay to steal from people?
Seriously, when you make VM look like the voice of reason, you've officially gone full retard.
And it seems the Supreme Court has constantly held up its hands saying, "well, it's precedent, nothing we can do about it, let Congress sort it out." Meanwhile, too many legislators mistake being tough on crime with being easy on cops.
Well, let's hope that they come around and start throwing out back precedent, starting with the wrong interpretation of the interstate commerce clause, the incorporation doctrine, and jus soli.
Wow, one out of three ain't... all that great.
"He Was Strip-Searched and Jailed for Criticizing Cops. Now He's Fighting Back in Court."
Going back for more, eh? Some people are just suckers for punishment.
And what about the magistrate or whatever that signed the illegal search warrant?
Gallows, perhaps?
You can't have a police state without police.
What, everybody knows that 14:00000 is a well-recognized subsection of the FYTW clause.