Fort Bend County government watchdog Justin Pulliam has been filming police activity for years and posting to his popular YouTube channel. But when he followed a cop to a welfare check of a known mentally ill man in a store parking lot, Pulliam was the one who was cuffed and taken to jail.
The incident happened in December 2021, about five months after Pulliam, representing himself as a “citizen journalist” and known to be antagonistic toward law enforcement, was booted by Fort Bend County Sheriff Eric Fagan from a press conference in a public park where human remains had been discovered.
“He’s not part of the local media, so he’ll have to go back,” Fagan is shown saying on a video Pulliam captured at the press conference. “If he don’t do it, arrest him.”
Pulliam, 36, wasn’t arrested that day at the press conference but he says he knew the Fort Bend County sheriff’s deputies weren’t fans of him or his Corruption Report channel. After the press conference incident, Pulliam scaled back his sleuthing but says when he saw a deputy speed past him and his wife Kelsey toward an area outside of Rosenberg, he knew where the cop was headed and he wanted to record it.
“Kelsey and I were on our way to the Brazoria County Courthouse to work on a jury tampering story,” Pulliam says. “One of the deputies passed us with his lights and sirens going toward the Kraft’s Country Store. We just happened upon this, basically. I’d filmed at that location before. I’ve followed that person’s story. He has a lot of police encounters. I was very concerned about his safety that day.”
Pulliam says he got permission from the store owner to film in the parking lot. “When you’re not physically obstructing the police or trying to help the suspect get away from the police, you’re not interfering,” he says. “The police go way too far in implementing authority that they don’t have.”
Pulliam says he questioned an officer’s authority. “We have the right to peacefully, verbally oppose the police,” he says. “There were four other civilians in the immediate vicinity and my wife was in the vehicle filming. I was the only one who got arrested.”
Court documents show that Pulliam has a history of taunting officers while they’re working, and on the day of the press conference, where deputies had just found a dead body, Pulliam called them “clowns” and “pathetic.”
Back in 2021 when both incidents — the press conference and Pulliam’s arrest at the country store — occurred, Fort Bend County sheriff’s deputies did not have body cameras. The devices were approved for all county law enforcement agencies in February 2022. The announcement that Fort Bend County would offer more transparency during police interactions was made by Judge KP George, who was convicted of money laundering last month in an unrelated case.
Pulliam’s arrest, captured on his dash cam video and by his wife’s cell phone, would later be used as evidence in a trial after he was indicted for interference with public duties, a Class B misdemeanor. He spent about four hours in jail and says the sheriff’s department seized his video equipment, which still hasn’t been returned. The matter ended in a mistrial when jurors voted 5-1 to acquit him, and Pulliam says it was his own footage that eventually “cleared [his] name.”
“Without my own video showing exactly what happened, I would have been wrongly convicted, and the police would have escaped accountability,” he says.
Pulliam filed a federal lawsuit, which was resolved on March 26 when Judge George Hanks of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas ruled that Pulliam’s arrest was “retaliation for the exercise of his First Amendment rights of free speech as a citizen and journalist and to discourage this speech based on its content.” Hanks further ruled that Pulliam should be awarded $75,000 in compensatory damages. Pulliam says he hasn’t gotten a check yet.
Sheriff Fagan hasn’t publicly commented on the matter since it occurred in 2021, citing pending litigation, and now that the case is over, he still isn’t talking. Public Information Officer Brionna Rivers told the Houston Press that the sheriff and county attorney are meeting about the case and a statement could be forthcoming.
“That’s something that our county attorney is handling,” Rivers said. “The public information office hasn’t been heavily involved. We’re not able to comment at this time.”
When asked if she could answer general questions on the department’s policy for dealing with members of the public who film law enforcement, Rivers said, “I’m hoping that the sheriff and executive staff will be able to answer those questions and hopefully give the public a greater understanding of what they deal with when it comes to everyone having a phone in their hand these days.”
Can someone be arrested just for being annoying?
Pulliam’s encounters with law enforcement raise a lot of questions. Can a person be removed from a press conference or a public place because authorities don’t like their content, or because they’re shouting insults?
Could a bystander with a cell phone camera or even a credentialed member of “traditional” media impede an investigation just by being at a crime scene in a public place? And how have local law enforcement standards changed in the advent of literally everything being caught on camera?
Murray Newman, a former Harris County prosecutor who now works as a criminal defense attorney, says there’s absolutely a value in influencer-style social media content, but it’s also true that some “citizen journalists” can be annoying to law enforcement and get in the way of officers trying to do their jobs.
Newman, who is not associated with Pulliam’s case, has blogged from Harris County courtrooms since 2008 and recently called out former District Attorney Kim Ogg for tweeting, “Will someone please put Murray Newman out of his misery … cockroach killer wanted.” He responded, “I think cockroach killing was what the voters did in your primary in 2024, Kimbra.” Then he posted screenshots of the interaction on every social media platform, garnering hundreds of reactions.
“It just kind of cracked me up,” he says. “I can’t believe I made her lose her cool like that. It’s not necessarily what you want in your public official.”
Although he supports social media exposés, Newman says law enforcement has the right and many methods to control people who show up at potential crime scenes, such as cordoning off an area with yellow tape, but they “can’t be arbitrary in how they control it just because they don’t like a guy.”
“Interference with a police officer is a real thing,” he says. “Police officers have dangerous jobs. They have to preserve the integrity of their investigations. It’s a good law to have on the books, but the way it’s worded is a little bit ambiguous. If they’re going to let in members of the media that they like in but try to keep others out, I think they’re going to find themselves in trouble. I don’t give away my rights just because I’m annoying.”
Most courtrooms don’t allow cameras because they don’t want jurors to be photographed or the official court record to be edited or manipulated, Newman says, but it’s common for people to use cell phone cameras to record public officials coming and going from a courthouse, and some influencers pride themselves on catching someone using profanity or making an inflammatory statement.
It may not be traditional journalism, but people want to see it, Newman says. It’s why a video of Harris County District Judge Nathan Milliron scolding an IT employee in his courtroom went viral and why Grizzy’s Hood News, operated by Griselda Castillo and known for its live videos and breaking crime news, has 1.2 million followers. And it’s why more than 100,000 people subscribed to Pulliam’s YouTube channel.
“A lot of these guys can push the boundaries of what I find really annoying but I do think they’re doing a service by showing the general public what’s really happening,” Newman says. “People should know what’s going on. It should have a light shined on it. I have definitely seen some of these people do things that demonstrate a lack of understanding of the law, where they are spreading misinformation and accusations. There is certainly a dangerous element to it but I don’t think it rises to the level of a wholesale ban on them.”
And people who hold elected office or work in the public sector ought to hold themselves to a high standard, he added.
“Anybody that is going to engage in the business of being involved in the outcome of a human life, the way that they act is fair game for review,” Newman says. “If I’ve got a client that comes to my office for a meeting and I lose my temper with him and he films me, I think that’s on me. When you’re entering the public sector you’ve got to be well aware that the public has eyes.”
Pulliam agrees. “If the police have nothing to hide, it shouldn’t be a big deal; however, they went to extreme lengths to stop my reporting,” he says.
Arlington, Virginia-based Institute for Justice, a litigation, research and advocacy firm, has covered Pulliam’s case extensively. Senior attorney Jeff Rowes said the judge’s ruling affirms that “people, not the government, get to choose the source of their news.”
“Justin stuck his neck out and fought back for years at great personal cost when local officials tried to silence him,” Rowes said. “After years of pressure, retaliation, and an effort to push him aside, Justin Pulliam and the First Amendment won.”
What’s next for Justin Pulliam
Pulliam didn’t plan on being an investigative reporter. He studied animal science at Texas A&M University and worked for an independent publication while he was in college.
He knows his way around video production and editing and started the YouTube channel when he moved to Fort Bend County in 2019. He monetized his channel through advertising and donations and was able to do it full-time for about five years but says that the negative publicity from his arrest and trial forced him into a part-time gig.
“Local government is the level of government that has the biggest impact on our day-to-day lives but also it’s a level of government where we have the most ability to influence how it operates,” he says. “I initially would just hear what we all hear on the cable news channels about police issues. I saw other videos on YouTube of how the police were treating people. I started filming the police, and what I saw was eye-opening. I do it to provide an independent record of the precise actions of police conduct and to give the voiceless a voice.”
He acknowledges that on the day of his arrest, he was saying inflammatory things that upset the sheriff’s deputies.”
“Initially I was standing in the parking lot filming quietly and peacefully for about five minutes,” he says. “Then a sergeant arrives, the one who arrested me. He got out of his car and told me to go across the street and I said, Why? So you can shoot him?”
The dash cam video shows the officer approaching as Pulliam takes steps backward away from the crime scene. He says he was handcuffed and placed in a police car, where he remained while “the scene was unfolding.” Records show the officer who arrested Pulliam is still employed at Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Department and was promoted to lieutenant in 2023.
Pulliam says his life has been destroyed since he was indicted in May 2022, “I was severely depressed and unable to do much of anything due to fear and mental health consequences, and ultimately [losing] something that I was able to make into a full-time job,” he says.
Now that the case is resolved, Pulliam says he wants to go to law school and start a family. His wife, who works at a petrochemical facility, says that when things got bad with the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Department, she encouraged her husband to stop but now she’s proud of him for pursuing legal action.
“My husband’s hard work didn’t just defend his name; it revealed the truth and expanded freedom for all,,” Kelsey says. “His vindication wasn’t handed to him. He earned it. He refused to give up. This sends an important message that you cannot silence critics with handcuffs.”
Newman says he’s pleased that conversations are taking place about social media reporting and access to law enforcement.
“The Internet has given everyone a microphone and a camera,” he says. “I think there are still laws you can write that can protect you without infringing upon free speech. I would pay a lot of money to fast forward five years and see what the laws governing all of this will be. I think you’re going to see more laws designed to put the First Amendment and libel at the forefront.”
Pulliam says the ruling in his favor sets a precedent for anyone with a cell phone who wants to film the police.
“We’re in a time where there’s all sorts of conflict about whether you can follow and film federal police officers and direct assaults on the media from the federal government,” he says. “This is a ruling that shows that anyone can go out and film the police and criticize government. Even those people who might be there to film the police, to hold them accountable, can’t be selectively excluded no matter who they are. There’s not enough resources to have the appropriate level of accountability journalism in our society right now.”
