Click the play button on the video window the the right to see the storyTEMPE, AZ-- An investigation has been opened by The Arizona Department of Public Safety to see if officers acted properly during a controversial border stop from Tuesday.
The man at the center of the stop is Steve Anderson from Tempe.
He’s the father of five children, a
small business owner who travels about three days a week to California, and a pastor for
Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe.
His wife Zsuzsanna is a housewife who also home schools their children.
The 27-year-old lived a quiet life until he posted a
video on
YouTube this week.
While sitting in his church, his wife’s hand on the record button, Anderson delivered a harrowing account of a recent encounter at a Border Patrol checkpoint in Arizona.
With large red marks across his forehead, he said he refused to answer a Border Patrol agent’s questions when stopped.
Agents then called in the
Department of Public Safety to arrest him.
He said officers broke the windows, deployed a stun gun on him several times, and then smashed his head into the broken glass.
He was subsequently arrested.
At his Tempe home, he showed off several pieces of bloodstained clothing and several marks from stun gun prongs on his stomach and arm.
He admits to refusing to answer the Border Patrol agent’s questions and his reason is simple.
He argues that our forefathers who drafted the Constitution wrote the Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment in order to protect us from becoming a “totalitarian government”.
Checkpoints, he said, violate civil liberties.
In a DPS news release from Friday, officers said Anderson never filed a complaint with their office concerning his arrest but instead made a YouTube video that featured his version of the events of that day.
The news release also said the department was looking at current agency policies and procedures that officers must comply with when requested by any agency to respond to checkpoints.
As an American, Anderson said he should have the right to go anywhere he pleases without the government asking him what he is doing and why.
That is the beauty of America, he argued, the gift of a free society.
He does not believe officers had the right to search his car without a warrant.
Yuma Sector Border Patrol spokesman Ben Vik confirmed the arrest late Thursday.
Vik said that on April 14th, Anderson was in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 8 when he pulled into a checkpoint near mile marker 78.
Vik said one of their police dogs alerted agents to Anderson’s car.
Border Patrol dogs are trained to sniff out illegal narcotics or hidden people, and if the dog suspects something and alerts an agent, Vik said that gives Border Patrol probable cause to search a vehicle.
Anderson refused to that search, he refused to answer questions, and he refused to move to a secondary inspection area, according to Vik.
Border Patrol officials said Anderson refused to leave his car for more than an hour, which is when Department of Public Safety officers arrived to arrest him.
Anderson describes himself as a “
Constitutionalist”.
His wife’s blog is full of references to the concerns the couple has about signs they see the U.S. government is morphing into a totalitarian government.
His wife was born in communist
Hungary and explained that she loves America and all the freedoms people have here.
This isn't the first and only YouTube video Anderson has posted. See some of his other stories below:
Airport Police
New Mexico Border PatrolBible BurningAnderson said he supports border security and believes illegal immigration is a problem, but states that I-8 is not the border.
He said he took his incident to the internet, in part, to broadcast his larger battle over the existence of Border Patrol checkpoints beyond the border.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Border Patrol checkpoints more than 30 years ago.
In 1976,
United States V. Martinez-Fuerte the Court found that briefly stopping cars did not violate the Fourth Amendment because they are minimally intrusive and therefore did not constitution an unreasonable search or seizure.
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