Adding to this long list of “weird sh*t cops do” was a story out of Chattanooga last year, in which a police officer stripped to his underwear and forcibly “baptized” a woman he was arresting for having a marijuana roach.
After this story garnered him national attention, an investigation was launched and Hamilton County Deputy Daniel Wilkey who was arrested last year and has been charged with more than 40 counts ranging from rape and sexual battery to oppression and extortion.
Now, it has been revealed that during the investigation, the department magically lost months of dashcam footage containing alleged evidence of this extremely bad cop’s crimes.
As Courthouse News reported, calling the loss of the data a “front-burner item,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Steger in Eastern District of Tennessee said that Hamilton County, which sits in the southeast corner of the state, had a duty to preserve evidence — including the dash-cam footage of the traffic stops in question.
Steger has now stepped in to see if the footage is actually gone or if the department is covering for this troublesome deputy.
The attorney for the woman who Wilkey “forcibly baptized” noted after requesting the footage that it has suddenly “gone missing.”
A few weeks ago, the woman’s attorney, Robin Flores, learned that the county admitted in another case in Tennessee state court that the server storing all the dash-cam footage the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office recorded from Oct. 25, 2018, to Jan. 23, 2020, suffered a software failure.
According to the county, all the footage is gone and unrecoverable.
The preservation request from the court points out that the date range of the “lost” footage covers most of the incidents over which Wilkey is being sued.
According to Courthouse News, William Klaver, who is representing himself in his suit against Wilkey and the county, said the timing of the downed server was too convenient — months after he filed his complaint in July – and the county kept the plaintiffs in the dark for weeks after learning of the loss.
“I don’t believe a word they said so far,” Klaver said.
Summing up the ridiculous nature of this claim, Techdirt points out that the department “took 180 hours of dashcam footage, moved it to an external hard drive, and than claimed a “software failure” suddenly made all of this evidence irrecoverable. There’s no reason to believe this was an accident — not until the Sheriff’s office makes some sort of showing it actually cares about the people it’s supposed to be protecting and serving.”
As TFTP reported at the time, Wilkey, 26, was indicted on 44 charges stemming from allegations of inappropriate behavior and assault while he was working for the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office. Wilkey has been named, along with other HCSO deputies, in four lawsuits that accuse him of misconduct during traffic stops. The alleged misconduct ranges from a forced baptism, groping underage girls and an illegal, forcible drug search, AP reports.
Shandle Marie Riley announced in October that she was suing Hamilton County government and two Hamilton County Sheriff’s deputies after she claims one of them stripped down to his underwear and forced her into Soddy Lake where he “baptized” her. Deputies Daniel Wilkey and Jacob Goforth are both named in the lawsuit.
According to Riley, the incident happened in February of 2019 as she was driving to a friends house where her child was staying. Riley was then pulled over by the two apparently insane deputies who accused her of having methamphetamine. She had none.
Riley was then forced out of the vehicle by the deputies who then searched her car without consent, the lawsuit states. According to the lawsuit, Wilkey then asked Riley to “reach under her shirt and pull out her bra and shake the bra and shirt.” Riley says she asked if a female officer could be present for the search, to which Wilkey replied “the law did not require” it.
The officers then asked Riley if she had anything illegal and she told them she had a marijuana roach in her pack of cigarettes. The horror. Upon hearing this, according to the lawsuit, Wilkey “insulted the plaintiff,” calling her a “piece of s—,” saying she was lying about not having other drugs. But the lawsuit says Wilkey found nothing other than the “roach,” reports News Channel 9.
After calling her a piece of sh*t and humiliating her, Wilkey then asked Riley if she was “saved” and if she believed in Jesus Christ. According to Riley, she responded that she believed in Jesus Christ but was not “saved” by her own choice.
Wilkey then told Riley that “God was talking to him during the vehicle search, and felt the Lord wanted him to baptize the plaintiff.,” and said that he felt “the spirit,” according to the lawsuit.
After humiliating her, kidnapping her, sexually assaulting her, and “baptizing” her, deputy Wilkey then arrested Riley for the marijuana roach. In his arrest report, he claimed to have stopped Riley because her window tint was too dark and she admitted to having a joint in her car. His report mentioned nothing of the baptism.
Also, as TFTP reported in October, Wilkey is named in a separate lawsuit over a stop for window tint. In that incident, Wilkey and his fellow deputy handcuffed an innocent man, beat him, pulled down his pants, and then gave him an anal cavity search on the side of the road as passersby watched them look for a non-existent plant. The anal cavity search was so brutal, that the victim required surgery to repair his anus.
We actually have the dashcam footage of this crime.
Despite both of these incidents, Wilkey was not immediately fired and instead he received a paid vacation for several months before being charged.
Riley’s lawsuit is now seeking $1,000,000 in compensatory damages and $10,000,000 in punitive damages.
If found guilty on all the charges, Wilkey could spend the rest of his life behind bars. If you watch the video below, based on just one of the charges, you can see that he definitely deserves it.
By Matt Agorist, Guest writer
