 But I'm the one doing the fire. You're the one that has to live in. Okay, so in terms of guns, now I get carried away, I'm sorry. So in terms of guns, you are able to have a firearm in your vehicle and go from home to work and back home. You can have a firearm in your vehicle going from home to the gun store and back home. Now, my advice to gun owners in this audience is you want to keep it secure and out of sight. If you drive around, because we are intent is that people love to show their rights. Keep that gun out and visit some plain sites that they call it, plain site. If that cop pulls you over, it gives them reasonable suspicion and almost proper cause to search your vehicle. Because it's in plain sight. It's a very great topic. Nine times out of ten, they're going to mention you about that guy. They are. It's going to happen. But that's when you be quiet, ask for your attorney, hire us, let us justify it for you. I am a licensed holder. I can walk around with a gun right here throughout the San Antonio streets. But I'm not going to do it. That's my choice. Because keep in mind, if you do, they're going to watch you. They're going to be watching you. So you can't go smoke weed. You can't go speeding. You can't drink and drive. Because of that situation, they're watching you. So that's what I'm saying. You have the right. But it comes with consequences. You have to be aware of those consequences. When I went through this class, and this is very important. Because I heard this a ton of times after the John Martin issue had occurred. Everybody wants to carry a gun and shoot somebody. It's getting out of control. While I'm sitting in this class, I don't tell anybody to return it. I just sit there and listen like everybody else. I'm not trying to want anybody. I want to know as much as I can. Out of a class of 11, six people, okay, six. More than 50% were asking scenarios. So what if I see a guy beating up his girlfriend? Can't she hit the guy? Or what if I see a guy beating up on the police? Can't she hit the guy? Or what if I see a guy running and he still can't shoot the guy? And they wouldn't give advice. So I want to clear this up right now. If you pull the trigger on any individual, you are going to be arrested. You are going to jail. You are going to bond out. You're going to have to fight this case. But with Cruz, Cruz, we have the right to self-defense. You do have the right to self-defense. But self-defense is what's called an affirmative defense. Which means, okay, you can do it. But you have to justify it. And the only people, which is not followed very often here in Bear County, the only people that can claim that justified is their jury or DA's office. Not police officers. They cannot say that was a justified killing. That is not their role. It's to go to the DA and to a jury trial. But you're still going to go through the entire motion. Keep that in mind. I know we love our guns. We love ourselves. But my question to you is this. Is it worth it? You pull that gun out and someone will kill you. And claim self-defense. So we have to be very strategic. We have to think about these things. Before we want to jump to our rights to do certain things. I want to see everybody in this room live a long and prosperous life. I'm tired on the funeral. I go to funerals all the time. From clients, from people in our community. And I speak to young people all the time. Because you know, I know I'm going too long. I'm sorry. You know, we don't want to look into authority. We want to do certain things. But at the end of the day, is your life worth it? You have to think about these things. Like I said, it doesn't know what happened with guns. Keep it tucked away to protect yourself in case something happens. But if you're going to pull out that gun and start shooting. Be known. Or let it be known that you're going to get arrested. You aren't going to jail. You're going to prosecute you. And you're going to have to hire an attorney to fight for your rights. And that's going to be, depending on who you hire, $100,000. As you do not get back. I don't know if this is a time to question the answer or... We have another. Okay. I'll be here for a little bit for the panel discussion. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you. So the second time, I think it's, what, $135,000 right now. Okay. Please make sure I don't hold for five minutes. Okay. Because we do have another speaker coming up. And we want to give you a chance to ask some questions. And obviously get business cards from the different attorneys that are here. So you can get actual legal advice. Just a seminar. Nothing here is actual legal advice. And we have not created an attorney-client relationship. We need to get that out there. Okay. I'm here today to, I'm Natasha Sherrod. I'm a practicing attorney. I just moved down the street on East Houston Street back in August. So I'm very close by. My focus area, even though I do practice criminal law as well, and I do do wills and estates. My focus though, my passion is family law. And the reason that I'm here today to talk about family law in conjunction with these rights here is because there are areas of family law that have criminal consequences. And most of you are aware with individuals that have baby mama drama or daddy, you know, baby daddy drama. And people say, oh, that person's bipolar and they're always having problems in their relationships. And they may be charged with assault by the injury. Well, on my end, I will represent the individual who's taking a protective order. Now, the thing is though, is that on occasion, I'll get individuals that come to me because they have a protective order. And they're like, the mom is still talking to me or the, you know, the dad is the one that's coming to me. It's like, well, you know, everything's okay. You know, we've made up and, you know, she says I can come over and stuff. But I have this protective order. One of my rights. Can I still, is it okay because she gave me permission? The truth is it's not okay. The person that's protected by a protective order can never say that it's now okay for the other person to violate that protective order. If individuals have a protective order against them and they're stopped by the police, so let's say that the tradition, the most common sense is the police are called to the residence because they've gotten into an argument again. If you have a protective order, there is nothing that you can say to justify why you're there. If that protective order says you are to have no contact with that individual, you're not to be within so many yards of their residence, there is no justification you can state to say, well, it's okay for me to be there. So that's an instance where it's best to remain silent. You're going to get arrested. However, your attorney may be able to mitigate the charges against you. The best thing to do, however, is to seek legal counsel before you encounter the police because if you have a protective order, the standard length of time is two years. But if within that year, let's say it's looking like, you know, you think you guys are going to make up, because let's be truthful about it. In relationships, you have a protective order. We know those that represent survivors of domestic violence, oftentimes the survivors go back. They go back to that individual for whatever reason and we're not here to judge that. What I'm here to tell you is that for one year, you cannot request a modification to be done. If there's a protective order against you and you feel like, look, it's time for me and my significant other, my wife, we want to get back together. You have children, get an attorney first. You need to have an attorney who will go into court and request if that protective order can be shortened to just a one-year timeframe. Because if not, that protective order states you are not to have any communication with that individual for two years. The other thing I wanted to say about protective orders is that it's a two-part process. The individual is going to apply for a protective order and nine times out of ten, they request what's called an ex-partee protective order. That means that based on the victims' statement alone, they are requesting the judge to grant that protective order. It's a temporary protective order and then we're going to have you brought into court to actually do the final two-year one. It's important that you have an attorney that will defend that protective order to make sure that you don't have one that states that you've committed acts of family violence if you have not. Because again, you will be in jail for violating the protective order and there's really not much that you can say to defend that. The other thing, I don't know if I'm going to use this up but one little quick little thing is it is a custody order. It's very important that you follow that custody order because in your visitation orders, a lot of times it states you're only to have the children on the weekends, first or fifth weekends, but mom says no, it's okay. You can have them during the week because he's a teenager now and he's driving me crazy. You need to get that modified because there is a state jail felony which will put you in jail for two years, up to two years and up to a $10,000 crime for violating or interfering with child custody. And so those are just two areas where again, family law has some criminal replications to it. For further information, I do have Mrs. Carson give you at the end of our presentation today. Do you mind if I introduce to that speaker? All right. We're having to change up the agenda just a little bit. I believe that we wanted to have a few words just very briefly on civil liberties and that will be from Attorney Tessa House. And then following her, we will have a presentation by Linda Corley and Roland Eichman of DWI Scots. Thank you. I'm Attorney Tessa House. I'm pleased to come to you today. I'm a San Antonio native. So issues that touch and concern the city of San Antonio are close to my heart because I grew up here. Generally, Congress, Texas, but mostly San Antonio. And I'm also educated here because I'm a graduate of St. Mary's Law School. So I see him before you as a lawyer. Fresh out of law school two years, but it's been an exciting two years. Right after I was licensed, there was a protest at North Star Mall. And this protest was organized by local young leaders of the community in order to commemorate the deaths of unarmed men. And I went out there fresh out of law school because I really believed in what these individuals were standing up for. North Star Mall really honored the civil liberties of our citizens and allowed these protesters to stage a die-in in the middle of the mall. And so we commend North Star Mall for safeguarding the civil rights and free speech of our individuals. However, after the die-in ceased, the protesters took the protest outside of the mall. And therein lies where problems occurred. The protesters decided to, at some point, take the protest on the street and into the highway where oncoming traffic was occurring. Obviously, to law enforcement, this posed a safety risk because there was oncoming traffic and then you had pedestrians in the roadway. At that point, to arrest occurred and those gentlemen with classy misdemeanor charges. There were no lawyers on the floor except me. And I was freaked out because I didn't know what I was doing. I sent a call to my fellow colleagues and it was on a Saturday. Well, the attorneys don't work on a Saturday. Well, you're a young attorney like me. You don't have a choice but to work on a Saturday. So I was there and I was able to assist those protesters in getting out, negotiated an agreement as far as what their charges were. And so they're free today to protest on the street of San Antonio. However, based on that first incident they were, and our education on what we can and cannot do when it comes to civil liberties and how that clashes with the law, they were able to refine their approach as to what they do on the streets of San Antonio. So what does this mean? And I will say, and I'm just going to talk about the city of San Antonio because every protest is different. How many of you all have Facebook, right? Raise your hand if you have Facebook. So you see on social media how many of you have seen protesters blocking that you've seen those? Yes. So some cities, although you may be arrested, okay? So I will say, depending on your approach when it comes to protesting, I think it is very specific to the actual city that you are in. San Antonio, however, I will say this city has evolved over the years. They have been very supportive and per se respectful, and I say per se because it depends on what you call respectful. There have been some occurrences where protesters have gathered and they are there with video cameras taping. They are recording. This is law enforcement officers, they are taping. It's every single move of what the protesters are doing. I'm going to say protesters. I'm talking well above Black Lives Matter. I'm talking about actual citizens just coming together that are concerned about the death of unarmed men in the streets of San Antonio. Right now I've been consoling a mother who is my client. Her son was shot last year while an officer was trying to, I guess, apprehend and take him into custody. So her son was driving his white Mercedes. They pulled into their apartment complex where they lived. As soon as they entered into a parking spot, her son exited the car. An officer who had been following him pulled out his gun, told him to put your hands up and turn around. Apparently he complied very quickly. The officer shot and killed this young man and he killed him to the point where when he was shot, his shoes were in one location and his body was in another. Then we hear, all of a sudden, the new story. The next new story, and I'm watching it because I'm looking at the Facebook news feed so the news is reporting it. Then all of a sudden a cell phone appears and the officer said he had a cell phone in his hand. But that wasn't reported in the beginning and so it's interesting how these stories evolve but what I will say, back to civil liberties, here's what I will say, it's very important and I'm just going to give you like realistic approaches as to how you can protect your civil liberty. I think social media person, I think it's good when you know how to use it to your benefit. Become familiar with a lot of the tools that you have been equipped with. Facebook Live. Who's familiar with Facebook Live? I'm trying to become a little bit more comfortable with it. Facebook Live. According to the consensus, Texas happens to be a one party consensus date, as long as you are present and you are part of a party to the conversation or communication or what's going on, you can record to the point that it does not interfere with any type of law enforcement investigation. Facebook Live and the information that us as an attorney are able to use from the different feedbacks that come from Facebook video recordings or Snapchat or Instagram, you never know how integral that is. Mr. Calvert mentioned, Commissioner Calvert, excuse me, mentioned earlier about the water burger arrest. Raise your hand if you heard about the water burger arrest. Right? So there were two African American young ladies they had went to an after party, the after gathering at Water Burger after a game at Judson High School. They go and one girl's driving and the other girl is a passenger in the car. The passenger in the car goes and she buys food. So she is a customer of Water Burger. Are we cleared? Y'all following the story? As she's ordering the food, she's waiting for the food. All of a sudden, a fight breaks out between two young men outside. So what do kids do, right? Some kids, they rush outside to see the fight, right? Some stay in because they're waiting for their food. Well, Water Burger does what? They call who? They call the police. Police arrive, right? Police arrive on the scene to investigate what happened. All of a sudden, police says, everyone get the effect, right? Excuse my French, but that's what was said to all customers and patrons. Because I want to pay the visual of exactly what went on here. So, customers are still waiting for food. The drive-thru is actively going on. It's an operating restaurant. Goes one by one and starts to clear out the restaurant. Apparently, one of the girls did move fast enough. Do you see a common theme? It's not that they were complying. Maybe they were. You know, I guess it's a matter of perspective at this point. Didn't move fast enough, girl gets arrested, and then her friend gets arrested as well, because she puts, the officer during the transaction takes her hat off, throws it across the restaurant. She tells her friend, pick up my hat and put it on my head. Her friend complies because this girl is the daughter of a very well-known hairstylist here in San Antonio, so she cares about her looks, right? Put her hat on her head and the girl gets arrested for interfering with that arrest. And as Mr. Calver said, he's absolutely right. Now, there are a lot of people that would take credit for having those charges dropped. I will say, I am the attorney for those girls. They're a criminal attorney and they're a federal civil rights attorney. When I sat down with Nikola Hood, he mentioned Mr. Calver's name and said, Tommy called me and said, we're getting pressure from the community. So, even though you say, what can I do? I don't have a law degree. I didn't always have a law degree. I was a teacher at Martin Luther King teaching sixth grade. I didn't have a law degree. But I saw in justices, so what do you do? Call Nikola Hood's office. If you see that an officer needs to be prosecuted for wrongdoing, call him. If you think that he doesn't listen, he listens because he went down to listen and told me every single person that called on behalf of those girls, it was the pressure from the community that caused those charges to be dropped. So, if you think it doesn't matter, it does. And so, from an attorney to the community, I just want to thank you because you're my community. This is where I grew up. So, it matters to me that you all backed up the community and County Commissioner Tommy Calvert, you backed these girls. The charges were dropped. Sheriff Parmaloo had no clue because I talked to her and she was talking as if these girls were going to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I mean, there was no crime. He was a paying customer and I said at the end of the day, the boys that were fighting got away scot-free because they made no other arrest at night other than that paying customer and the girl that drove her there. So, when we talk about civil liberties, what it takes is community participation. If you see something's wrong, if you think your constitutional rights are violated, you'll have to remember the Constitution. You know, some people say you violated my constitutional rights. Oh, which right? Sometimes you can't say it. I know something wrong happened. So, take it to the house. Call Test House. Call your attorney and say, hey Test House, you're acting on my rights and violations. Now, we're going to have Linda Hurley and Linda Lackman come up and let's just let me have about 10 minutes for a minute. Just quickly, my wife and I were laid down in the streets in front of the river center mall. We get to die in there. I also died in with the young people in the ocean for a while. They have helped me get back up. I died in the water. It's good for older people to support our younger people. We don't want to end that. We're still complaining about it. We're doing the right thing. I'm sorry for interrupting. I am running for district 8. One of the things I wanted to tell you is that your city council is also very, very responsive. You've got some very good people up there who are ready to take your phone calls and so just any city council person will take that phone call and take it very seriously. The other thing I give similar talks, I'm an attorney as well, I give similar talks to college students around Texas. One of the things I always make them do, Tess, and you may want to tell your clients, is who's got a phone? Anybody got a phone? Who can download an app? There's an app out there called Mobile Justice by the ACLU where it actually lets you video and the cop cannot take your phone away and erase it because we've all heard of that too, right? Take your phone and erase it. This live screen is directly to the ACLU and all you gotta do is call the ACLU afterwards and say, can I get my video? The only problem is Texas ACLU hasn't developed theirs and so Oklahoma, Washington, D.C. and Georgia have one but I recommend it. You can always call the ACLU in Georgia. Sorry for interrupting. Go ahead. I'm going to start because we've got about five minutes. I'm going to ask Pastor to let us go five minutes to pass to a cop. He's a command. We're going to run a little bit over. That's okay. But make it quick because we would like to get out of your own time. Okay. My name is Raul Aikman. I'm a licensed attorney in Texas. This is Linda Corley. She's a licensed attorney in Texas. She runs the office. She's the head of their law firm. We're going to show you a two-minute video that sort of recaps the 20-minute video that you saw at the beginning of the presentation today. It's a little simpler. What we've found is that in stressful situations maybe two or three rules. So you have to act on what the cop can do as opposed to what you think he might do. You have to quote amendments. You don't have to quote all of these things. You just have to know we all generally know what our rights are. What we have to be able to do is to translate that into our own lives when the situation is occurring. How do we make that happen? How do we really invoke our rights? And so we're trying to make it simple with different kinds of stuff. We're doing a DWI stop as an example but you can really use this for any kind of encounter with a police officer. Knowing encounter with a police officer ever makes you any money. Nothing good comes out of an encounter with a police officer. One minute, just a moment. There's been I can't remember his name. So what's your name? William Chow. He's right about he made a comment about you make decisions and there's consequences to it. But you cannot know what a cop is going to do. All you can know is what they can do. If you consent to a cop searching your vehicle in Texas the law for possession of marijuana is any useful amount. I could have five useful amounts underneath my fingernails and it could pop into the carpet of your car and it reaches it and pulls that out and that's what the class would be missing me. I've seen charged they do it all the time. I personally will never consent to a search in my car and I won't let a cop in my house unless they've got a search warrant or an arrest warrant. I won't even open the door for them. You don't have a duty to open the door to a cop without a warrant. Now this what you're going to see is a DWI stop but all the rules that are shown in this video work for an encounter, any kind of encounter in your house, anyway. You just take the DWI questions out of it and I follow these rules religiously. Don't leave it. Who chose that? Sorry, I don't have any questions. Not enough of your attitude. I'm going to enjoy watching you scratch down the tear for a blood clot. I will just show you how to heal the end of DWI stop and any other chase in the house. Don't answer questions and do not consent to a search when dealing with a cop in a tub or eating by the truck Dennis the cop's just like two real Dennis in in charge call me and you just want two real Dennis in the ring only an improvement. It's not always do that. It's very intimidating when you're talking to an officer but we want to give you the strength to know that you have the right to invoke your right and how do you do that? You do that by telling them I'm sorry it's okay. You can cooperate with a police officer but that doesn't mean you have to answer any questions you have a little thing that he wants. Okay? So you have like they love to say no refuse a weekend well what a joke. What are they going to do if you take these sobriety tests or design and cause you to lose your balance and they're going to say you're intoxicated because that you're going to end up under arrest, right? What's going to happen if you say no I'm not going to take those tests you're going to end up under arrest. What we're trying to make you understand is you will live through the experience it's traumatic but I hope that everybody will do is when we get stopped by a police officer it is our we want to go home alive we want to go home. So you want to answer whatever questions you can you want to be cooperative and tell them everything you can because you want to go home you want to do everything that they want to say because you think if you do what they say they're not going to let you go home if they passed you out of your room nine times out of ten you're going to jail. So what I hope that everybody will have the strength to do is instead of making decisions for that short term thing to try to go home tonight make long term decisions if you're praying for your long term defense what you do is going to be different than if you're trying to talk a police officer to let you go home if you and I both know you're never going to talk into it because what do they get paid to do? Arrest people I don't think it's just about whether they're doing their job you didn't make any arrests what do you have to do with it? So make your decisions not based on the moment and try to achieve a result that you're probably not going to get they've already decided if they're going to arrest you it doesn't matter what you say you're doing you're going make your decisions in a way that your longer defense is you beat this rap because you're not guilty or whatever and that's another thing that everybody talks about guilty people exercise their rights you don't do anything to hide you don't lie to search no, your rights are not tied to guilt or innocence they have nothing to do with whether you are guilty of innocence they are your constitutional rights our citizens have fought and served and died so you have these rights and I hope that we can teach everybody how to make it happen in their own personal life that you exercise these rights it will stop certain things from happening but one thing I do want to clarify on the video is it talked about the best way to exercise your right to remain silent is to remain silent and that makes such common sense doesn't it? but as you and I know the people that make all the rules up to the Supreme Court sometimes we agree with that they had come down with a rule and it says well, if I invoke your right to remain silent if you just remain silent the order to actually invoke your right and the protections that it will provide you you actually have to speak you have to say want to remain silent so I encourage you always the two things you need to say to the police officer I want an attorney and I want to remain silent and then please do remain silent please if you start talking to the police officer again you have waited your right okay? so don't answer questions tell them I want an attorney everybody say that don't say I want my attorney you're not Tony Sopran oh you don't have that I want an attorney I'll remain silent I'll remain silent and then do it these rights don't attach to you until you're under custodial arrest I don't know what you guys try to figure out when you're under custodial arrest it's a little legal twist we do okay? don't try to figure that out know your rights and I don't care that you don't have the right to invoke them yet you just keep invoking them okay? you do it because it's your right and stand strong and don't be afraid because you can call us Natasha you can call me you can call Mr. Shaw and we will help you in court and we will fight for you I'm here today because I believe that we all need to stand up for our lives until we do we will not be able to stop this over run and overreach of government and police and everybody so please don't hesitate to call us if you have questions okay? I think the last it was one of the things that I was concerned about the fact that it was my brain that look what I want you to come around with those two things don't answer their questions it's not going to get you out of trouble and you don't know what you might say that will cause trouble what they'll switch oh the last thing everybody's talked about video did you see something happening? video tape it to you please because that's going to be our saving grace because we can prove what really happened not just what somebody besides the court that has so much BS we can have an actual video so pretend there's a video on you at all times hope there's a body here hope there's a dash camera the police know it's there don't play your game you're not going to win their game on the street you play your game you behave like you want a jury to see you not where the cop was going to see you okay? and you're going to win at the end alright thank you let's do this because we practically ran out of time let me explain what I'm going to do if I ever get a trouble again I'm going to call all the lawyers that were here for a great big legal case because it sounds like we'll win that case so let me do this why don't we do some questions and answers we can still do that why don't we do that on an individual basis let's do it that way