by David Tulis (423) 316-2680 davidtuliseditor@gmail.com
(Feb. 4, 2025) — CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025 —A radio journalist suing Hamilton County sheriff Austin Garrett is arguing in federal court that Tennessee occupational privilege law requires decriminalization of traffic stops.
The Eagle Radio Network reporter is demanding Hamilton County sheriff’s department be ordered to stop using threat of warrantless arrest to criminalize traffic administration, that deputies “not stop any more automobiles except when the person in the car is committing a crime.”
“I was arrested and jailed for a damaged taillight,” says David Tulis, who also runs TNtrafficticket.US and sues public officials for corruption. “This is a crime in itself – to do that to any ordinary and innocent person. Damaged taillights, revoked plates, suspended license, expireds— these are not crimes. These and technical defects are not public offenses. They are administrative or civil wrongdoing. At most these are the kinds of things you have to handle by notice and letter. You hold a contested case hearing if need be.”
The reform-minded suit filed November 2024 against the county and deputy Brandon Bennett says that the motor vehicle code is no different than the administrative code governing other occupations. “The motor vehicle code regulates privilege taxable activity,” Tulis says. “Disagreements and claims about a licensed party’s wrongdoings have to be handled in administrative agency and not criminally,” he says in the 27-page filing.
Defendant Hamilton County and the two sheriff’s employees have filed motions to dismiss in the court of U.S. district judge Travis McDonough.
Tulis in the petition describes how other occupations are handled administratively by regulators and commissioners.
“If you have the privilege of running a tattoo parlor, and you screw up in your procedures, you are not facing arrest by deputy. You face giving an accounting to your regulatory board,” Tulis says. “If the barber fails to put combs in his bucket of germicide, he doesn’t face cuffing by the cops. He’s brought up on allegations before his commission administratively. It’s nonviolence, civilized. That’s the marvel of the Uniform Administrative Procedures Act. All disputes regarding licensed professions such as driving a motor vehicle are administrative.”
“Operating and driving a motor vehicle is a privilege, no less so than podiatry, contracting to build houses or running a funeral funeral parlor,” Tulis says. “People who have to have the driver license are those involved in transportation. Traffic — transportation — same thing. Troopers have exclusive jurisdiction to regulate privilege taxable activity on the roads that the courts declare belong to the people. That’s because big trucks are dangerous.”
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David Tulis
Eagle Radio Network
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(423) 316-2680 c
Your arrest was unlawful because the deputy had no Standing. Who did you broken tail light injure in fact? Who is the victim and how did your broken tail light relate to the victim’s injury?
Absent injury in fact to a person of property with a causal relation between the alleged conduct and the injury, there is no standing and your arrest amounts to nothing less than kidnapping, aggravated assault and aggravated battery. They know this too.
Precedence.