IMMEDIATE RELEASE — David Tulis (423) 316-2680 davidtuliseditor@gmail.com
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025 — A notice served on Hamilton County officials this week demands that traffic stops be decriminalized by referrals of wrongdoing to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.
An investigative radio reporter suing deputy Brandon Bennett, Sheriff Austin Garrett and the county is demanding traffic administration practices be relinquished to the department responsible for driver licenses and traffic regulation.
David Tulis, whose lawsuit over arrest for a damaged taillight on appeal in the federal sixth circuit, says safety commissioner Jeff Long has a duty to hear cases pertaining to the driving privilege in department contested cases.
“The sovereign citizen types in local government are ignoring clear law and I am telling them they must let the law operate for the safety of the deputy and the peace and tranquility of the public,” Tulis says.
A contested case is a hearing within the department of safety over the allegations of wrongdoing. Bennett arrested, jailed and criminally charged Tulis Nov. 22, 2023, for a damaged taillight. The journalist who works at the rock hits station Eagle Radio Network at 107.5 FM sued for injunction and damages in U.S. district court. His complaint says the sheriff’s office uses criminal and peacekeeping police powers to enforce motor vehicle laws that are properly administered under “non-criminal, nonviolent economic police powers” of the department of safety.
“Every member of the public under a license has a right to hear accusations made against him in the department that issues and regulates the privilege taxable activity under that license,” Tulis says.
“The plumber’s under the contractor board. The hairdresser is under the barber and cosmetology board — all callings under a unique board. It’s high time the state overseer of driver licenses step up and do his job so that the safety and lives of our deputies will no longer be jeopardized. Traffic stops are more dangerous to deputies and cops than high-risk domestic disturbance calls. They are shot, injured, hit by moving cars. Sheriff Garrett needs to consider the lives and families of our brother and sister deputies — stop agreeing to this unfunded mandate by the state and start obeying the law keeping things civil and honest.”
Tulis in his filings says the sheriff’s criminal enforcement authority for control of riots, affrays and disorders is different from the police power the state possesses to regulate telecoms, hospitals, carriers and drivers of vehicles. The notice cites the uniform administrator procedures act and the legal doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies requiring disputes be heard in a department prior to going to court.
“Criminal prosecution under law is not the first step in the state’s seeking redress of a grievance under the driving privilege,” said Tulis. “It’s the last. Government employees need to stop their Jim Crow operation ignoring well-known law in harassing, abusing, criminally prosecuting the black, the poor immigrant, the weak and the poor, the alien, the stranger and others. We deserve not only God’s protection under God’s righteous and holy law, but our rights under Tennessee law.”
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VIDEO OF SERVICE TO COUNTY
https://davidtulis.substack.com/p/county-attorney-meets-with-journalist