Joshua Gibbons is going public with his federal lawsuit against Kingsport police after Tennessee’s second-highest criminal court wiped his record clean.
Gibbons, a local YouTuber who films officers to hold them accountable, spent nearly four years fighting charges that stemmed from a pre-dawn raid on his home. The Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee unanimously dismissed the last charge in June, and now the civil case his lawyers filed in 2023 is taking center stage. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) represents him in the suit targeting the city, its police chief and multiple officers.
The case traces back to October 2022, when Gibbons filmed a Kingsport Police Department SUV speeding at night without lights or sirens. He followed the vehicle to a fast food drive-thru and confronted the officer on camera. The officer ignored him and drove off with his food. Gibbons later posted a second video showing a different officer flipping him off. A citizen complaint about the speeding officer prompted the department to scour Gibbons’ YouTube channel, according to FIRE.
Within two hours of discovering the speeding video, officers secured an arrest warrant from a court clerk rather than a judge, the lawsuit alleges. The charges: speeding, using a cell phone while driving and disorderly conduct. Just before dawn the next morning, eight armed officers stormed his house and arrested him in front of his elderly mother and young daughter.
“They tried to intimidate me, but I’m not backing down,” Gibbons said in a statement. “I can’t let this injustice stand, because my family doesn’t feel safe anymore. There’s no coming back from that raid on our home. They sent eight heavily armed officers to arrest me because I embarrassed them.”
FIRE Senior Attorney Adam Steinbaugh said that the officer in the original video “did the right thing” by ignoring Gibbons. “He didn’t arrest him, didn’t view it as a crime, and went and got his hamburger,” Steinbaugh said. The department changed course only after the footage went online.
“The First Amendment protects the right not only to criticize and film police, but also to post it online,” Steinbaugh said. “The police department didn’t treat this as a crime until Joshua posted this online and embarrassed the department.”
Gibbons’ first trial ended with a judge acquitting him of speeding and cell phone charges but convicting him of disorderly conduct. The judge said he was “offended by the way” Gibbons was “talking to that officer.” A county circuit court jury upheld that conviction on appeal. But the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals saw it differently in June, finding “no evidence” that Gibbons’ words “prevented any person from doing any lawful activity.”
The appellate panel noted Gibbons “did not threaten anyone, did not engage in any violent behavior, and did not create a physically offensive or hazardous condition.” The court added that even “‘profane and insulting’ words alone will not rise to the level of a crime, particularly when uttered against the police, who ‘are trained to exercise a higher degree of restraint than the average citizen.'”
Steinbaugh called the department’s conduct “as lawless as it was hypocritical” and said the actions “were all to make an example out of a critic.”
The criminal ordeal took a heavy toll, Steinbaugh acknowledged. “That’s a long process that can take a mental toll on someone,” he said. “I think that Joshua wants to send a message to this department. I think he wants to see some reforms to this department, and we’re happy to support him.”
Steinbaugh framed the case as a national warning to law enforcement. “If you are a law enforcement officer, you are required by your uniform and by the First Amendment to tolerate criticism,” he said. “Some of that’s going to be fair criticism, some of it’s going to be unfair criticism. But you don’t get to go and arrest people for it. That’s the message we want to send to this department and to departments around the country.”
The Kingsport Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Gibbons’ lawsuit now proceeds in federal court seeking damages and reforms.