Fort Worth police messed with click-hungry street preachers, and it went viral | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- David Grisham and Rich Penkoski preached at Trinity Pride on June 27.
- Fort Worth police blocked them and later ticketed Grisham for a bullhorn.
- U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dillon is investigating Fort Worth police.
The clickbait-for-Christ crowd came back to Fort Worth the other day trolling for viral video and cash.
Sadly, there was a law officer willing to help them find it.
This time, Amarillo-area street preacher and professional instigator David Grisham — best-known for ruining Christmas by shouting at elementary schoolers that Santa isn’t real — brought his religious roadshow to South Main Street.
Grisham and Irving street preacher Rich Penkoski came to the Trinity Pride LGBTQ+ community festival June 27 on South Main Street ready to roll cameras.
Sure enough, a Fort Worth police officer took the bait.
She blocked them from preaching. Officers even warned them they’d be ticketed “if someone is offended.”
It couldn’t have been scripted better for the outrage machine.
Within days, the video landed on the commercial grievance-for-dollars site LibsOfTikTok with a screaming headline: “Female Texas Cop THREATENS to ticket a retired officer and Christian street preacher for ‘offensive speech.’ “
Look, the officer was wrong. She was belligerent, too.
But she isn’t the first law officer to choke on the First Amendment.
Law officers of all kinds — from beat cops to ICE agents — regularly go overboard to shut down cameras or critics.
But here is one rule for anyone wearing a badge: Behind every street preacher is a very eager lawyer.
In this case, it’s U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dillon, now investigating the Fort Worth police for civil rights violations.
Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have made it clear that preaching, protesting, heckling and videoing are all protected on public sidewalks.
You can’t block a walkway, you can’t incite violence and you can’t violate the noise laws. But you can be annoying.
Fort Worth police should know better, anyway.
In 2016, the city paid Grisham $65,148.92 when another officer interfered with his street preaching during a 2014 Pride event.
This time, police realized right away that they might have made another very expensive mess.
On July 1, the department issued a statement conceding that officers wrongly blocked the preachers, though Grisham was ticketed for using a bullhorn.
Yet on July 8, a full week after police owned up to the mistake, LibsOfTikTok.com posted the original video as if the city had never responded. That video has now passed 13 million views.
Not until July 10 did LibsOfTikTok post that police had admitted they were wrong. By then, Fort Worth had become the new dartboard for conservative media.
This is the kind of publicity street preachers live for.
Last year, Penkoski was in Florida making news by waving bacon at Muslim students during prayer.
Grisham, a former 25-year security officer at the federal nuclear weapons plant near Amarillo, is also the one-man band behind Repent Amarillo’s street crusades outside adult novelty stores.
He staged a video “execution” of a Santa piñata. He also invaded the Santa Claus House in North Pole, Alaska.
Maybe Grisham and Penkoski think it helps the cause of Christ to tour the country stirring up outrage by trolling LGBTQ+ events, Muslim students or kids on Santa’s lap.
But we robbed them of our rights.
Then we got smeared.
And we’ll have to pay them money.
Don’t feed the outrage machine.
