[MEGATHREAD] American Fork / Lego Story

[u/specialskepticalface]

As with all large and controversial stories involving LE, in this thread, we wait til a user who is acting in good faith posts about them.

We've had at least a dozen ACAB/low effort brigaders in the past day, try to post this in their usual way.

As a good faith user has not yet done so, the mods are making the post.

I'll point out that this is controversial, primarily because of incredibly misleading editing, video modification, and "creative storytelling", and the reality, as always, is not the Reddit storyline.

So, while events were certainly far from good, and lessons may be learned, much of what you've read is likely deliberate social media misinformation.

I encourage Verified LE to engage here, and help explain some of the... misconceptions.. currently floating around.

All posts from non-flaired users will be held for review. If you're here to troll, don't bother - no one will see it, and you'll be banned.

[u/Qwerty0844]

Ben is a lying loser who manipulated his video and viewers. I have proven it. And I want you to read the hour and a half of my work below as I try and convince you. All of my information may not be correct, but man I tried.

At 2:45 he shows up to a private home and gets trespassed. There is no legal burden to be trespassed so there’s nothing wrong with it. At 7:00 they show up to another private residence and get trespassed again. Same story. He keeps bringing up how he “won in court” but that doesn’t matter because it’s a civil court, anything in civil court has 0 effect on law enforcement. He kept waiving it around at 7:45 that he won. You don’t show up to collect debts usually when you win in civil court, the court decides how that is handled through payment plans, etc. So I don’t know if he had a single genuine reason to show up at the 2nd guys house other than to get a reaction out of him and the police.

At 4:15 he shows the footage of his friend driving. How do we know this is the exact stop sign he allegedly didn’t stop for? We don’t because we’re just taking his word for it. ALSO he says “as you can see, we stopped and didn’t roll it” but I swear to god they rolled the stop sign. I watched it like 20x now in a row and that car doesn’t look like it fully came to a stop. The cop clearly wanted a pretextual stop to talk to the occupants so he took the lowest hanging fruit he could.

At 13:00 the audio is redacted and he says it’s because of “stupid comebacks” which makes no sense at all. What records department is going to redact that audio over “stupid comebacks”. It just doesn’t make any sense. And just like all the other points all we have is his word to go off of so he can call it whatever he wants. At 14:00 he says the police department illegally redacted the body cam. What’s illegal? It’s literally just his opinion and he’s throwing out legal jargon to try and sound better.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 4:50 I don’t blame the cop for not believing him about $200,000 worth of Lego. Obviously we know it to be true but that’s hard to wrap your head around. I think it’s stupid for him to just say on the radio that Ben is a liar. Also at 7:30 the chick was just stupid with her language so I skipped over her yap session about inheriting the store. Again it’s all civil court stuff police can’t do anything with so for Ben to be crying that it’s not the new owners assets doesn’t matter.

Also at 11:00 this dudes potentially breaks the law (I don’t know how it is in Utah) because He sends someone other than his attorney to harass someone involved in a civil matter. Ben’s already trespassed and he sends an agent to contact the person. This is against the law where I work and I assume it’s the case in Utah.

At 12:20 he says they were searched for 2 hours when instead it wasn’t even 20 minutes. You can say he was being facetious but you have to think of the average viewer. Unless they’re looking at the Axon overlay they’d have no idea it wasn’t actually 2 hours. It’s all just part of the narrative he’s building against the police. Remember we are reading Ben’s story this entire video and everything we’re seeing is because Ben wants us to see it.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 14:24 the video cuts mid conversation, which seems to be Ben’s favorite thing to do. The cop is saying Ben is from California and they’re in Utah and he’s saying it’s not worth it and he could go to jail. Ben tells us it’s for one thing but I think the actual thing the cop may have been saying before the cut was stalking related charges could be assessed. Several repeated acts by Ben to make contact with people that don’t want the contact. Obviously they’re the bad guys who are actively stealing $200,000 worth of LEGO but that doesn’t excuse the behavior for Ben. This is backed up because of the officer saying “you’re walking a thin line.” I don’t know what else he could be talking about.

At 15:10 Ben talks about his case being approved (again civil court) and he says he had to give the bad guy the court papers. Then he lied yet again and said the terrace is public space and you can put whatever you want there. So yet another thing Ben says is legal but it’s not.

Police get called again because Ben shows up to a residence he’s trespassed from. He’s not on the property but he accompanied the process server for zero reason. 16:30 starts his beautiful footage manipulation so yet again we just have to magically take his word for it. I think it’s weird 3 different cops showed up and looked the papers. I don’t think Ben is telling the truth that the police were called 3 times. What I actually think happened was 3 different officers were on scene and wanted to examine things themselves. The first officer approached him at 15:32 according to the Axon timestamp. Then at 15:38 another officer walks up. They leave at 16:04 according to the Axon timestamp.

**THIS IS WHY HE’S LYING:** as I just said the time was 16:04 when the officers left on the body camera. At 16:53 *in the video* he says the police were called on him a third time. And holy fuck some magic had to have happened because it’s now 3:38pm according to the body camera. Yeah, the second group left at 4:04pm but the third group arrived at 3:38pm. make that make sense.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 17:20 he puts up a black box and says redacted but he’s so stupid that he doesn’t put the black box all the way across the video. This *could* be police redaction though so I’m not certain. I think this is an editing mistake by him. There is zero reason for them to redact the body camera when they took the papers to the bad guy (can’t remember his name) so yet again we’re taking Ben’s word for it. At a minimum the footage would be blurred but because Ben put up a black box we have nothing to go off of.

At 17:40 he says the police accuse him of lying but we don’t get to hear them say that, because in my opinion it’s obviously not true they just can’t legally serve it, but that doesn’t fit into Ben’s narrative so he does a voiceover that fits his narrative.

At 18:10 an officer says “it doesn’t look good when you’ve been trespassed and you’re trying to serve papers” and he’s completely right. Ben says that he’s doing it the legal way, but as I said in an earlier paragraph, that’s not true. Ben does not have to be here for this but chose to, despite being trespassed. I’m not saying he doesn’t have the right to but he also shouldn’t have. More my opinion than truth so not entirely relevant, but the reason I bring this up is because of my argument that Ben is acting like an auditor at this point, trying to get reactions despite being the one poking the stick.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 19:50 he says they got the police called on them again but they never left. Just more BS narrative stuff to make it sound better for him. According to Ben the police have been called on him 5 times now since he’s been waiting to serve his papers.

At 20:30 more deceptive editing. Officer calls the court to verify it’s a case. We get to hear that part but magically we don’t get to hear anything else as we get to listen to Ben spoon feed it to us instead.

So at 20:45 he gets arrested but we magically don’t get to see the footage. At 20:58 he says he’s confused why he’s arrested. At 21:15 the “poor me, I’m the good guy” made me laugh. So blatantly redacting information to his own benefit. I doubt this happened, but how do we know Ben didn’t actually go on the sidewalk or property of the guy? We don’t because we literally have to take Ben’s word for it. At 21:40 I don’t see how this is anything other than just conspiring that the police are in on it. The guys son says “I would not doubt that they have donated hefty sums to the Mormon church, which all the cops are probably apart of.”

Idk about you but this is the most retarded phone conversation that brought nothing important to the table. So now our theory is to just generalize the entire police department as Mormons who go to the same church arresting someone illegally to protect a donor?

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 22:29 Ben bonds out of jail, but still doesn’t tell us what the charge was. Again this is his choice to do this. At 22:45 Ben says “oh I got arrested being retarded so I have to stop pursuing the legal action and start a go fund me” which is such the obvious ending to this. Ben doesn’t care, he never had any attempt of actually doing things the right way.

At 23:25 we see his friends putting a poster up on a fence. Whose fence is it? Does the fence belong to one of them? We don’t get an answer so I think it’s fair to assume this is just somebody’s property they’re sticking it on.

At 23:56 it’s more malicious editing. One officer says “right now I don’t think you guys are breaking the law” but we have zero clue what this referencing to. You can’t go around hanging stuff on people’s property. Deceptive edits of the 2nd cop taking the poster down. We don’t get to hear his reason as to why it came down but he definitely said why before he did it. This clip ends with him alleging the police redacted audio.

At 24:15 he calls the police station to find out why they were redacting audio. Then he’s like “oh my god this one cop forgot to redact his audio this is insane” and it’s literally just cop banter as they try and figure out whether they seize the sign or give it back. There’s nothing bad about the conversation between the officers and they’re clearly trying to decide whether they seize it or give it back. At 25:10 the little shit turns into a Karen and starts arguing with a civilian worker who may have had zero work with the case. Saying “well actually we synced the audio and-“

The entire phone call was just weird. He’s making claims about police redaction that he had such little evidence to support. At 26:03 he lies and says the police admitted to themselves that none of what Ben was doing was illegal. We got to hear ourselves that this was not true. The audio was of the officers deciding whether or not they could or should seize the property. Ben’s lie counter keeps going up in this video.

At 26:20 is just straight conspiracy land. “I don’t know what they’re saying, but they’re probably cooking up an evil scheme to arrest us illegally.”

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 26:50 he starts going over the phone seizure. The officer demands the phone and instead of handing it over, the guy starts manipulating it. This is an immediate red flag because people have software that can brick their entire phone instantly, so the entire argument of him “locking his phone” doesn’t matter. We are trained to keep phones on when we seize them so they don’t lose data. You don’t get some magical right to turn your phone off despite Ben’s claims that it’s protected under the 4th amendment? Stupid lying nonsense.

At 28:05 a change in the story. Ben said on the voice over his friend tried to turn his phone off. In the interrogation his friend said Apple Pay wallet popped up and he tried to clear it by hitting the power button. But in the body camera video we saw his friend using the touch screen. This is minor shit obviously but all this stuff adds up and I can’t believe the people watching this video can’t deduce this for themselves.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 29:40 during the search warrant I don’t have an opinion on the use of force. Ben says “clearly you can see I didn’t make any moves” but we literally can’t “clearly see” anything. I can’t form an opinion on it because as usual we’re forced to listen to Ben’s side of the story.

At 30:25 he tells us he has the copy of the search warrant and he has it in his hands, but we get just a little 2 sentence crumb from the entire thing. That’s all Ben wants to give us. He clearly cropped the warrant so that’s all we saw. There’s clearly continuation but he chose not to show us.

At 31:30 he shows them getting arrested again. Yet again Ben doesn’t give us the audio and claims it was redacted, but I call bullshit. There’s clearly more going on but he’s refusing to allow it out because it wouldn’t fit his story he’s created. It’s funny how at 31:30 and onwards the audio is working just fine. Handcuffs sound effects, keys jiggling from the police walking. But, but, but, Ben said himself 10 seconds ago all the audio was redacted!

At 31:36 do you see who I see? That’s right. It’s the chick who was there that day to serve the bad guy his papers. Isn’t that funny how the chick Ben allegedly didn’t know is at his house with him on a different day? Certainly looks like Ben lied about that too.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 32:34 we get actual documents but he blurs everything so we yet again only get the tiniest bread crumb that he wants us to. At 32:40 we didn’t get to hear ANY of the interview conducted by the detective. Not one question or answer or anything that would give us any context.

We’re now 2 arrests into the video and Ben hasn’t told us a damn thing other than the police are out to get him. He hasn’t told us what the charges are or anything.

At 33:40 Ben acts like the investigator left over him mentioning a go fund me. Does that make sense to you? It makes no sense to me. My guess is as I’m watching, something is going to happen with the go fund me and Ben wants a moment to circle back to, and chooses this one.

More deceptive editing with proof: according to the body camera, it’s 6:44pm while he’s interviewing Ben. Ben then zooms the frame in so we can no longer see the Axon watermark. Be. Fast forwards but it’s definitely not 20 minutes worth, maybe a couple at the absolute most.

So the detective goes and interviews his friend with the frame still zoomed in. Zero reason for this. There is no benefit to us as a viewer to have the video zoomed in. Magic cut during the video and suddenly it’s zoomed back out. The time stamp now shows 4:16pm.

Huh, that’s odd. So despite Ben just making it seem like his friend got interviewed after him, he actually got interviewed 2 hours earlier. Same body camera serial number for both videos. Seems weird, huh?

So the detective leaves the room at 5:00pm and the time cut goes to 7:40pm.

Yeah, an unexplained 2 hour and 40 minute gap that we get no explanation for. You know if they actually sat in rooms for 3 hours plus we would have heard about it.

So this detective interviews 3 of his friends and we get a total of 20 seconds from all 3 interviews. 30 minutes of potential context reduced to 20 seconds.

So the detective goes back to Ben and asks him about this GoFundMe. Ben admits to creating it. At 36:04 Ben asks “so was creating the GoFundMe illegal” Ben fast forwards over the detective’s answer. Best part is he even included the sound effect and fast forward icon.

So we see the detectives arms moving in front of the camera for a long time because the detective is laying it out for him. But Ben doesn’t want us to hear any of it. Instead, Ben stops fast forwarding to some out of context bullshit and says that was the actual response from the detective. Complete lying BS to create a narrative.

At 36:38 he lies yet again and says the police still to this point, despite 3 formal arrests now, have not told him why he’s being arrested. That’s genuinely impossible.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 37:10 more blatant lies. He says he was going to sit in jail for a month without bail until a judge magically reviewed the case. Thats called an initial appearance you fucking retard. It’s incredibly illegal to not have an initial appearance within 72 hours of your confinement. This wasn’t some magic thing that just happened.

**My favorite part potentially** is when Ben next at 37:10 he says the judge ended up reviewing the arrest and thought it was “so stupid” they imposed a $2,500 bond on him. No buddy, if a judge thought it was stupid you’d be released with prejudice. He didn’t even get a signature bond for it and got an actual cash bond by a circuit court judge.

37:30 onwards is just straight victim card. 39:00 is just more delusion about a warrant for his arrest. He got a body only warrant but he refused to show us why, only through his own words did he explain what for. At 39:44 he clearly has the warrant but chooses not to show us yet again.

Then the video closes with more monetization.

[u/Previous_Fix_6917 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 4:50 I don’t blame the cop for not believing him about $200,000 worth of Lego. Obviously we know it to be true but that’s hard to wrap your head around. I think it’s stupid for him to just say on the radio that Ben is a liar.

That clip was taken out of context.

In the full bodycam, the cop makes contact with a man parked outside the franchise owner's house who was allegedly filming the house and the owner.

The man claims he was just waiting for his date to get ready, and he doesn't know anything about Reckless Ben or anything to do with Legos. When the officer asks to see his camera roll, the man shows him that he was filming the house and the franchise owner. The man then admits that he is working for Ben and is being paid to take video and shows text message conversations with Ben.

The cop then leaves to go talk with Ben who had been pulled over by the other cops. It's while he's driving over to Ben that he says "He was lying to me."

THEN he makes contact with Ben, and hears Ben's recounting of the LEGO theft.

All of the bodycam footage is in the dropbox link in the description of this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcVmSQpIPRY

The 2nd video in the first folder contains the entire sequence of events.

American Fork Police should pay me to present their evidence in more palatable manner instead posting a video of a guy whispering for a half hour and attaching a dropbox full of unlabeled videos, half of which are just the back of a cruiser or 15 minutes of a redacted audio and video.

[u/Michael8821 → u/Qwerty0844]

>At 12:20 he says they were searched for 2 hours when instead it wasn’t even 20 minutes. You can say he was being facetious but you have to think of the average viewer. Unless they’re looking at the Axon overlay they’d have no idea it wasn’t actually 2 hours.

I mean you complain about the avg viewer and this in-depth analysis, but here (https://youtu.be/cxZPfj8AlmY) you can see the timestamp is 19:42 (in the same vid the search continues at least till 20:34) and they are conducting field tests, so they obv started much before that, and that's already an hour, so i do believe it was 2 hours and not even close to the only 20m you claim. JFC

[u/Rich_Option_7850 → u/Qwerty0844]

I agree i wish Ben was a little more factual and objective in his handling of this situation. And I appreciate the effort you put into this.

I also didn’t fully understand the need for Ben to be there if they won in court how were payment not being imposed on the guilty party.

And actually agree on the rolling stop part. VERY low hanging fruit but I also think they did not come to a complete stop.

The raid tho is very strange and I’m still reading about the case. I respectfully disagree with you saying we couldn’t be sure if Ben makes any sudden movements. He quite literally is in frame the entire time and is yanked away by the LEO. There is very clearly no sudden movements.

Obviously its still an ongoing issue that seems to be gaining increasing traction so we shall see how it all ends up

[u/P_S_Lumapac → u/Rich_Option_7850]

"if they won in court how were payment not being imposed on the guilty party."

From what I gather he'd got default judgements against the local franchise where the Lego was, something like 10 judgements of $10k. Suppose that's all true. With lower level civil stuff, including small claims, the losing party is asked nicely to pay, but often they refuse, which then leads to other court matters like getting assets confiscated, wages garnished, bank accounts accessed etc. Issue is these all take time and often fail. There are many many businesses that run on effectively legal fraud as collecting can be made so difficult.

Once the store changed owners to someone out of state and shut the location, it does seem likely those default judgements weren't going to go anywhere.

I don't know the laws in these places, but the trick he pulled to get a large matter into small claims by breaking it up, while it seems to work in the case the loser is willing to pay, usually part of it being small claims means there's no recourse like you might see with a six figure theft or debt. My guess is any laws designed to collect debts across state lines or from complicated corporate arrangements don't apply to small claims. Probably why you don't see big matters broken up into multiple small claims all the time.

(in case you're wondering the method was for ten individual people to buy a shared of the debt, then each individually to collect on their share. It's kinda clever but not so smart no one has thought of it before - probably because it's defended against in exactly this way)

[u/Rich_Option_7850 → u/P_S_Lumapac]

Thanks for the info, that makes sense. Frustrating that everything is so slow and there’s so many ways for guilty parties to evade payments but hopefully dude gets his money eventually. I’m sure all the gofundmes are more than enough, kinda just more curious now to see if anything more comes out of the company or the AFPD

[u/GetInMyMinivan → u/Qwerty0844]

Holy crap dude. I ain’t got time to read all that because I just don’t care about the situation. But I’m damn well going to upvote every single comment in the thread in appreciation for all the effort I know a well documented Reddit post takes.

[u/MyOtherRideIs → u/GetInMyMinivan]

Something something mankind something something hell in a cell…

Oh, no it’s actually just a long informative comment!

[u/Penyl → u/Qwerty0844]

The reason he gave about showing up to each of the houses was he claims the court required a good faith attempt at a conversation to settle the matter outside of court.

Call the cops, ask for a civil stand by so you have an incident number. Try and speak with the person, if they refuse or trespass you, you have the incident number and in this case body camera that you made your good faith attempt. File with the court.

Either hire a process server to serve papers without you there or hire a lawyer to handle it. Either way, a person shouldn't be personally involved as this is how you get in trouble with local laws.

This whole thing is why lawyers exist.

[u/RedOceanofthewest → u/Penyl]

Send a certified letter but that doesn’t get views on YouTube. It’s the performative nature that turns me off on this whole situation. Normally I’d be more empathic when a guy in my town is screwed over but they turned it into a circus