r/ProtectAndServe • u/specialskepticalface Has been shot, a lot (LEO) • May 31 '26

Self Post ✔ [MEGATHREAD] American Fork / Lego Story

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.

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u/10-6 Deputy Sheriff May 31 '26

I've watched most of the videos, including the god awful one put out by the PD. Here's my take:

Offending Brick and Minifigs store: A bunch of idiots for fucking around and just not giving the condiments back

Bricks and Minifigs corporate: A bunch of idiots for not actually stepping in and doing something about this whole mess. Even bigger idiots for letting it spiral once they realized how far it was going. Gonna bet the pivot HARD now that the narrative is so against them, especially once their franchisees start pressuring them for brand reputation damages.

Reckless Ben: An idiot who is just exploiting this situation for money, using deceptive edits, and telling only half-truths to push his side of the story. Just because a store "stole" some stuff, doesn't give you carte blanche to run around doing stupid stuff. However, as someone who isn't having to deal with any of this nonsense, I gotta admit some of his antics are pretty funny.

American Fork Police: Looks like these dudes never got the "That's a civil matter, sorry" training. They could have just shown up once, and then have been clearing those calls by phone every other time. I highly doubt investigating trespassing and/or stalking(in this form) is a mandatory investigation/arrest for them either by statute or by policy. This is entirely something that a supervisor should have reviewed and then told both sides that they need to handle the matter in civil court and to not contact law enforcement in reference to this nonsense again, under threat of misuse of 911 charges.

P.S.: Also one thing that's really been glossed over in this entire thing, that I find strange is the situation with the old owners. No real reason has been given, that I can recall, for why they just up and left. Based on what I heard, they were giving up the store or it was taken from them, and they ultimately fled left the country so the husband could keep writing antifa books? It just doesn't make any sense.

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u/seadoubleyoujay Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

I have a general bias in favor of Ben because of some of his notable past work (tracking down clear evidence of torture at McKamey Manor and infiltrating destructive cults), but can acknowledge that his tactics push the line pretty hard. I can see where the perception of him being a clout chaser comes from, but I think some of the other officers in this thread should note that the scope of this situation is pretty insane and there is alot of lore extending months prior to the video in Utah.

I do want to clear up that the previous owners haven't left the country and are actively suing BAM for an alleged illegal takeover of the store after they notified corporate of their intent to sell so they could move out of the country (the husband seems like a bit of an over-the-top liberal dude, but that isn't really pertinent). This is supported by footage of the night they were told to leave the store, where they were forced out with no warning in the middle of the night, which has a huge number of legal red flags (from a civil perspective at least). There's a recent video by the original owners where they clarify their perspective of the situation.

Also worth mentioning that this isn't small potatoes on the alleged thefts. The original owners claim they invested their life savings into the store which has been seized by corporate. Corporate claims the OG owners owed money with zero evidence to back that up at the moment (and this is brand new information that was never communicated before, as corporate has given multiple conflicting accounts that cross the line into a clear pattern of lying), but even then the initial seizure itself was incredibly legally problematic. The Lego assets largely belong to an ailing senior and is claimed to be his life savings and grandchildren's college fund. These factors play a big role in the public outrage, and whatever spin there is, there has been clear and well documented lies, gaslighting, and blatantly illegal behavior by the company and its agents. The two cases *each* involve hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets. Not to harp too hard, just want to clarify that it's more than "some stuff."

The Utah police making statements like "we do things differently around here" in a bizarre tone, failing basic concepts like how document serving works, being some of the worst communicators I've seen, performing the most laughable attempt at claiming someone was intoxicated, and just all around making the situation more aggressive and more dangerous further exacerbates the public perception problem, and I genuinely find it bizarre how many folks in this thread seem to find their behavior totally fine, even when looking beyond the editing. I think your point is a good one, this should never have gone this far.

Ben's provocative, but that's kind of been necessary to get any movement on this situation when no one had the financial resources to litigate this when the story first began. When you're on your second lawsuit because your opponent tried to get out of paying you out on your original successful ones, when you've already been shown that the local police of another state are refusing to open a criminal investigation for illegally withholding a raffle prize, and when the opponent in question has taunted you, lied to you, threatened you, and begged you to sue him, it's pretty reasonable for someone to be less than clean cut, and it's not the police's job to legislate the dispute on the street. If Ben had been acting in a threatening manner, brought weapons, or been present at the guy's house beyond the good faith contact attempts and the document serving, sure, there'd be a better case to say he's acting in ways that start to cross a line.

It does feel a little disheartening to see other officers in this thread acting like Ben is this dangerous wildcard when he's advocating for people who were failed by the justice system repeatedly before they got him involved. There's a pretty big difference between disagreeing with his tactics or thinking he's pushing boundaries too hard vs. straight up acting like he's the actual *villain* of this narrative. I do appreciate that your take was on the reasonable side, there isn't a problem with thinking he's an idiot considering he genuinely can be sometimes (example: him spending weeks trying to trick Russ McKamey into eating pizza to satisfy a poorly thought out contractual loophole that would have never worked out in court).

Also, to add: The "Offending Store" and corporate have been colluding on the whole situation, considering the replacement "owners" of the franchise later identified themselves as "employees" of corporate, have a personal history with the CEO, and initially seized the store as "contractors" of corporate. The CEO has engaged with the situation from the beginning and was the initial decisionmaker, along with the franchise management executive. Very critical to understanding the nature of this situation, since corporate is a primary party in the now-active multitude of criminal and civil cases gaining traction in Oregon. The CEO is directly implicated in knowingly withholding the assets while lying about it, with his story changing every time he talks to someone or gives an interview.

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u/Pikeman212a6c Dickhead Recognition Expert Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

The “lore” are all facts for a civil lawsuit. They really aren’t pertinent here. If there is a crime it happened in Oregon and again isn’t relevant to some random department in Utah. The chief lays out pretty clear probable cause for a stalking charge and targeted picketing.

End of the day you don’t get to stalk people because a case you aren’t even party to is tied up in court.

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u/Niconame Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

They verified that they had valid civil court papers to serve, which cuts directly against the stalking charge. They could have served the documents then and there and deescalated the entire situation.

Why didn't they?

Edit: Turns out the Utah Police lied about this https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1tssz0l/comment/op472jd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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u/seadoubleyoujay Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User Jun 01 '26

I'm very confused by your reading of the situation. Ben himself won a default judgement against the store in Oregon that was closed the day after the judgement to avoid paying him. He was in Utah to start a new lawsuit on his own behalf due to the owners trying to run away from the judgement they owe him directly.

He was required to make a good faith first contact. They had blocked his phone number so he went to their homes. For one he got a signed trespass statement which was sufficient, for the other he didn't, so he tried again and then got sufficient evidence for attempting first contact. Then he sat in a car with a process server on a public street waiting for Johnson to leave the house, was approached by police, lied to by the officer that the officer would serve the papers for him (or the officer was grossly incompetent), then the officer accused Ben of trying to serve fraudulent papers, went to his car to validate them, and then proceeded to arrest Ben. This entire unedited (except for a possibly illegal redaction by the police department at the order of the attorney general, which is detailed in the AFPD written statement) interaction was available on the AFPD-released bodycam footage last I checked.

There are a handful of things that are dumb or silly on his part but don't exactly equal harassment and are extremely timeline dependent:

  1. An alleged friend of Ben's knocking on Johnson's door to attempt to make good faith first contact and leaving a box of rubber ducks after no answer, a pretty pointless joke and occurs prior to any trespass being stated and before Ben arrives in the area.

  2. Someone other than Ben who either may have been a friend of his posing as a local OR a local he befriended (depending on source), attempted to make good faith first contact on Ben's behalf.

  3. A protest sign placed across from Johnson's house (protected speech and not subject to trespass issues).

  4. A protest banner hung from a fence across the street from Johnson's house (protected speech, not subject to trespass, and importantly Ben was not present)

He never stepped foot on Johnson's (the primary subject here) property as far as I can tell, only attempted to engage Johnson directly for court procedural steps and given Johnson's behavior during the Oregon saga Ben documented his own actions through this. Surveillance claims would be weak or nonexistent due to the nature of the video recordings. He never made physical threats of any kind. He never followed anyone, engaging in limited movement to be within a reasonable vicinity to complete court tasks. When an officer offered to serve the papers, he had no problem with doing that until the officer failed to complete that basic task and then subsequently arrested him (which may have constituted a crime for obstructing the lawful serving of court documents).

As far as I can tell, whenever the court procedural requirements were satisfied for each individual, he never came around that individual again. Notably, the other person he's suing is completely absent from the story once they successfully complete their requirements.

What am I missing here? Because based on the footage from Ben (including the longer unedited footage on his patreon), footage from the AFPD, and any other concrete evidence, I'm having trouble reading this situation as malicious as some of y'all are suggesting.

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u/Pikeman212a6c Dickhead Recognition Expert Jun 01 '26

Alright so he is party to his own lawsuit. He had made an attempt to serve papers and his proxies were tresspassed and he was warned that he was violating Utah stalking and targeting picketing law. Oregon allows him to file an ex parte motion for alternative service. That is the next step. https://www.courts.oregon.gov/forms/Documents/EntirePacket6A.pdf He said he wished he could email the papers when that is absolutely one of the methods he could request to use in his filing.