LAS VEGAS, NV - Jose "Chille" DeCastro, a man with a YouTube channel and who identifies as a self-proclaimed "First Amendment" auditor and "constitutional scholar" was accused of intentionally interfering with an officer when he filmed a traffic stop and refused to back up when asked to do so by the officer.
According to the body camera footage from that day, this was not the first time DeCastro, who is 49-years-old, had been in trouble with law enforcement, as he told the officers that he had been arrested four other times for filming police across the country.
The incident, which happened on March 15, 2023, alleges that DeCastro walked up to a woman who had been pulled over by a police officer in a parking lot near Flamingo Road and Grand Canyon Drive.
The body camera footage shows the officer, Branden Bourque, step out of his car and tell DeCastro to back away and to stop speaking with the driver. The officer can be heard saying, "You can film, but you need to stay away from my driver." For about a minute and a half, the officer and DeCastro verbally argue back and forth, until DeCastro says, "Mind your business. I'm a member of the press. Go get in your car and do your job, little doggie."
The officer then told DeCastro that he was being detained. DeCastro was placed in handcuffs and stood in front of a police vehicle until other responding officers arrived. While waiting for a sergeant to arrive on scene, DeCastro continued to insult officers, occasionally using degrading and graphic sexual language. By the time the sergeant arrived, DeCastro told the officers that he would be suing them and asked over and over not to be taken to jail.
According to court records, DeCastro was arrested on February 14 at the scene of a fatal hit-and-run accident near Charleston and Decatur boulevards. DeCastro posted video from that incident to his YouTube channel, which shows him telling officers to "shut up" and "mind your business" when they asked why he was at the crime scene. He pleaded not guilty to a charge of obstruction in Las Vegas Municipal Court and has a scheduled court day of May 1.
On March 19, DeCastro's bench trial began and he started off the day by calling a courtroom marshal a "pig" after the judge directed him to turn over his phone. Justice of the Peace Ann Zimmerman said that she did not approve a media request for DeCastro to record the hearing. She threatened to hold him in contempt of court until he apologized to the marshal.
During the trial, DeCastro shook his head when the prosecutor, Chief Deputy District Attorney Agnes Botelho argued that DeCastro had been detained to protect the officer's safety after he refused to follow instructions. Botelho said, "This is not a First Amendment issue. As you heard over and over and over again on the video, officer Bourque did not have a problem with the defendant recording."
DeCastro's defense attorney, Michael Mee, argued that even though officer Bourque testified that officers are trained to instruct people to stand about 20 feet back from a scene, that training is not supported by any federal law. He argued that DeCastro had a First Amendment right to film the officer and speak to the driver and that he was illegally detained for trying to do that.
When it came time to sentence DeCastro, the prosecutor was looking for him to be placed on probation, but Zimmerman had another plan and ordered DeCastro to serve 180 days in the Clark County Detention Center. At the time of the sentencing, Mee asked, "Is that suspended?" Zimmerman said, "Oh no, it's going to start right now."
During the hearing and prior to convicting DeCastro, Zimmerman spoke out about DeCastro's apparent hatred of police. When she did that, DeCastro nodded his head and flashed the judge a thumb's up sign. Shortly before sentencing DeCastro, the judge said, "He called the officers here in my courtroom today pigs, and he's nodding his head, so apparently he hates every law enforcement officer in the United States."
DeCastro's YouTube channel, "Delete Lawz," has more than 500,000 subscribers and is full of hundreds of videos where he spends hours talking about police body cam recordings and footage from others. In some of his videos, he films his own interactions with police officers, where he is seen cursing at them and calling them "pigs."
After finding DeCastro guilty, Zimmerman said, "It seems to me from observing him in the video that he wants this. He wants to get arrested, he wants to get into an altercation with police officers. He welcomes this, this helps his YouTube channel."
DeCastro has filed a motion for him to be released from jail or be granted bail. He appeared in court on Monday, April 1, where that bail request was denied.
