Most people’s contact with the police isn’t dramatic. It’s a traffic stop on the way home from work, a few minutes on the shoulder, a warning or a ticket, and then back on the road. These routine encounters are where a police agency earns or loses public trust, one driver at a time.
That’s why de-escalation matters so much. When an officer ignores sound, state-approved tactics and turns an ordinary interaction into a confrontation, nobody is safer. The officer isn’t safer. The driver isn’t safer. And the damage doesn’t end when the stop does. The person walks away with a lower opinion of the police and tells family, friends, and neighbors about it. Those conversations multiply, and one bad stop can poison a community’s relationship with its police department for years.
It gets worse when video of the encounter reaches the local news and, instead of accountability, the public gets a defensive wall. When police leadership and state officials rally to protect an officer despite the harm done, the cover-up becomes a second, much larger multiplier. People stop asking “What did that officer do?” and start asking “What is this entire system willing to excuse?”
This Week’s Episode
This week we examine a case from Montgomery County, Texas, that shows how quickly this can unfold. Earlier this year, a driver was pulled over for failing to signal a right turn and for a dim license plate light. Some would call it a pretextual stop that never should have happened. Either way, it should have been minor. It ended in an arrest on charges that, as we discuss on the show, don’t hold up under scrutiny.
What happened next may be even more troubling: the response from police and state-level officials once the incident became public.
Our Guest
To walk us through it, we’re joined by Jaewon Jung, an Emmy Award-winning journalist at KPRC 2 in Houston, who has been reporting on the case. Together we talk about:
- How the stop began and the point where it escalated.
- How officials responded once the story broke, and why that response matters as much as the stop itself
- What the video shows, and how it compares with the official account
- Jung’s records requests for the officer’s file and the department’s policies, and the pushback she’s getting
- What this case says about accountability, pretextual stops, and community trust in Texas and beyond
The Records Fight
Jung didn’t stop at the video. She filed two public records requests: one for the arresting officer’s personnel file, and a separate one for the sheriff’s office’s traffic stop policies.
The department refused to release the personnel file. Its justification was that the officer is involved in pending litigation, an excuse that looks more like a convenient shield than a legitimate reason to keep the public in the dark. The Texas Attorney General’s office backed the department’s decision.
The traffic stop policies were released, but they were completely blacked out. The public is left unable to judge whether the officer followed department policy because the department won’t say what that policy is.
Jung has appealed both decisions, and both appeals are still pending. On the show, she explains what she’s fighting for and why these records matter to anyone who wants to hold a police agency accountable.
Whether you work in law enforcement, care about civil liberties, or have ever felt your pulse jump at flashing lights in the rearview mirror, this conversation is worth your time. Good policing isn’t only about the calls that make headlines. It’s about getting the ordinary moments right, and owning it when they go wrong.
Listen to the full episode now and share it with someone who should hear it.
Click here to read the full podcast transcript
What happens when covering for corrupt and abusive offices is all that it matters to officials from the sheriff’s office through state government officials. What happens is the very policies that dictate how sheriff’s deputies conduct traffic stocks become something the public is not allowed to see. You can submit a public records request, but all you’re gonna see is a page of blacked-out text. Why? Because the sheriff’s office says the deputy in question is involved in a pending litigation. Deputies are always involved in pending litigation. It’s a big part of their job. Of course, everyone involved in this knows it is all theater. Welcome to the Chicago Justice Podcast. I’m your host, Tracy Siska. I’m also Executive Director of the Chicago Justice Project and an adjunct instructor in the Department of Justice, Law, Criminology, and Security at American University. Today we are discussing a rather routine but unusual traffic stop that occurred on May 21st in Montgomery County, Texas, near Easton. For all those working to end traffic stops, this is Exhibit A in your case. These stops should never occur. From body worn camera footage, the stop seems to have been conducted in a very unprofessional manner and possibly outside the sheriff’s office policy. If only their policies were open for public inspection. To make sense of all of this, we sit down with Jaywan Jung. To make sense of this story, we sit down with Jay Wan Jung, an Emmy Award-winning journalist from KPRC2 in Houston. So I want to talk to you specifically about some reporting you’ve done on a traffic stop in Montgomery County. Um while my research shows that uh Shenandoah, Texas, um, that happened on May 21st, where a sheriff’s deputy pulled over a 40-year-old Elizabeth Kim. What was that stop? What was the pretext to that stop happening? Why was she pulled over originally?
Yeah, I mean, we’ve all been pulled over by a cop before. It was over a minor minor traffic infraction. She forgot to use her right-turn signal, which, you know, a lot of people will say uh that that irks me as well. Sure. Um, but if you don’t use your right-turn signal, usually you get a citation for it. Uh so she pulls over to a parking lot in um well-lit area because this is late at night, I think about um 9 or 10 p.m. at night. Uh, and usually when a cop pulls you over, they go up to your window, ask you for your driver’s license, insurance registration, and then they give you a citation. In this case, the deputy is seen getting out of his patrol car and stands about 20 feet back from Elizabeth’s trunk. He does not identify himself and just tells her, get him out, get him out, get him out.
I’m telling you, I can get out.
Um, so she’s super confused. This is late at night. She’s wondering, like, did I commit some sort of felony crime? Like, what is going on here? Eventually, about four minutes in, because she doesn’t get out of her truck, he finally goes up to her passenger side window and identifies himself for the first time and and then just says, get out. I need you to get out. So she finally does get out, but she’s scared in this situation. She starts calling her mom, and the deputy is obviously pissed off that she’s um not following his commands, and uh she is put in cuffs right after that.
Do we know why it escalated? Do we know why right off the bat he used those tactics rather than what I think everyone else in this country would be used to, which have which is sometimes they walk up to your passenger side, but walking up either to the driver’s side or the passenger side or right off the bat, introducing himself, being calm. I mean because you wouldn’t think that uh being pulled over for not using your right turn signal would have a cop shouting at you from behind your car right off the bat.
We don’t know to this day. When I asked the sheriff’s office, their explanation was basically cops can do whatever they want. Um, and the federal law does give um officers permission to uh have drivers exit a vehicle for any reason, um Pennsylvania versus MIMS. Was it lawful? Sure. Was it right? That’s what people are questioning online.
If that is lawful, that’s pretty sad. Right? That’s a sad state for our country. And like there should have to be some cause for them to ch deviate from the practices that we’re all used to. If she was used to being pulled over, like I have been pulled over many times, if I saw that happening, I think I’d immediately get nervous and try to understand the situation. I got pulled over years ago. They sur I ended up having four cops and they surrounded the car with their hands on the guns. And the cop finally comes over to the door, and I have my hands up at this point. And I’m like, what the hell is going on? He says, Oh, put your hands down, we’re just training. I’m like, Well, you scared the crap out of me. I and that was I’m male, it was in the middle of the day, I’m white. Like, I had a lot of reasons not to be nervous, but I was still terrified. I can’t imagine being pulled over at night like this and having those tactics. I know that you haven’t reported on the deputy sheriff’s uh the deputy’s name. Do we know anything about this person’s background?
I have been trying so hard to get his personnel file. Um, I I want to preface and say that Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office has been a difficult agency to work with. I’ve been requesting a lot of records from them, and they send all of my requests to the AG’s office. Even Elizabeth’s body cam video, I got it leaked to me. I didn’t get it from the sheriff’s office. Uh, and all of my reporting afterwards, um, policies I got from the sheriff’s office, in intel um from the DA’s office to law enforcement, I got all of that from sources. Yeah, unfortunately, uh they send all of my requests over to the attorney general.
And so in Texas, the they’re asking for permission from the attorney general’s office to deny your request, or is that basically the process here?
That’s exactly right. So um what they will say is um we according to Texas code, whatever, whatever, um we have a right to withhold your records. Um we will send your request over to the attorney general for their opinion. And a big problem is the attorney general is not on our side either. So the attorney general will have 45 business days to rule, and I don’t think I’ve uh ever been ruled in my favor.
All right, so for the personnel records, what excuse did they use um when you when they when they sent it to the attorney general’s office, I believe they sent you a letter letting you know that was happening. What excuse in there did they did they use to withhold the records?
They have a go-to one, and it’s that there’s pending prosecution in a case that he’s working on. And I just feel like right. And I feel like that’s just they could use that for any deputy, right? I mean, a deputy always is always involved in a case, officers are always involved in cases.
That is crazy. Okay, let’s go back. Um, you mentioned a little bit ago about the policy. So you tried to request traffic stop policies from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office. And what did you receive from them?
We knew he didn’t break law because Pennsylvania versus MIMS, as I mentioned, does say that officers can ask a driver to exit their vehicle for whatever reason. But I did want to see if officer violated policy. I knew that um T Cole, which is the Commission on Law Enforcement in Texas, their training on all officers requires what’s called the seven-step violator contact method. Again, the very standard. They come up to your window, they identify themselves, ask you for your driver’s license insurance, etc. I wanted to see if that contact method was enforced within the sheriff’s office. So I requested it. They gave they gave me something, but they redacted the traffic stop policy. Um so uh it it was it was pretty shocking to see that they would give me a redacted um document for a policy. I mean, I wasn’t even asking for anything juicy, I was just asking for policy.
What does it say about a police department that can’t even give people their policies? How far is America fallen? That even the policies our local police departments use are hidden from the public.
I I don’t even know why we have to get that through public records, to be completely frank with you. I feel like that should just be posted on a department’s website. But here we are in 2026.
Yeah, it’s making like I’m in DC, but even the Chicago police departments for all its warts, and there are a many, don’t get me wrong, but they have a website. You can just go and they have a website that is basically all their directives, and you can just keyword search all of their policies. They call them directives, but policies anytime you want, you don’t have to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get them and then pray they give it to you. So they blacked it out. Did they also do they have to send the a request to the AG or a letter to the AG saying that they blacked it out and the reasons why?
So um what happened originally was so when you file a public records request, there are certain questions that say, Do you agree with um certain redactions? And at first I just said yes because I would never think that they would even need to redact on a policy record. Well, I was wrong. So now I always say no when um it says do you agree with um certain portions being redacted? So I actually filed a second request and I asked for an unredacted document and they sent that request to the AG’s office.
And what reasons did they give for why you can’t have a clean copy of the policies?
They used the same reason that there is pending prosecution, even though I didn’t mention any any case in my request. Um, I actually uh asked an attorney to look over my request to see if there’s something I could have done to get um my policy unredacted. And uh he said usually the number one reason why um things like policy documents are are redacted is because you say, like, I am working on the state of Texas versus Elizabeth Kim, and I would like this certain document. But my request says nothing about Elizabeth’s case, it doesn’t say anything about anyone’s case. I literally just ask for traffic stop policy and training. That’s it. Uh so he was like, Yeah, you you requested it right. It makes no sense that they use this excuse to withhold it from you.
Right, but if you have well, one, it’s they’re just trying to stall. And two, if you have an attorney general’s office that’s just gonna rubber stamp it all, then you don’t have to come up with a good reason.
Yeah.
I I just got uh we asked for uh we sent requests in recently into Chicago for data related to police litigation. And there’s an inspector general report on it, it’s between Department of Law, the Department of Finance, and the Chicago Police Department, and the databases they use and and the data and some of the reports. So we cited the reports we wanted from the Department of Law and the analysis we know they did because they say in the attorney the inspector general they did it, and they just said, no, too vague. We cited the individual reports, they just don’t care. When they just don’t care, like we’re gonna have to sue, and it’s gonna take two years to get it. If they just don’t care, there’s just no it’s so infuriating, especially in this case. Like, I’m sorry. The pup of all things the public has a right to know, is it’s your policies when you people have guns and laws and can use them. But you, the intrepid reporter, am I right? And you received a you found a way to get in an unredacted copy of the policy.
Yeah, luckily, because I’ve been doing a lot of reporting in Montgomery County, there are a lot of people who want to come to me in confidence and reveal what’s been going on within the department. I had a source who is in the department and um was willing to share the entire SOP, the policy manual that um deputies have to follow.
You have the body cam video. How far did this deputy sheriff stray from the guidelines? Is he in the ballpark? Can he see the guidelines? Can he smell them? Or is he in another state? How far did he stray from the guidelines that they’re trained with?
Well, he didn’t follow step one, which was identify yourself and um where you work. So I I would say he strayed pretty far from the policy. And if this had been a felony stop, if um let’s say I mean, even even if Elizabeth happened to be in a stolen car or or something like that, um, I think more people would have understood where the deputy was coming from. But he even said, Yeah, you didn’t use your right turn signal and your license plate lights were dim. Okay.
Yeah, and it makes you think if he’s scared of that situation, if what drove his misconduct, I would I’m saying myself, I in my opinion, is misconduct. If fear drove that, given those set of circumstances. I wonder what would happen if the circumstances were any much closer to legitimate circumstances. If it was a serious felony stop, what would happen? One would think that was not the type of stop and the type of circumstance where he would be have to use those tactics. And if they were out of fare, I’m not sure this deputy sheriff is qualified to be on the street. That’s a pretty simple routine community engagement. Now you could I I would argue, and I’m agree with scholars that are starting to push this in other states, we need to reduce traffic stops altogether. That stop, in my opinion, should never happen. Turn signal, light on your license plate, that should never happen. And I I think a lot of times it uses three textual stops to get searches and violate people’s civil rights. But it just scares me to think what someone who’s using these tactics in this situation, given the really ordinary set of circumstances we hear we have here. Um what he would do in non-ordinary circumstances, or if the person you more to f one would think cops are more fearful of men. Probably a gendered statement, but probably God men of color, God would know what happens on the street with that deputy. So Elizabeth Kim gets arrested. What are her charges? Why is she arrested?
So uh before we get there, I do want to bring up a few things in the body cam video that I found kind of interesting. One was the deputy, you can hear him in the body cam video say, This is just how I do my stops. I thought that line was very interesting. Um, and it and that’s why I requested his personnel file because I wondered if his other traffic stops had been like this before as well. And then another aspect I thought was interesting in the body cam video was when he was talking to the intake DA to accept the charges. And you can actually hear the DA on the other line say, that’s not enough. Her calling her mom, I don’t think that’s enough. So I I just thought those two aspects were really interesting in the body cam video. But Elizabeth, she was charged with interfering with public duties and resisting arrest. And actually, after I did this story, I had an attorney in Montgomery County contact me about the interference charge in particular. He actually used to be a prosecutor for the county DA’s office. And he told me this charge has been so overused that the DA sent out a guideline to um law enforcement back in 2021 giving them a clear outline of how to use this charge properly. So I wanted to see well, ever since this guideline came out, has it gotten better? And in 2017 in Montgomery County, there were only 29 interference arrests. Last year there were 229 interference arrests, and 60% of them were dismissed.
Right, so that is 120, so that leaves 80 that are charged. Wow, I read I saw that and in your reporting. And in my police accountability mind, which is what I’ve been doing for 30 years. So the what I in my police accountability mind, what I heard and saw in that data was like, they’re using this as contempt of cop. We used to call it contempt of cop. Disorderly conduct arrest in Chicago was a thing. Well, you’ve made me mad, you didn’t know listen, you didn’t respond quick enough. I’ll arrest you, but I have to have something, so I’ll just disorderly conduct you. And then they would put the person through the system, they would get to the arraignment or and then they would just throw it out. Throw it out. But they’re punishing the people by putting them through the system. The fact that we you had 200 of those, um, and you have a state’s attorney on the body camp saying, I don’t think that’s not enough. It isn’t. It does anyone think that person should be arrested like that? You can look at this and say, he created the circumstance to put to elevate the tension in the stop that could have caused her to react in ways that got her these charges. And that’s everything a police officer should not be doing. They shouldn’t be elevating things, they should be responsive to the elevation of things. And it seems like this is so when you have these 200 cases, is this from so is this from this specific sheriff’s office, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, or is this over the county? The uh are there other agencies involved in those 200?
There’s other agencies involved. Uh Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office is probably the largest department in Montgomery County, so they’ll take up the most percentage of the cases. But there are um other departments as well. In in Texas, there are so many police departments. There’s something called constable’s offices here, too. So it includes those. Um, and then you have your city police departments. Um so it does include all of the law enforcement agencies in the county.
So now you have, if I’ve got the count right in the case, you have two open records or FOIA requests that are pending in the attorney general’s office. You’re just waiting to get what you assume is going to be the confirmation of a denial.
Yeah, actually, um, this morning I woke up to um an AG ruling on Elizabeth’s body. Cam request because originally I had requested her body cam through the sheriff’s office, and the AG said you have a right to withhold those records. I have it anyway, so it doesn’t matter, but and what do they say?
Because it’s a future prosecution?
The AG’s office says that actually let me pull it up and see exactly what they said. They always use this, it’s it’s a not a novel or complex issue or something like that. Here it is. AG ruling withhold all. Okay, it says you claim the submitted information may be withheld from the requester pursuant to section 552.108. Upon review, we conclude you may withhold the submitted information. So yeah, under the original, it was pending prosecution.
So as long as they just drag the case out. And drag the case out and drag the case out, you won’t, you don’t have any chance of getting any of these records really until the prosecution is over. Which could take they just keep dragging it out, they don’t have to worry about it.
Yeah, I and actually what’s interesting also is um Elizabeth’s case was just dismissed last week. And I was just at a conference over this weekend, and I was asking a media lawyer if you can ask for body cam footage once a case is dismissed. And he said that agencies can withhold it because it’s dismissed. If it was completed where the where there was a prosecution, then you can get the body cam once it’s completed. Like it, for example, in in my case, like I just want the body cam to show if there was potential officer misconduct. But yeah, if these cases get dismissed, it’s it’s really difficult to get body cam footage. And you can’t get it during the time the case is pending.
Yeah, it’s a system set up to cover up for abuse and corruption in the police department. I mean, that’s that’s in my view, that’s just 100%. You can’t get it. In Chicago, for example, they have 30 days, 15 days, 30 days, and then they can extend another 60, but there have to be like very serious reasons why they have to do it. And this is even everything from police shootings down to the simplest thing. Yeah, it’s hard to imagine having faith in police departments that can just withhold records willy-nilly like this. So then you’re just waiting on this, and does the reporting stop now?
No, um, it it keeps going. Um I have other people who have been in similar situations that have come to me about their cases. Again, it’s difficult when they don’t have body cam footage. I I do believe them. It’s just, well, the public believe them, you know? And that’s why that body cam is so important.
Right, and that’s why we have them wear body cameras, so we can show it to the public. And then if the officer is wrongly, wrongly accused, then the officer gets exonerated quickly in the public’s eye because everyone saw it and they can tell that the person who was making the accusation was lying. If the officer is absolutely wrong, then the public knows hey, you guys should stop that prosecution now, and now we got to look at discipline. But what we have now is just a cover-up system. Okay, well, maybe we’ll check in with you later if you uh publish more on this topic. It’s fascinating to me. What a really interesting case. It’s not, we don’t see documented cases where officers are pulling over older people at night like this, and and talk to and address this way. I usually deal with large urban departments. I’m usually seeing it on people of color, and no matter who it’s against, it’s awful and horrible and should never happen. But um, this was kind of a standout case for that. But it is, it is, I am still I still have that scared feeling in me about what this deputy is doing on the street when he confronts something that might actually escalate things. That’s pretty scary if he was scared of this. If you can’t do a traffic stop right, you should not be a cop. That is just my view. Jaywan Jung, thank you so much for jumping in with us. We really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me.
That was Jay Won Jung from KPRC2 in Houston. Bad tactics make police and citizens less safe. The bosses and government officials covering from them doesn’t help. This is taking ideology over communities. All the secrecy throughout all of the government, from from the sheriff department officials all the way through state officials, they’re all now conspiring to say what that officer did is a-okay. And we’re just gonna lie and cover up to make sure that no one actually sees the regulations. One would wonder why they would need to do that if the traffic stop was good. Seeing all the secrecy just harms the relationship the police department or sheriff’s department in this case have with communities. People are seeing this and they’re just trusting your organization less. Thanks for listening. As always, share with your friends and contacts, and I will be back with you next week.
