Less than a month after a St. Louis, Missouri cop allegedly crashed his police SUV into a local gay bar only to arrest the owner, new footage has been released depicting just how high tensions were running in the accident’s aftermath.


While local authorities have yet to publicly release bodycam footage from that fateful night, Bar:PM owner Chad Morris’ attorney Javad Khazaeli took matters into his own hands, sharing previously unseen footage from the night of his client’s arrest.



Beginning with tangentially-unrelated harassment, a scrub hanging out the side of his friend’s ride demanding that the cameraperson “show your dick,” the clip then turns to Morris’ interaction with Officer Ramelle Wallace.


Though Morris, now grappling with his newly destroyed bar, was visibly less-than-thrilled to answer Wallace’s questions — “You’re not ID-ing me, I didn’t do anything wrong” — tensions quickly escalated, the cop grabbing his handcuffs and arresting the grieving business owner seemingly under the guise of “creating a disturbance.”


Despite the apparent disapproval of another witness walking by — “That was a GTA side quest, you all got f–ked!” they yelled — the officer was undeterred, arguing with the cameraperson after he also pointed out the absurdity of the situation.



“Ramelle Wallace pulls out cuffs within TWENTY TWO SECONDS of talking to James. And James was breaking no laws,” Khazaeli wrote in a subsequent post, noting that contrary to popular misconception, it is fully legal to disrespect authorities.


“The Supreme Court ruled in Cohen v. California (1971) and Lewis v. New Orleans (1974) that you can yell at cops & even tell them to fuck off,” they elaborated.


Though Wallace may have behaved poorly, let this be a lesson in tact: As @KarisaGH1989 so aptly put it, “This guy is pretty calm for having a police SUV crash into his bar.”