A Fannin County Texas deputy showed up at a woman’s home yesterday, asking questions — a day after we published a story on Wednesday that occurred on August 9, 2018 involving deputy Kenneth Steelman from the same department brutalizing a woman who asked him to leave since he did not have a warrant to be on her property.
Stella Eachus, Joi Eachus’ mother, answered her door on June 27, a day after our story went viral on June 26, to find a Fannin County deputy Hatanville standing at her door.
Eachus answered the door with a camera in-hand after several incidents of harassment.
“Can I ask you why?” Eachus asks deputy Hatanville, standing in her door.
“The plate on the car comes back as Nagy, so I was just checking to see….”
“We don’t own it,” Eachus replies.
“OK, alright then. Y’all have a good night,” the deputy says, as he walks away with his wrist pressed to his gun.
“Do you have a card?” she asks with fear in her voice.
“Yes, ma’am, I can grab you one real quick outta my—”
“Would you, please?” Eachus asks.
Deputy Hatanville walks away and politely returns with a card, this time without his hand on his gun.
“Here you go, ma’am?”
“Is that it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he tells her politely as he hands her a card.
“Y’all have a good night.”
He walks away.
Deputy Steelman, seen on the video footage, which was originally obtained by Eachus’ friend, an FBI agent, was ultimately retrained by the department in arrest search and seizure tactics as a result of the 2018 arrest.
“We did some retraining on de-escalation and things where deputies have better understanding of their position when they’re at a scene if they’re doing an investigation or if they’re there for criminal purposes,” Fannin County Sheriff Mark Johnson admitted in an interview with local news station KTEN.
“The deputy in question was placed on administrative leave until the investigation was completed, and once it was over he was called back to work,” Johnson said before also saying the video was shared by many ‘hate groups’ online.
Now, a day after we published the story, not only did the sheriff say independent news media and people publicly complaining must be part of “hate groups,” a deputy from the same department arrived a day later to ask questions in an apparent “tap and rap,” or “knock and talk” intimidation tactic to harass the woman.
Except she did not answer the door.
“This video was shared with many, many groups, and it was done for a purpose: Hate groups, law enforcement hate groups,” Johnson claimed.
“We’ve had so many hate emails, so many nasty responses on our sheriff’s office Facebook page that I made the decision to take it down.”
The sheriff said his personnel will continue working with deputies the best they can in spite of all the criticism they’re receiving.
“We have lots of new training that we put in place to get the officers better trained, to be better prepared for all situations, and that’s what I’m excited about,” Johnson explained.
This isn’t the first time Fannin County deputy have harassed the Eachus family.
“They have gone as far as having an officer follow me from my drive way all the way into downtown Bonham and it’s eight miles from my parents house,” Joi Eachus told photography is not a crime in an exclusive interview.
“And I have had officers park at the school down the street from my parent’s house and sit in the parking lot with their car pointing to where they can see directly into my parents front yard, and have sat there for an hour or so.”
Joi Eachus says since the incident police have blatantly harassed her on multiple occasions.
After the 2018 incident, sje was charged with assaulting deputy Steelman, but that charge was almost immediately thrown out of court by prosecutors.
For the record, PINAC is not a hate group; we’re more of a pro-civil rights police journal, that covers mostly the worst cases we see across the country.
We do not hate law enforcement.
Nor do we condone or support violence against police in any way.
In fact, we recognize the need for police in society.
But we also recognize problems in policing.
In 2017, Carlos Miller, who founded the site in 2007, received the ACLU of Miami’s prestigious Gene Miller Voice of Freedom Award for his work over the years.
Watch video of the harassment the day after we published the story above.
Watch video of a reporter parroting the local sheriff’s narrative about so-called “hate groups,” as well as the original incident, in the videos below.