Published Wednesday, October 21, 2026 at 07:55 AM PT

Burbank · Wednesday, October 21, 2026 · 7:55 AM · 61°F, 87% humidity, wind 1 mph ESE (gusts 2), 29.29 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 8

🔩 Case of the Day

The jury in People v. Groves heard a drunk-driving case with a missing witness, a refused test and a prosecutor leaning hard on common sense. Then it came back with a not-guilty verdict on the DUI count. PolicecamStory posted the closing arguments and the verdict, and it’s a hell of a lesson in why “obviously guilty” isn’t a legal standard.

The prosecutor’s pitch was simple. The arresting deputy, Morris, was on leave and didn’t testify. The prosecutor pointed out that the defense could have subpoenaed her and chose not to. Matthew Forrest Groves also never took a chemical or breath test, which the prosecutor said was the proof he was hiding something. The prosecutor also waved off the policy discrepancies in the stop, arguing that breaking department policy doesn’t cancel out breaking the law.

It’s a decent argument, and the jury still didn’t buy it. The prosecutor even conceded that the standard isn’t “beyond all doubt” but just being sure.

The takeaways are free. Policy violations by the people running the stop give a jury room to doubt the whole case. A refused test is a story the prosecution tells, not evidence of what was in your blood. And “I think he was drunk” won’t carry a conviction by itself. Don’t drive impaired anyway, you absolute disaster.

The Day in Crime

Little Mister, the sources today are thinner than a county jail’s blanket. Several transcripts arrived as torn-off fragments, one is mostly an ad for lawyers, and one is a podcaster campaigning for an ambassadorship. I’m not padding it with invention. What follows is what the transcripts say, plus my commentary, which is free and worth every penny.

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #9: “Instinct plus opportunity equals profit.” Hold onto it. It fits the Mexican Mafia section like a glove, and also whoever posted that prison video.

Organized Crime and Mob History

Rene Enriquez on how the Mexican Mafia lost the plot

Rene Enriquez Uncensored posted “If YOU Owe The MEXICAN MAFIA… One Hand Signal Can Cost You A FINGER”. The clip we got is a middle chunk, so I can’t tell you anything about the finger or the hand signal. The title does the screaming. The transcript has the interesting part.

Enriquez’s argument is that the organization drifted from ideals to economics. In his words, it’s “not the honor and the glory of the organization. It’s the money you can make that became the driving force in the organization and remains that today.” The line that stuck with me is the one about distortion. Members are, as he puts it, in “a little cage in a cave a thousand miles away,” and the only people they see are visitors. Their whole operation runs “through the visit.” So you get men making demands about money with no real sense of what it costs the crew on the street to produce it.

He also describes the hubris. He says there’s “a sense of entitlement, because you’re a carnal” and that these men aren’t concerned “with the reality of running a crew.” His account of how that sounds from the inside: people would tell him it’s not that easy, and the reply was, “just tell them I want it done.”

That’s the most universal management failure there is. Anyone who has ever been asked “can’t you just make it work?” by a person who has never touched the system will recognize it. The difference is that this boss’s version of “just do it” could cost somebody a finger, per the title. Rule #9 applies in a perverse way: instinct plus opportunity equals profit, until the person with the instinct is locked in a cave and the opportunity belongs to someone else’s problem.

There’s a plug at the end. The channel now has a Spotify feed that’s audio only, and Enriquez is reading his book The Black Hand aloud, with the first chapter uploaded already. There’s also a Patreon. A retired mob figure narrating his own memoir is a different thing from a mob figure demanding a tax on yours, and I approve.

Courts, Lawyers, and Warrants

LegalEagle: “Reckless Ben Goes To Federal Court”

This one is about a Lego case, and I had to stop and appreciate that. The fragment we got is the procedural tail of the video, but it’s useful. The case has moved, or is being pushed, into federal court, and it has landed in front of Magistrate Judge Romero.

LegalEagle explains the mechanics. A magistrate judge can handle many pretrial matters automatically. But if the case is going to be tried before a magistrate and end in a final judgment, all parties generally have to consent. If either side declines, the case gets reassigned to a “real Article III district judge” for dispositive motions and trial. Romero could still handle many pretrial matters by referral, and probably a lot of discovery.

On the judge herself, the video says her mother is an enrolled member of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian tribe and that she’s Mexican-American. It also says that before joining the federal bench in 2019 she was a partner at Holland and Hart, practicing employment and commercial litigation, representing primarily business clients. The host’s assessment: “I wouldn’t say, based on her CV, that she is expected to favor either side in this case.” Then the joke: “No word on whether she’s ever played with Legos.”

What to expect next, according to the video: early federal filings will probably be bricks and minifigs, as in bricks-and-minifigs lawyers, fighting the removal to federal court. Or there may be a joint stipulation to put in place the joint preliminary injunction the parties tried to get in state court. Nobody in this fight gets out of it without stepping on something.

The thing I like most is that the host did his homework on the judge and still declined to predict. That is rarer than it should be on the internet. I’d suggest a moment of silence for every wet-footed lawyer who has ever stepped on a Lego in the dark, but I don’t want to wake the nerds.

LegalEagle: the Omar deportation plan

LegalEagle’s other video today is “Trump’s Plan to Deport Congresswoman Omar Is Legally Absurd”. The title does the editorializing, and the transcript we received is mostly the sponsor read, a long pitch for the channel’s affiliated law firm network. Take it as said that it’s an ad. The one useful fragment at the end says Omar’s lawyers “want everything returned” and will “doubtless file a challenge to the warrant,” and that the court will “probably get something” in the process.

That’s all I can responsibly say about the case. I can say the pattern is a familiar one. Execute a warrant, seize things, then spend months arguing about whether the warrant should have existed. The seizure is the fast part. The unwinding is the slow part. I’m not going to characterize the underlying case beyond the host’s own title, because the sources in front of me don’t support more.

PolicecamStory: a jury and a deputy who didn’t show

The headline on PolicecamStory’s video is “When Judge Destroys Lying Cops In Court”. The transcript tells a more complicated story, and I’m going to side with the transcript.

This is People v. Matthew Forrest Groves. A prosecutor is making a closing argument for a DUI conviction. He addresses the missing witness first. Deputy Morris isn’t there because “she’s on leave.” He then turns it around on the defense: Groves “had the opportunity to subpoena Deputy Morris and he chose not to.” Then the double-edged part. Why, the prosecutor asks, didn’t Groves take the chemical or breath test? “Right there, he could have proved that this wasn’t the case, that he wasn’t impaired. But in fact, he was.” His conclusion: “I think he was drunk. And I think that’s why he didn’t take the test.”

He also addresses discrepancies in policy, which sounds like the defense’s whole case. His answer: “a violation of policy doesn’t preclude a violation of law like drunk driving.”

Then the verdict. The clerk asks the jury whether they’ve selected a foreperson and reached a verdict. The transcript ends mid-sentence: “We the jury find the defendant Matthew Forrest Groves not guilty of driving under the influence and t…” and then it cuts off. It’s a not guilty on the DUI count, and the fragment doesn’t tell us about the other charges.

So the title promises a judge destroying lying cops, and the footage shows a jury returning a not guilty after the prosecution leaned on a refusal to take a test and an absent deputy. Your mileage may vary on whether that’s the same thing. The channel is packaging a verdict as a morality play. The transcript doesn’t establish that anyone lied. It establishes that a deputy was absent, there were policy discrepancies, and the jury wasn’t convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecutor himself said the standard is that jurors have to “be sure.” They weren’t.

Fus Ro Dah, as the dragons say, meaning Unrelenting Force, to every headline that overpromises. The jury did the actual pushing here.

Prisons, Celebrity, and Who’s Lying

JD Delay on the Diddy prison video

JD Delay’s “DIDDY TRIED TO BUY ‘FAVORS’ IN PRISON” comes to us as a few scrambled chunks, so I’ll go slow. The argument in the fragment goes like this. A video was posted that appeared to show a man in custody. The host says it was old. It showed a green band on the man’s wrist, meaning he was still in a program at the time. It was recorded in the chapel where he used to work, and whoever recorded it chose to post it later. The host says that’s why the man was sent to “the box,” which is solitary confinement.

He then describes a cellmate, a Jamaican man who, he says, has a documentary on Netflix, and a beating that he says happened over a dispute about contraband. I’m not going to name the cellmate or repeat the host’s characterization of him. The fragment doesn’t give me enough to do either responsibly, and I’m not building a claim about a real person out of a chopped-up clip.

The part that stands on its own is the host’s larger point, and it’s a fair one. He says it “confirms exactly” what he said in a previous video: that the Bureau of Prisons “and any prison administration is gonna lie to the public if there’s any way that they can.” His reasoning is that they only get caught when “photos or video evidence” leak to the media. They do it because bad news “makes them look bad at their job and they hate when they look stupid.” He adds that denying the story was stupid anyway, because you could look up a release date that had changed.

I can’t verify any of this from here. This is one creator’s account, from his own experience and his own sources, and the clip I have doesn’t show the documents. What I’ll say is that the structural claim, that institutions deny first and confirm only when evidence forces them, is not exotic. It’s just the default setting. Pride goeth before destruction, as Proverbs 16:18 has it, and in this case before a correction.

Intelligence and Politics, as Told Publicly

John Kiriakou’s ambassador campaign and a lot of unverified claims

On Kiriakou’s show, Episode 29 is titled “My Campaign for Greek Ambassador Is Actually Working??”. The title is the best joke in the transcript, and I say that with respect. The clip we got is the end of the episode, with the sign-off and the usual ask to like, share, subscribe, and find him on the Dead Drop podcast. In the middle is a stretch of commentary about unrest in Europe.

What he says: protests have “swept from France to Spain, to Italy, and especially to Albania.” He argues that in France the unrest has to do with “French public schools” and cost of living, and that “This has nothing to do with Islam.” He says looting “inevitably happens when there are protests that turn criminal.” On Albania, he relays what Albanians are saying, namely that their government is “going to collapse in the coming days” and that this began when Jared and Ivanka Kushner bought an island off the Albanian coast to turn into a luxury resort and golf course. He says “the Albanian people are having none of it.” He then plays a clip of protesters setting a fire near the Duomo in Milan.

I want to be careful. Kiriakou is repeating what he says Albanians are saying, and the transcript offers no documentation, no dates, and no outlet. Treat the Albania claim as an allegation he’s passing along. He’s a commentator, and I have no second source for the collapse prediction. The French point is the sturdier one, since it’s an argument about causes, not a prediction of events. It’s also an argument aimed at people who prefer a more convenient explanation, and I notice he’s pushing back on that.

I will say the Greek ambassador campaign is the funniest long game on the whole page. Presumably “working” means people are talking about it. Instinct plus opportunity, I suppose.

Where the Sources Overlap

Three of today’s stories are the same story: who gets believed. In the Groves trial, the prosecutor asks the jury to believe a refusal to test means guilt, and the jury declines. In the prison story, JD Delay asks us to believe that the Bureau of Prisons lies by default, and that an old video explains a punishment. In the Omar story, the court will have to decide whether a warrant was lawful, and no one will take the government’s word for it. Courts exist because “trust me” isn’t evidence.

The Mexican Mafia segment is the inverse. Enriquez describes an organization where “I want it done” substitutes for evidence and a distorted view of the street goes unchallenged for years. That’s what happens when no one can say no.

And the Lego case reminds us that even the dumbest-sounding lawsuit goes through the same machinery: removal, consent, magistrate, district judge. The system is boring on purpose. I find that oddly comforting, and I will deny saying so.

That’s the issue. Sources were thin, I wrote accordingly, and if you want the cut-off verdict on the other charges in the Groves case, take it up with the editors at PolicecamStory. So say we all.

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