Hunter Demster pulled out his phone at a gas station in Memphis to record over half a dozen men in bulletproof vests gathered around the flashing blue lights of a Tennessee Highway Patrol car.
Then one of those officers stepped forward and told him to stand 25 feet away because he was violating a new Tennessee law that allows police to create a buffer zone for any of their interactions, according to video reviewed by the Lookout.
“They are explicitly trying to remove accountability for police across the state,” said Demster, a leader with the group Free the 901, a coalition of advocacy groups organizing against federal and state law enforcement’s presence in Memphis.
At the end of September, President Donald Trump and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee established the “Memphis Safe Task Force” that brought in an additional 700 law enforcement officers, according to a report by the Daily Memphian. The task force includes a combination of federal and state agencies, like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the ATF, the FBI, the Tennessee Highway Patrol, the state National Guard and more.
The heightened presence of enforcement comes with little detail from officials about the task force’s exact orders and their operational areas.
Most current gen phones have stabilized zoom that negates the 25 foot buffer. Pinch zoom and record that shit.