On July 16th, 2022 popular Fayette County independent journalist, Jesse Blackburn of Fayette Exposure, was arrested by the Uniontown Police Department and then immediately assaulted as he attempted to get into the police car. Officer Travis P. Shandor is the one that assaulted Jesse.

They initiated the arrest a mere five minutes after Jesse had been trying to ask Officer Shandor about the PFA's filed against him. Officer Shandor ran away from Jesse's questioning. Once Jesse entered a publicly accessible parking, where members of the public were filmed entering without having a word said to them by police, Officer Shandor, Officer Nick Zocco, and Capt. Dave Rutter approached him. They made false claims that he had two warrants out for his arrest, they denied that he is the press as well as denied that he was an elected Law Enforcement Official, which he is. They also allege that he was trespassing and that the property owner told them to remove him. Another lie.

They claimed that Jesse was harassing a victim of a crime by refusing to stop filming her. The alleged victim is never fully in the video frame. Mr. Blackburn actually agrees not to put her or her friend in his video when the girls approached him. The Uniontown Police admit in the video that they did not want Jesse near the police vehicles, and told him to move more than 100 feet away from the publicly accessible area to go stand by a TV camera.

Despite the illegal nature of the request, they arrested Jesse for telling them about United States Federal Court rulings made in the Glik v Cunniffe case. After the Glik case, the Boston Police ultimately admitted that the officers had used "unreasonable judgement" by arresting Glik for filming.

After arresting Jesse, Capt. Dave Rutter proceeds to spend nearly an entire minute attempting to go through Blackburn's phone. This is another violation of his Constitutional guarenteed rights as the United States Supreme Court has ruled in Riley v California that police officers need a warrant to go through your phone.

The Uniontown Police are claiming that Jesse was refusing to put his legs in the car. The attack happened in less than two seconds of Blackburn attempting to get into the police car backwards and handcuffed. He showed no signs of resistance. Blackburn had been asking for the police to turn on the Air Conditioning, crack the windows or leave a door open but had not been able to complete his request.

The temperature at the time was 78.8 degrees. The police car had been sitting in direct sunlight for 45 minutes. According to an calculator created by scientist at Standford University, the interior temperature of the vehicle at the time was 117.4 degrees fahrenheit.

We are demanding that Officer Travis P. Shandor and Capt. Dave Rutter be fired from the Uniontown Police Department to ensure that no further citizens or journalist will be subjected to violations of their civil rights.