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October 28, 2025 • 13 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Attorney. Scott Morrow, our buddy, former law enforcement now attorney

(00:04):
in the studios with us, fought a number of class
action suits against the Birmingham Waterworksport on behalf of customers
for years and now is representing Gary Chapman, who is
a police officer in Priceville. It is basically being kind
of thrown out to the dogs in the situation with
the incident that Leah was just talking about in her
newscast where there was a car accident. So Scott, welcome in,

(00:25):
thanks for being back with us, appreciate you being here, well,
thanks for having me JT. And as we know, Gary
Chapman is Dog, the bounty hunter's son, and that brought
national attention to this whole story. It has, so let's
start at the beginning. What took place that got us
to where we are now.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
At the beginning, Gary Chapman got hired by Priceville Police Department.
He was up on the interstate doing police work as
they do. He started to stop an impaired driver. He's
an expert in that field, and the impaired driver took
off and a pursuit started on Interstate sixty five, exited
into hertzel and at an intersection of Highway thirty six

(01:03):
and thirty one. The suspect criminal ran a red light
and struck a vehicle, and unfortunately there was a fatality
and some injuries.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
So Gary Chapman is now being blamed for that causing it.
He should have backed off, But isn't that up to
the individual officer to make that judgment call on whether
to stop a pursuit or continue pursuit. Where's the blame
for the guy that actually was the criminal in.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
This Well, the blame is there for the criminal, that's
not a problem, but the support for Gary is not there.
He followed their police pursuit policy, He followed the law,
and he successfully navigated the pursuit. It was the criminal
who did the wrongdoing and should be held accountable. But
when a city abandons their warrior, well after they've been
telling him to do these things and supporting him in

(01:50):
his efforts to fight crime, but they've abandoned him, and
I believe they think that it's better for their liability's
sake in this case that they left make him a
scapegoat and try to blame him. Let me be clear,
there should be no blame on officer Gary Chapman. He
was within the policy. It was up to his discretion

(02:11):
as you mentioned. But for whatever reason, I think the
city attorney is pushing this for the city of Priceville.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
He needs to be fired.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
The police chief needs to resign, and so does the
mayor because they're not backing the police officer. You got
a back law enforcement when they do their job.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
All right, Who is the city attorney?

Speaker 2 (02:29):
His name is Woody Sanderson.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
What is his background.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
He's been up there a long time representing these municipalities,
and I think that he's giving them bad advice. You know,
he's telling them, well, you got to reduce your liability
because these police officers are going are doing these dangerous things.
But that's what police do. The Supreme Court of Alabama
and the Supreme Court of the United States say, especially

(02:53):
on an impaired driver, you do not have to cease
a chase because you don't know what that impaired driver
is going to do down the road. They're not going
to stop driving bad because you stop your pursuit.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
This is not somebody that stole a TV out of
a Walmart, and you know there's no danger beyond him
being a thief. Impair drivers could potentially run another red
light on their own, kill somebody else, and you just
you have to take that off the highway. The danger
has to be stopped and removed. I understand that.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, And that's why this is such a difficult case
and everybody needs to support Gary Chapman.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
So what happened when the decided to put him on suspension?
How did that come to be? Is he on suspension? Now?

Speaker 2 (03:35):
He's on suspension? Now? We appealed he was terminated by
the mayor at a recommendation of the police chief's he
and but we appealed that to the city council, and
the city council reinstated Gary, but gave him a one
hundred and twenty hour suspension, saying that discipline was still warranted.
I have appealed that to the Circuit Court of Morgan County,

(03:56):
which doesn't have a judge yet. There's two judges have
recused them. So for whatever reason they didn't say they
probably know Gary or been involved in some of it's
too close to the matter, right, And so we're hoping
that the Circuit Court of Morgan County is going to
reverse that decision to have discipline. And so we've done
that I've also did a notice of claim against the

(04:18):
City of Priceville for interfering with a business relationship. That's
going to lead that leads to a lawsuit that Gary
is going to do against the city. And then, of course,
now we have this new civil suit filed by the
mother of the young man who was killed.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
We'll get to that in just a minute, but I
do want to ask you about the city attorney, the mayor,
and the police chief. They apparently all agreed that if
we take you know, and move the liability from our
department as a whole to one person will suffer less damage.
What would be the damage if, in fact the city
did back him up, that they would be liable financially.
Has this come down to money? Does it come down

(04:55):
to jobs? Why would they want to bury one person
to avoid having to deal with it themselves.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Well, I say it's political pressure, its perception. But if
they were to back Gary Chapman, which they should, they
had a good police pursuit policy and he adhered to it.
But to criticize him as a mistake, and if they
would have backed him, there would be no liability. It's
like insurance companies, like if you slip and fall at
some companies. They don't settle, They make you go to court. Well,

(05:23):
you can't give in. You can't give in because you're
sued or it looks bad. You have to support the
police in this case.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Is there something going on behind the scenes that we
don't know about as far as personal relationship with Gary
and people involved in this Jay's at the department or
in the city. Do they not get along? Is there
a history of problems? I mean, there's something that we're
not seeing here.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
You know, interpersonal relationships at any company when you have
somebody like Gary who's new, not from around here, knowledgeable, assertive,
you know, he talks about the law, and I think
some people take take offense to that and they feel.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Newcomers in the room trying to tell us to Howard
do our job.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
That kind of perception, yeah, I think, and it creates
interpersonal problems. And then when something like this happens, they say, okay,
well let's just get rid of them. We don't want
him around anyway. And it's unfortunate because they were building
him up to be promoted. They like them, you know,
shocking that the mayor who is a marine would abandon
this warrior like he has. But politics is ridiculous sometimes

(06:28):
the decisions people make, it's terrible.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Is it small town versus big town politics?

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Well, you know Brookside, small towns, Marris, some of these
towns around here, they're just not sophisticated in what they're
doing and let interpersonal relationships interfere with professionalism. And unfortunately,
I think that's some of what has happened here.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Okay, let's talk about the case that's now on top
of all of this that's going on. Him losing Does
he get paid on this? Is it you?

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Suspended without pay? Suspended without pay for one hundred and
twenty hours.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Okay, so he did not lose his job. He'll be
back after that, but I can't imagine the climate for
him would be that decent.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Well, they've already reassigned him. They're not going to let
him do what he was doing before. He loves policing,
he loves catching criminals. What's he where do they resign him?
They're putting a Monday through Friday day shift doing investigations
and being an evidence technician, and that's not what he
wants to do.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
But he's just a warrior. Trying to force him out
and have him move and I got.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
You again, all right, reduce liability, don't let him chase criminals.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
I got you, all right. Continuing the conversation with the
attorney for Gary Chapman, the police officer who is under
a scrutiny and suspension now because of a chase that
took place where the criminal ended up crashing into somebody
after they ran a red light. That Gary Chapman is
being disciplined by the department. And also now a civil
lawsuit has been filed against Gary and everybody else. When

(08:00):
you file a civil lawsuit, you know, Scott, as any
attorney would, when you file civil lawsuits, you throw the
net out and get as many people involved as possible
to try and collect some money. So talk to me
about the civil lawsuit. What's happening here, all right?

Speaker 2 (08:14):
So, Rachel Moore is the administrator of the estate of
Tristan Hollis, the deceased young man, and she filed a
lawsuit against Archie Hill, Gary Chapman, the City of Priceville,
Progressive Insurance Company, and other fictitious parties, which there's no
problem with filing a lawsuit. Somebody has to be held
accountable for this tragedy. We don't have a problem with that.
What we have a problem with is the City of

(08:36):
Priceville has created their own liability by not supporting Gary.
And I've talked to the attorneys for this family. I
haven't talked to the mister Warren who actually filed this lawsuit.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
I've talked to Will League.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
And he knows that Gary Chapman was doing his job,
and he wants to know, well, was he pushed into
doing this by Priceville? Was he negligent? Gary Chapman was
not negligent. The things they've named in the lawsuit, he
just did not do. And so they've said that he
violated known and established rules for police pursuits. He didn't

(09:09):
do that. They said he failed to properly notify Hertzell.
He notified Hertzell, Heartzell was in some of the intersections.
They said he failed to consider the volume and flow
of traffic in downtown Heartzell. He did all that. They
also said he went into Heartzl without knowing or being
familiar with downtown Heartsville. He was chasing an impair driver.
It was his duty to try to stop them. The

(09:32):
things they've said in this lawsuit are not true, not correct,
but when you're criticized by your own city, by your
own leaders, what do you expect. You know, I feel
for the family, obviously, there's nothing I can say to
make them feel better about what occurred. It's terrible. Gary
Chapman thinks it's terrible. We think it's terrible. But we're

(09:53):
going to defend this lawsuit. We're going to counter sue
and we're going to you know, the gloves are off.
You're not recognizing the fact that Gary Chapman is a
sheep dog protecting the sheep.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Well, Gary Chapman is also the son of Dog the
bounty hunter, and this's got national attention because of that,
and with that, you know, becomes awareness of this case.
And I understand you've got some outside council that may
come on board with you to help in your case. Yeah, JT.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
This is a national case obviously, with Alan Treadaway paying
attention to it, coming to some of the hearings, and
Alan Treadaway, he is a state representative that is the
chairman of the Public Safety Committee in Montgomery. He knows
that this is an important case on supporting police when
they're doing their job, and so it is going to

(10:41):
get national attention, probably international attention, but we want it
to be correct. We want to be sensitive to the issues.
But we all know police have to do their job.
I know, JT how you support police in law enforcement
and you can't be blaming the police when a criminal
does something bad.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, I don't see I don't see anything you know,
criminal activity going on here with Gary or any you know,
misconducting his job in this he's chasing a drunk driver.
Drunk drivers need to be taken off the road because
of the danger in the you know, down the road
potentially for other members of the community. Like I said before,
it's not like the guy stole you know, a TV
out of a store and that's the only crime he's committed.

(11:22):
This guy's impaired and impaired drivers. I mean, it could
have been more disastrous, you know. So he had the
legal right and training to make that decision based on
the circumstance he was in and once that was made
and unfortunately, the criminal who's being you know, held accountable
in this, you know, is the one that caused the
death of this person, not Gary Chapman in a pursuit.

(11:44):
Could you imagine anybody that is involved in a car
accident because they're being pursued by law enforcement. We saw
just one on the interstate. I think this was in California.
This motorcycle guy he shot and killed a deputy now
and he's running on his motorcycle down to the interstate,
crashes into a vehicle. They got the guy because he's

(12:04):
laying on the interstate now. But you know, all of
a sudden, you watch, there'll be a lawsuit against somebody
because that poor criminal ended up getting hurt running from
the cops after he did an illegal act like shooting
and killing a deputy. You know, this person that was
running from the cops, you know, was running for because
he was a criminal.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
You know that.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
So we're just going to stop going after bad guys.
I mean, what do you do. That's the way it
is now, JT. They're looking for any way to escape liability,
and you just can't do it by abandoning the police.
You can't do it. I appreciate you coming in in
one hundred percent. I hope this goes the way you
know it's supposed to go. And I keep his posted

(12:45):
on this.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
We'll keep you updated and thank you for the opportunity
to talk about this. Case, and we'll keep you posting.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
It affects a law enforcement everywhere. I mean, the next
guy in this price fuel department that has to go
chase somebody, I bet they're going to be a little
bit shy on doing it. Well, I'm not going to
get it after him and just let them go. You know,
it changes people's minds if they see their fellow comrades
getting called out for doing the job. I mean, it's
all of a sudden, no pun intend, you become gunshy,
you just say, okay, well I guess I won't pursue anybody.

(13:13):
Then I don't want to have to go through this
and lose pay and get suspended, and maybe you lose
my job because well you know, I didn't want to
turn my lights in, my siren on and go get somebody.
JT for police chief somewhere. That's what I say. Now,
I'm good here, Thank you,
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