Wisconsin Police Held A Man And 3 Kids At Gunpoint During Routine Traffic Stop

Welcome to the land of the free that has the temer­i­ty to issue warn­ings about oth­er coun­tries’ crime sit­u­a­tion. The great­est threat to peo­ple’s safe­ty and secu­ri­ty comes from their mad dog, over-hyped, heav­i­ly-armed thugs in uniform.
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

Luke Weiland was dri­ving his sons and their friend to base­ball prac­tice when he was pulled over by a police offi­cer who inex­plic­a­bly held Weiland and the three chil­dren at gun­point, shout­ing bizarre orders at them before even­tu­al­ly let­ting them go with minor cita­tions. Weiland has now sued the police argu­ing that the offi­cers used exces­sive force and unrea­son­ably detained him.

The ordeal start­ed on January 29, 2023, when Weiland — an attor­ney in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin — was dri­ving his two sons, ages 14 and 12, and their 12-year-old friend to base­ball prac­tice in a near­by town. According to the suit, around 9:20 am, Weiland noticed a police cruis­er behind him with his emer­gency lights on. Believing the cruis­er to be try­ing to pass him, Weiland pulled along the shoul­der of the road to allow the offi­cer to pass. However, after a few min­utes, Weiland real­ized the offi­cer was try­ing to pull him over, so he turned onto the shoul­der of a side road.

However, instead of a typ­i­cal stop, Officer Rodney Krakow opened the door of his cruis­er and began yelling for Weiland to put his keys on the roof of the car and for every­one inside the car to keep their hands on the ceil­ing of the vehicle.

“Officer Krakow was act­ing errat­i­cal­ly, yelling, and shout­ing demands that made no sense,” the com­plaint reads. “His behav­ior was con­cern­ing to every­one in the Weiland truck to the point that they thought some­thing might be wrong with the offi­cer to be behav­ing in this manner.”

Soon after, a sec­ond offi­cer, Douglas Van Berkel, arrived and both began point­ing their guns at Weiland’s car. Krakow demand­ed that Weiland get out of his vehi­cle and kneel on the ground. At this point, it was only five degrees out­side. As Weiland com­plied, hold­ing his dri­ver’s license and reg­is­tra­tion, Krakow grabbed the paper­work and threw it on the ground with­out look­ing at it. 

Krakow hand­cuffed Weiland, while Van Berkel kept his gun point­ed at Weiland. At this point, Krakow asked who the car’s pas­sen­gers were, and Weiland told him they were his two sons and their friend. Eventually, after a third offi­cer arrived, the offi­cers picked up Weiland’s dis­card­ed ID and real­ized that Weiland was an attor­ney who was fam­i­ly friends with the local sher­iff. According to the com­plaint, one of the offi­cers even remarked that “he knew Weiland and his fam­i­ly and that they (the offi­cers) would be alright.”

Eventually, Weiland asked what was going on, and Krakow told him that the inci­dent was being treat­ed as a “high risk vehi­cle stop” because Weiland did­n’t imme­di­ate­ly pull over. 

“This whole ordeal right here with pulling your guns out on me is fuck­ing ridicu­lous,” body cam­era footage shows Weiland telling Krakow.

Eventually, Weiland was released and giv­en cita­tions for speed­ing and resisting/​fleeing a scene, though those cita­tions were even­tu­al­ly dropped. 

Weiland’s suit, which was filed last week, claims that the offi­cers vio­lat­ed Weiland’s “rights to be free from unrea­son­able seizures when they detained the Plaintiffs at the scene for sub­stan­tial­ly longer than was nec­es­sary to accom­plish the orig­i­nal pur­pos­es of the traf­fic stop” and that the offi­cers used “exces­sive force by point­ing their guns at” Weiland and the children.

Unfortunately, this is far from the first time police offi­cers have held inno­cent peo­ple — includ­ing kids — at gun­point dur­ing a rou­tine traf­fic stop.

In 2020, police in Aurora, Colorado, forced an inno­cent fam­i­ly — includ­ing a 6‑year-old girl — to lie face­down on the pave­ment at gun­point after alleged­ly mis­tak­ing their car for a stolen motor­cy­cle. In 2022, two elder­ly Texas res­i­dents filed a law­suit alleg­ing that a police offi­cer vio­lent­ly arrest­ed them and held them at gun­point dur­ing a traf­fic stop. And just last year, Texas police apol­o­gized over a strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar “high-risk traf­fic stop” that led police to hold an Arkansas fam­i­ly at gunpoint.