“If someone is offended by your talking, then we have a problem,” Fort Worth, Texas, police officer Sarah Stogner appears to say, in a video reposted on X by Libs of TikTok, to retired federal law enforcement officer David Grisham and his associate Rich Penkoski during a public LGBTQ pride event on June 27. Grisham and Penkoski preach Biblical teachings on city streets as members of “Warriors for Christ,” a religious organization whose website says, “We proclaim Christ openly, boldly, and without compromise.”

“You’re going to ticket us for ‘offensive’ speech?” Grisham asks Stogner in the video.

“Yes, absolutely,” Stogner seems to confirm, before arguing that offensive speech would, in her opinion, constitute “disorderly conduct,” an arrestable offense.

Libs of TikTok’s repost gathered some 12.4 million views in the five days between its original appearance on July 8 and this past Monday, along with thousands of comments agreeing that Officer Stogner’s threat violated Grisham’s and Penkoski’s First Amendment free speech rights. Some added that she should be fired.

There are no apparent grounds to deny the First Amendment’s applicability in this case, but before anyone gives Officer Stogner the benefit of the doubt, one day after its repost, Libs of TikTok posted another video of Officer Stogner, from last year, in which she appeared to tell other individuals protesting an earlier LGBTQ event in Fort Worth that they were not allowed to enter the event’s space—a public street—and warned that they could be arrested for speech depending on “what you’re saying” because “you could offend somebody.”

If one still argued that this was a lone case of a poorly trained cop exhibiting a minimal grasp of constitutional law, a third video posted by Libs of TikTok appears to record Stogner’s fellow Forth Worth police officer Justin Herrin confirming—just moments after Stogner’s exchange with Grisham and Penkoski—that they could receive a citation “depending on what you are saying and who is offended.” Herrin clarified that “if you called somebody certain words and they feel offended by that,” it would result in a citation, which he would be obliged to issue as a duty of his job. In another video segment of the same conversation, Herrin appears to tell Grisham and Penkoski that if they hypothetically addressed a biological male claiming to be a woman as “sir” after once being warned not to do so, it would result in criminal consequences. But if Grisham and Penkoski were offended by other people’s words or actions at the event, Herrin admitted, “there is not much on our side to do anything about it.”

In still another video, an as-yet unidentified police supervisor twice confirmed to Grisham and Penkoski that they would be “arrested” if they preached in the public event area and failed to leave upon a hypothetical request from its organizers. According to Fox News, Grisham and Penkoski ultimately did receive a noise citation for using megaphone, which was then confiscated as “evidence.”

This was not the preachers’ first or only brush with the law over civil rights issues. In their conversation with the police supervisor, Grisham mentioned that he successfully sued the city of Fort Worth over a similar incident that occurred in 2014. The supervisor appeared to be unaware of the case, but it is a matter of public record with file data relating that Grisham won nominal monetary damages, legal fees, and an assurance that municipal authorities would never again interfere with his or anyone else’s free exercise of civil rights.

In 2020, Penkoski and two other activists sued Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser in federal court to reverse her decision to paint “Black Lives Matter” in 48-foot yellow letters across two blocks of a street approaching the White House, arguing that she was unconstitutionally using government funds to promote a “cult” of “secular humanism” that discriminated on the basis of religion. The legal case was dismissed, but in March 2025 Bowser removed the letters in response to civil rights-related congressional threats to cut federal funds to her city if she allowed them to remain.

In 2023, Penkoski was threatened with arrest for using a megaphone to declaim Bible verses in protest against a Florida drag show. A year later he successfully contested, on free speech grounds, an Oklahoma state court’s restraining order prohibiting him from making social media posts critical of an LGBTQ-friendly church and its leaders. In November 2025, according to media reports, Florida authorities charged Penkoski and two other men with “disturbing a religious assembly” and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors, after they verbally protested a Muslim prayer service on the campus of the University of South Florida, a public institution. All three men have pleaded not guilty, citing free speech rights and asserting that their protest included neither threats nor physical actions.

One wonders if Fort Worth authorities, who have already lost to Grisham on this issue in federal court, will learn anything new. If they have, it was not immediately apparent after Libs of TikTok posted its videos: another of its X posts showed that the Fort Worth police department’s official account on the platform had “blocked” Libs of TikTok, an action that itself could constitute a violation of law. That’s because, as Libs of TikTok and many other users have pointed out, the department is a taxpayer-funded public institution that has apparently restricted access to public information in response to disfavored online speech. The department subsequently gave a statement to Fox News that “acknowledges that an officer involved in the incident made certain statements that were not accurate,” but did not identify the officer, the statements, or the inaccuracy.

The feds now seem interested. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon posted that the incident was “troubling” and that the Justice Department’s civil rights team is “on it.” Given the similar statements by the officers who appear in the Libs of TikTok videos, they and other law enforcement officers who have pestered Grisham and Penkoski elsewhere may well have received similar DEI-inflected “training.” They would have likely been informed that First Amendment rights count for more in minority protests  favored by  DEI’s advocates than the objections of whites, Christians, and heterosexuals. The courts appear to disagree, and so may the Justice Department.