Nearly three years after garnering national attention for an aggressive traffic stop of a local high school student, a Cody police officer wasn’t stripped of his badge during a Wednesday meeting of the state’s law officer licensing board.
Officer Blake Stinson was under review after complaints were made about three of his interactions with residents, including the January 2023 stop of a then-17-year-old Cody High School student.
The stop went viral months later in May 2023 when an edited version of dash cam and body cam video from the stop was posted to YouTube, showing Stinson being aggressive with the teen while stopped in the high school parking lot.
While the Wyoming Office of Administrative Hearings recommended pulling Stinson’s accreditation as a police officer, the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (POST) ultimately rejected that on Wednesday.
Instead, he’ll be cited for a code of conduct violation and be ordered to have additional training, the seven-member board decided.
After debating the nature of the complaints against Stinson, which included the interactions with the CHS student and two other contacts with residents, the POST board decided the incidents didn’t rise to the level of undermining public confidence in the law enforcement profession overall.
Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz, who sits on the board, made that argument, telling the rest of the POST members that, in his opinion, those three incidents in the course of about 18 months isn’t proof of that threshold.
“Three times out of 400 is not a pattern of conduct,” he said during the Wednesday meeting. “And there’s no evidence in this file, or in this case of over the 18 months … how many engagements this officer had — I can’t find there’s any proof of a pattern of conduct at all.”
Not Reliable
He also pointed out that some of the complaints and testimony offered in the three incidents aren’t reliable enough to warrant a vote to strip Stinson of his badge.
“I find most of them biased, self-serving testimony, and none of them — to me — rose at all even close to the level of something that’s so serious that it undermines public confidence in law enforcement,” he said.
“So, there’s my discussion,” he added. “I don’t think the state made its case … and I’m willing to listen to what some of you would have to say.”
Board member Richard Patterson, himself a former law enforcement officer, said he largely agreed with Kautz.
“I know how things can go” as an officer, he said. “And what I saw here were several examples of probably emotion-driven decisions as opposed to maybe … having a little bit more self-control.”
That’s not ideal, Patterson said, but to him, “it looked more like a bad day than a pattern — a situation that didn’t go the way you intended, to which we all are aware of those.
“So, I would agree with Mr. Kautz that I don’t see a pattern, and I don’t see anything rising to that level.”
Kautz also pointed out that there was other video evidence presented in the three cases, but that he doesn’t view the YouTube one as credible because it had been edited.
The Edited Video
The edited video uploaded to the LackLuster YouTube channel shows an agitated Officer Stinson telling the 17-year-old to get out of his car or he’d pull him out as the teen verbally resists.
In the video, Stinson orders the driver to give him his license, registration and proof of insurance. The teen, who appears flustered, says he doesn’t know where the documents are as it’s his mother’s car. So, he calls her on his cellphone.
When he offers the cellphone to Stinson to talk to her about the stop and where the documents are, the officer declines to talk to her and instead orders the teen out of the car.
“OK, go ahead and step out of the vehicle,” he says. “Step out of the vehicle. I can smell marijuana in the vehicle, get out.”
The driver doesn’t get out immediately.
“I’m not going to tell you again,” Stinson says. “You’re going to get out of the vehicle or I’m going to drag you out.”
The incident escalates from there.
A little later in their exchange after an editing cut, Stinson and another officer try to physically pull the driver out of the car by grabbing him through the open window.
Stinson says, “When you don’t do what you’re told, this is what happens.”
Cody Police ‘Absolutely Do Agree’
Repeated attempts to reach the former 17-year-old’s mother for reaction to the POST board’s decision were unsuccessful. Messages to her last known phone numbers and email weren’t returned by the time this story was published.
However, after the edited video of her son’s interaction with Stinson was made public in May 2023, Teresa Piper told Cowboy State Daily at the time that she “was very upset” by what she saw and thought he shouldn’t be a police officer in Cody.
“I was very upset, because I felt Stinson could’ve handled it in a different manner,” she said. “He didn’t have to be so angry and upset.”
She also said doing it right in front of the high school in view of all his classmates “was a little outrageous. It was right in front of the high school right when the high school was letting out.”
The Cody Police Department said it supports the POST board’s decision, and that since the viral video moment with Officer Stinson, the CPD has made proper interactions with the public a priority.
“We absolutely do agree with the POST decision to throw that out and allow Officer Stinson to keep his certificate,” said department spokesman Lt. Juston Wead.
In response to the high school stop, the CPD had an outside agency review the department’s policies and recommend improvements.
Stinson also was placed on administrative leave for a time after the incident.
“De-escalation training has been incorporated into regular trainings of officers,” he said. “That helps officers learn the skills they need when interacting with the public.”
He also said that while the YouTube video stirred up a lot of emotion and criticism, it was edited to elicit that reaction.
“Certainly, when someone takes a video and edits it to be skewed to their point of view, it’s going to give a perception that maybe isn’t the whole story.”
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
