He has more than 500,000 followers on YouTube, where he posts hundreds of videos where he talks for hours about police body camera footage and footage from other people who say they are auditors. In some of his videos, he records himself talking to police officers. He often swears at them or calls them “pigs.”
DeCastro says he will ship buyers a $25 flyer called “Learn the Law. Know Your Rights” from Los Angeles, but court records show he actually lives in Henderson. The channel promotes DeCastro’s different cash apps and the flyer. In his case against Zimmerman, DeCastro said that he gets money by “selling legal documents to people.”
“From what I saw on the video, it looks like he wants this,” the judge said after DeCastro was found guilty. They said, “He wants to be arrested and fight with police officers.” This makes him happy and helps his YouTube account.
A traffic light in a parking lot
Someone had pulled over a woman on March 15, 2023, in a parking lot near Flamingo Road and Grand Canyon Drive. DeCastro went up to her. Branden Bourque, the officer, got out of his car and told DeCastro to move back and stop talking to the driver. Body camera video showed this.
The cop told them, “You can film, but stay away from my driver.”
For the next minute and a half, DeCastro and the officer fought until DeCastro told the officer, “Mind your business.” I work for the press. “Little dog, get in your car and do your job.”
DeCastro was told by the cop that he was being held.
Body-worn camera footage showed DeCastro being handcuffed and standing in front of a police car while more officers arrived to help. As DeCastro waited for a sergeant to arrive, he continued to insult police officers and sometimes used very sexual language. He also told the police several times that their actions were hurting his arms.
By the time a sergeant got there, DeCastro had already told several police officers that he was going to sue them and asked many times not to be taken to jail.
The sergeant told him, “What you’re doing is fine.” “All you can do is stay out of the way during a fire stop.” The lesson should be learned from now on.
Court records show that DeCastro was caught again on February 14 at the scene of a hit-and-run accident that killed someone near Charleston and Decatur boulevards. On DeCastro’s YouTube page, there was a video of him asking police to “shut up” and “mind your business” when they asked him what he was doing at the crime scene.
He has said he is not guilty of obstruction in Las Vegas Municipal Court and is set to appear there on May 1.
A Controversial Bench Trial
At the start of DeCastro’s March 19 bench trial, he called a courtroom guard a “pig” because the judge told him to hand over his phone. Zimmerman said she hadn’t agreed to DeCastro’s request to record the hearing for the public.
Zimmerman told DeCastro that he would be in jail for contempt of court until he told the sheriff he was sorry.
Later in the trial, Chief Deputy District Attorney Agnes Botelho, the prosecutor, said that DeCastro had been held to protect the officer’s safety because he wouldn’t follow orders. DeCastro was seen shaking his head.
“This is not about the First Amendment,” Botelho told the judge. As you could see and hear over and over again on the tape, officer Bourque did not mind that the defendant was recording.
Michael Mee, DeCastro’s lawyer, said that even though Bourque said that police are trained to tell people to stand about 20 feet away from a scene, that training is not backed up by any federal rule. It was his case that DeCastro was wrongly detained because he had a First Amendment right to film the cop and talk to the driver.
Bourque said in court that DeCastro “swatted” at him, but he didn’t think DeCastro was trying to hurt him.
“The law says you can stop an illegal arrest without doing anything,” Mee said.
Mee did not answer when asked for a statement.
The judge told DeCastro’s defense lawyer that his argument did not address the officer’s safety worries before convicting him. Later in the hearing, Zimmerman talked about how DeCastro seemed to hate cops. DeCastro nodded his head and gave the judge a thumbs-up sign.
Before giving DeCastro his jail sentence, Zimmerman said, “He called the police officers here today pigs, and he’s nodding his head, so apparently he hates every police officer in the United States.”
He said it was a “travesty of justice” that he was going to jail as he was being handcuffed at the end of the hearing.
Since then, DeCastro has hired Christopher Oram, a well-known defense lawyer in Las Vegas, to help him with an appeal. On Thursday, Oram refused to say anything else about the case. In addition, DeCastro has asked for him to be freed from jail or given bail.
He is due back in court on Monday so that his lawyers can make their case for bail.
