The Kevin Duggan Case: When Bad Cops Destroy Public Trust

In this episode of Hidden Threads, Macky Outlaw and Jus break down the case of former Baltimore officer Kevin Duggan and the dangerous reality of what happens when law enforcement officers lose control, abuse authority, or cross ethical lines.

We discuss how a very small percentage of corrupt or reckless officers can damage the reputation of the overwhelming majority of good cops who serve honorably every day. From public trust and accountability to police culture, leadership failures, and the long-term damage caused by misconduct, this episode takes an honest look at the consequences when the badge is abused.

This is not an anti-police episode — it’s a discussion about protecting the integrity of law enforcement and why bad officers hurt good officers more than anyone else.

#TrueCrime #PoliceCorruption #Baltimore #HiddenThreadsPodcast #KevinDuggan #LawEnforcement #PoliceAccountability

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, Juice, we're back to recording again. That's all we do. You know, Juice and I we sit around and at the house here, and then every occasionally we just turn the mics on, right? Oh yeah. Is that how it goes? Yeah. That's the way it seems sometimes. Right. You don't have your hat on today. No. I got my Raddy Carhar hat on. You see that? Sweat. The sweat rings in it. It's good, right? It happens. It's a working man's hat. It is. I don't know why you're wearing it, but you know, we've been watching politics. I mean you get into politics a little bit. It's impossible today not to get into politics, wouldn't you say? Absolutely. Right. Unless you're dead. Well, you're still in politics. Well, yeah, because you're voting Democrat if you're dead. Right. But up in Indiana, a lot of the state's senators, they had their primaries, right? Yeah. A lot of the long-term senators and representatives, however, Indiana's got it set up, got ousted by MAGA people. Yeah, imagine that. But oh, MAGA's dead. They were saying I King Jeffrey said MAGA's dead. They're coming over to the Democrat Party. Well, he's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. He's a failed football player that's been a career politician. What do you think of that? Yeah, he's he's one of the problems. There should be term limits set for Congress anyway, but we were talking about it the other day, me and a friend of mine. It was like, you know, like me and Juice, you know, hey, it's your turn, your guys' turn to go up and we're like, God, I don't want to go up there. That's how it should be. Yeah. But people are anxious and want to get career in, you know what I mean? And there's about 10% of them that are there to change, you know, make a good change. Well, if it if it stayed the way it was when the country was founded, I think it'd be a lot better. Yeah, you know, that's a collateral duty. Ben Franklin and whoever, he wasn't never a politician. He was like this Department of State guy. Yeah. Right. But those kind of people, they didn't want to, they were like, hey, I just want to come do my part and then go back to my farm. Yeah. You know what I mean? Or go back to And that's the way it should still be. Go back to writing books or whatever they did. Yeah. You know, so I wish it was that way now. So do I. It'd be so much better. Yeah. But when you can't do anything else but just sit there and, you know, insider trade. Draw a check. Yeah. They get paid like 180K or something. Yeah. For doing what they're doing to America. That's ridiculous. I don't think they, you know, we've never had a balanced budget in like since the 80s or 90s, maybe. They keep doing continuing resolutions, right? Which means we're gonna go for this bonds that are fake and print money. That's where the bet comes from, right? I don't think they should get paid till it's balanced. That would be awesome. It'd be balanced tomorrow. I think they also should have the same health care that we have at the VA. I got tri-care. I just I have to pay for it. I pay like $1,500 a month for it. But let's see how fast that would get changed. So I've been trying to get a VA appointment and it the morning of it gets canceled every time because I'm having to go to a specialist. Yeah. That's ridiculous. That's crazy. They cancel every time. And I'm like, Is it the same specialist? They'd move it around. I said, let's try a different one. Okay. That's crazy. They're supposed to be doing this community care thing that's not working. Yeah, I always get out on community care. As soon as they call and tell me, well, it's gonna be this day, can I do community care? Well, yeah, but yeah, but nothing. Put me on community care. Right. All right. Well, enough complaining, Juice. We got recruit we got stuff to talk about today. We do. What do you think about dirty police, Juice? You were a cop for quite a while. I was. You would go back to police, and if the opportunity correct opportunity presented itself, right? No. You wouldn't in this no today, I wouldn't. Not not the way it is. No, it's climate. Dirty cops and and let me put something to bed real quick. I don't care if you're corrections, I don't care if you're on the road. You're a cop, you're law enforcement. So when we talk about cops, it's the correctional cops and it's on the road cops. I see no difference. There are people who say, oh, they're just corrections officers. But corrections officers, and I've worked both, corrections officers have a tougher job than cops on the street. You're police, you're just inside that with no weapons. In that building. Yeah. Yeah. With no weapons, there's doors locked, and you're so outnumbered it's not even funny. The only ones that get weapons are the ones out doing the working parties. Yeah. And that was that's to prevent escapes. And those people, those m majority of those inmates are not going anywhere. No. They're doing their time, getting their outside time in. Yeah. Getting their cigarettes and their, you know, lickies and chewy. Sunlight, stuff like that. And they probably get better chow out there when they're working. And yeah. So so when we're talking about it though, just so everybody knows, talking about both behind the wall and on the road. Sure. Yeah, that's I agree with you. Have you ever seen any around here that were dirty? Yes. Major or just like, well, if it starts minor, it could grow into major major things, right? Well, so you have to be in this trust group to see the big things. And I didn't really trust any of them around here. Right. The trust group, is it like the Scorpion teams? Yeah. Yeah. Like Vic Mackey off the shield. Oh, yeah. That that would be one of those, like the strike teams. The hit squads or whatever. No, you just so I'm not from around here. You know that. You can tell by my strong southern accent. I'm a Yankee. Yeah, hemorrhoid Yankee. Right. But if you're not from here and you didn't grow up here and you're not buddy buddy with all the officers here, regardless if you're an officer or not, you're an outsider. Right. So now what if you were a local but you came in and were straight laced? You'd be an outsider, right?

unknown 5:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Mm-hmm. Okay. You you'd get blackballed right there. You just they put you out on some duty by yourself? Yeah, they they wouldn't hang out with you. They wouldn't come to meet up, have lunch. If you were out in the middle of nowhere and you had you needed backup, they'll take their time getting there. What about so your promotions and those things, is that gonna hurt you too? Oh, absolutely. You think like the sheriff's department, you think the head sheriff is in on it? Oh yeah. I was on him for a while. He has to have his lackeys, right? Yeah. Okay. If he's ever in the office. He needs stuff to get done, right? Right. And uh he goes and gets this guy. Hey, go get this. It's like a Lance Corporal in the Marines or a private in the army. Hey, I don't care how it gets done. I just want to see results, right? Yeah, exactly. But they do illegal stuff, right? They do. They violate people's rights. So we have an incident where I would I've met them. I didn't go do anything with them. This they're First Amendment auditors, and they came down to DeCab County. Right. And they went into the clerk's office. You know how the clerk is, you go up on the, I think it's the third floor. This was recent, like a week ago. Oh, yeah. You go up on the third floor and it says you got the doors and there's a hallway. If you go through the doors and you got the clerks, you got district attorney and the right, everybody's offices. And the rules are no recording in the offices. Right. They were recording in the hall. The city clerk came out, or the clerk of the court came out and pitched a big one. About what? Said they weren't allowed to record. Yes, they were like in the hallway. Now they called the you know, the security, which is the deputies on duty down there, and they came up and they're like, Yeah, you can record in the hall. You can't go in those rooms, you know, because people have their computer. I get it. They got the computers up. There might be some sensitive information up on the screens, piece of paper laying around. But the clerk went after they left, you know, they got their what they were going to do and they left. The clerk filed trespassing charges and they got arrested. They went and picked them up. Okay. So why were they allowed to file the warrant for one? And why did they even follow through and make the arrest if what they were doing wasn't illegal? There's video. We can submit that as evidence. Right. Right. And I read the trespassing. I've been convicted of trespassing. Right. It's to remain you go into an enclosed space and enclosed space and remain. Don't say how long. You just remain, right? Right. And then you you know, and then they get you for trespassing. If you're not invited in that fenced area or whatever. Okay. Now they also got them for disrupting government operations. See, that's that's like a catch-up. Yeah, that's not disrupting operations. That behavior of the clerk not knowing what the law actually states or their policy states in the courthouse. Their policies on the website. Exactly. If you're not up to speed on it, keep your yap shut. Don't go out there and and show your butt when you're wrong. Right. And if they were in the hallway, you're allowed to record in the hallway. Yeah. There's no reason there should have been trespassing charges and arrest made. None of those are signed or posted. It doesn't say no recording. Now on the courtrooms, like you go in there to the where the judge says no recorder, right? Unless permitted by the judge, right? Right. So that's the only place it's posted. I'm bet it's posted now. I'm going down there today for some business. Yeah. We'll see. So I'm not going to do a first to me. That's ridiculous. First Amendment auditors can be a little extra pain in the butt. They can. But occasionally they hit a they're like, Well, you got it right this time. Yeah. I think they did there. As long as they're doing the right thing and they're not being overbearing, pushy, you know, being obnoxious. I'm f I fully support it. They were being nice. They sat around and talked to the deputies like they were bro. The deputies did a fine job down there on that deal. It was the uh bureaucrats that had an issue. Right. Which is typical, right? Of course. Now we got some national news here talking about some police officers in Baltimore indicted on assault, false reporting, false statements, and misconduct. So when you get to this level, in my opinion, so here's my opinion. This is my opinion, is worth probably a dime, maybe, maybe a penny. They don't have pennies anymore. No, they quit making. But if they get to this level, it means it's been somebody has let it happen before and it's carried on and became a habit. Absolutely, I agree. What do you think? Like some supervisor, some chief, some whoever said, okay, we'll let this one slide. Then it grows into this crap bracket we're going to read about. Yeah. It's it's it's like a fungus. Have you ever seen a department where the chief or the sheriff was like, hey, we're not doing this crap and had a disciplined force? Oh yeah. And I know one of your chiefs, stand-up guy. Yep. And I don't think he put up a lot of crap either. No. He didn't like the mayor. No, none of us did. The bureaucrats, right? Yeah, because they were trying to do things that are ethically and and illegal and it's just the way it is. Alright. So this is Officer Duggan up in Baltimore. Five counts of misconduct in office. There's no maximum penalty for misconduct. Does that mean he goes to jail for a while? You can. For life. What he does here, you and I would go to jail for at least 40 years. At least. If I just pick somebody, yeah, if I just me as a soup civilian, pick somebody out of a crowd and started whacking them with a stick. Oh yeah. It's over, dude. So you're going away for a while. You can't do that. All right. This uh this indictment on Duggan, it alleges that Austrian Kevin Duggan allegedly assaulted a juvenile and an adult male without legal justification and with corrupt intent on June 8, 2024. At the there's some street intersection. There was obviously some kind of assembly going on. Right. It doesn't say whether it's a protest or they were just hanging out at a concert. Doesn't say. All right. But he and his partner left the car unattended. Is that a no-no? No, you can leave your car. I used to leave my car. Yeah. But I had a fob and I'd lock it. Lock it, right? Because you're by yourself a lot. Yeah. And the bigger cities usually have two. Yeah. You have zone partners and everything else. They left it. And while they left, this patch told them, hey, they're taking pictures of your car. So what? That's who cares, right? Yeah. Come take all the pictures of mine you want. And there's another First Amendment guy, and he was taking pictures of a police car, and they had the screen up on the inside, not tinted windows, right? Right. And the cop came up, smashed his camera, and threw him on the ground. Yeah, he can't do that. It's his responsibility to hide to what's the word I'm looking for? It's his conceal. To conceal half privacy, what right's the word I'm looking for. But that get that cop got fired and he's the whole department's being sued now. Yeah. Which hurts because that takes money away from payroll and training and all kinds of stuff. Sure it does. But when your staff goes out and does things like that, that's what happens. Right. Anyway, this guy, people were taking pictures. He came back and said that the he said, hey, who's recording? Nobody said anything. And so he started knocking people down with his stick, tripping them, beating them with his little with no probable cause to do so. What's the word they used here? Espantoon. Yeah. His nightclub. His wooden stick. Night stick. I used a I learned a new word today. Baton. I said while the juvenile was held on the ground, a officer Duggan was on top of him and used his espatoon, his stick, against the juvenile's throat. So he was choking the kid, put his knee on the juvenile stomach and arms, and stepped on the juvenile's arm before attempted to turn him on his stomach and to be handcuffed. While the juvenile was on a stomach, officer Duggan used his stick on the back of the juvenile's neck. That's the red zone, right? Yes it is. So there was no resisting anything. Mm-hmm. So Officer Duggett then authored an incident report in support of the juvenile's arrest, stating in per in the pertinent parts, the male moved in between me and the female I was attempting to arrest and grabbed my vest in an attempt to stop me. At which time I then used a takedown on him, held him to the ground, at which time a crowd formed around us and would not obey police commands. The juvenile did not make physical contact with Duggan until Duggan put hands on first. Hmm. What about that? It's aggravating. A false report to you. How are you gonna do a false report these days? Well, you can, but everybody's got a recording device. Yeah, but you you can do it. It doesn't mean you're gonna get away with it. You got body cams, everybody's got a recording device in their hand. I think a lot of the problem is a lot of these guys they want to be bullies with badges. And they get in the law enforcement to be bullies because they got picked on in school. I also think that they don't have the the law enforcement role models that were in place like when I was growing up. Everybody was gone, right? Yeah. All the good ones are gone, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And there's some that that, you know, I I always refer to the the one officer back home when I was growing up, Tommy Wallace. Great cop. He gave everybody, regardless if you you were a troublemaker or criminal like I was back then, or you were the most upstanding citizen. He gave everybody respect and he carried himself a very certain way. And I don't see that by hardly any officers anymore. Right. I think they're quick to, and this comes from the top down, in my opinion. They're quick to, hey, let's get them in, let's get them in cuffs and throw them in. Yeah. And that that's not, in my opinion, that's not the way to police in a community. Over uh when I was younger, they would it was more like, hey, get out of here. You know, every get yeah, sket outle, get out of here. You know what I mean? So unless you've assaulted somebody or done something stupid. But if it was just a group of kids or whatever hanging out, hey, we don't want you here, man. Get out of here. Yeah. Some places are elite are allowed to hang out, but if you're blocking traffic or doing something or like move, yeah, now they'll they'll cuff some you, man. Yeah. Quick. I'm like, man, a lot of things. Yeah, it's it's changed since I started police until now. It it's it's changed a lot. The de-escalation is not there. No. You know what I mean? Uh I've gone through that de-escalation training, and they the the officers a lot of times escalate. They're escalators, I guess. Oh, with I'll agree with that. They don't use proper verbiage. No. They're quick to go hands-on. And don't get me wrong, I love police and love what they do. Yep. But there's uh 1% ruins it for And it's a tough job. And police are humans. They're not, you know, just mellow all the time, nothing bothers them. They have family problems and everything else. Should they allow that to affect the way they work? No. They get tired. Yeah, yeah. All those things. It's it's they're humans. But to carry it as far as some of these officers have, right? Should never get that far. Right. Can police just leave? Sure they can. If it's not, if things are out of control, can you just walk away? Like in regular life. You the situation is gonna dictate what you do. Nine times out of ten, I'm not going anywhere. But I am gonna try and de-escalate as much as possible. Yeah. And I think it's a society too. Used to be a uniform de-escalated. Right. Well, that was the the first stage in the use of force matrix was officers' presence. Yeah. That's not the first stage to me anymore. Right. Because nobody respects it. Nobody respects whose fault is it, society or the police? Both. Okay. I think it's both. But also, when we grew up, we were taught to have respect for authority, police officers, firemen. I don't think that's taught anymore. Right. I mean, I have respect. Like if they show up, I'm like, okay, something's serious. Yeah. Something serious is happening, right? Be cooperative, talk to him. Now, if he drags me out and starts beating me up, that's a problem. Yeah, that's that's a little different. I'm not gonna fight back. I'll just take it and then we'll deal with it later. Yeah. So some people want to fight back. Yeah. Which everybody gets hyped up. Adrenaline goes, right? Yeah. But this kid though, you know, he's getting beat up, choked with a stick. Now, what if uh there's a 10 or nine-year-old watching this and they're like, hey, this guy, you know, he grows up and not Duggan is the culprit here, in my opinion, and the people watching are not gonna respect police in the future because of his actions. So No. And is you could have a hundred officers on the force. That one officer that did that just set the tempo for how everybody's gonna treat every one of those other 99 officers. Right. And we got some more in Baltimore here. We got Hilton. The indictment alleged officer Kevin Hilton allegedly assaulted an adult male on March 30, 2025 at the 1500 block of Pennsylvania Avenue and Bloom Street. This is all in Baltimore. Officer Hilton responded as a backup to the scene of a fight between multiple people. So we got people fighting. Right. Happens, right? While another officer was attempting to separate the parties, a man reached under Officer Hilton's arm. Officer Hilton then ordered the man to stop and pushed him to the ground, causing him to fall on his back. While the man was on the ground on his back, Officer Hilton walked over to him, used both hands to grab the man by his jacket while yelling, What are you doing? Three times while holding the man up by his jacket. The man advised Officer Hilton that he was trying to break up the fight. Officer Hilton lifted the man from the ground by his jacket, turned him around, walked him backwards, and shoved him, causing the man to fall on his back and down approximately three stone steps, as Officer Hilton stated. Why? Why? Separate, right? Create distance is what we do. Yes. And don't push him down the steps. You're in that reactionary gap. Right. You don't want them in there to begin with. But I get it, because I've had people in situations where you're trying to cuff somebody, you see an arm coming under you, your weapons right there, you're gonna react. But that initial reaction, and he pushed them back. Once he seen he was down, he goes, just so what do you think you're doing? Yeah. He the the escalation, it stayed up here. Right. And it didn't have to. You have to be able to go up and down with that that escalation, de-escalation. Right. Now we used to train on this and hit get hit with all kinds of terrible scenarios and react. Right. Yeah. And then we would coach each other and say, hey, this is how I would have done it. Or, you know, what the best way to do it. Here's what the book says, right? And I don't know if they're doing that. Are they not doing it at police academy? I don't think so. They're there for like half a year. Why not? Well, I haven't been through any academies in forever. So I don't know what they teach now and what they don't teach, but we always I mean, I I went through several academies. They all Always teach based on scenario trainings, and we all took turns. It wasn't like just one person did a skit, one reacted, and that was it. Everybody took turns. Right. And and you would actually have to sit and de-escalate and you get critiqued afterwards. It's one of the best tools there is. Right. Yeah. But this guy uh uh went ahead and filed a false report as well. Yeah. How how can you be a cop with no integrity? I mean, everything's on camera, man. Yeah, you're gonna get caught. Just tell the truth. If you're doing your job correctly, the truth ain't gonna hurt you. Right. I said it's happened too. Yeah. But if you pick a person up by their shirt, drag them over to basically a ledge and tell them off what he did down there. Well, yeah, there may be a problem there. Anyway, we got more here we could get into, but we're kind of running out of time here. But cops are great. 99% of them. Good cops are great. But this one percent makes everybody over the years have no respect for them. Oh yeah. When they show up to an area with a crowd where tensions are high, I agree. Their presence doesn't do anything. No, it just well, sometimes just a presence escalates it. Right. Depends on what town you're in and uh community, right? But oh, it's a rough job, and I think it's been made tougher. Politicians don't help, you know. Yeah, no, they don't, not at all. And and it's been made rougher, you know, because of the no de-escalation training and um society. I think it becomes from that where they don't have presence anymore. Well, you would think, by the way, everybody's so scared to have any lawsuits that they would implement more training. Right. Because training doesn't hurt at all. And that kind of training doesn't cost anything. Yeah. You can do that right there in the gym or whatever. Yeah. At the police, you just get a few people together, family members together, whatever. At the classroom and do it. All right. Every department I've seen had some kind of classroom or an area where you can do this kind of stuff. Yeah. Or if it's nice weather, do it outside, right? Yeah, you can do it in town hall. All right, that's all for this one, Gice. These next three or four episodes are going to be about dirty cops. Y'all ready for it? Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. I had it on my mind this week for some reason, but we'll be back with another episode in just a bit.