Posted on 05/08/2015 6:03:29 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
In 2011, I was arrested by Baltimore City Police on charges of conspiracy to commit first degree attempted murder.
You might be asking yourself, “Why? What did he do?” I took a cell phone video of a small drunken scuffle in a downtown Baltimore parking garage. I was not a participant in the fight, nor was I an instigator. Despite what the facts of the situation presented, a personal family relationship with one of the so-called “victims” took precedence over the law. What started as a typical two-sided misdemeanor became a one-sided fight for freedom. I spent 50 days in the Baltimore City Detention Center facing two life sentences, and a host of other charges mounting to well over 200 years in prison, all for simply taking a video.
I’ve seen the corruption firsthand. I’ve seen how a law enforcement agent’s personal agenda can destroy a life. I’ve seen how charges are ramped up in order to make a lesser charge stick. I’ve seen detainees entering jail with worse injuries than the participants in the fight I captured on video, all at the hands of police. I’ve also seen the corruption that resides in BCDC on my 50-day tour of the jail.
The conditions at this facility were sub-human, in some cases. Ignoring the mice, cockroaches and decaying conditions, basic necessities of life were severely lacking. The food was nearly inedible and, in some cases, hazardous. For example, the drink flavoring had a poisonous emblem on it, eggs were often brown and rotten when served, and during my stay we even lost water for four days, which meant toilets and sinks did not work. All we had was a cooler jug that was brought in to drink from. Showers were so hot (not adjustable) you could not stand in the water. I saw a detainee drop on the floor, having a seizure from withdrawal, because drugs are not administered for close to a week after arrival. My experience in jail was that of an educated observant, and what I saw was appalling. The list goes on and on.
Now I’m not here to vilify police or law enforcement in general. I believe there are guys on Baltimore’s force that are honest and true and I would be by their side if they needed me. However, I hope events of recent have helped open people’s eyes to those who are not as honest. My hope is that those in power take a long, hard look at this and begin policing themselves internally. Far too much is overlooked. Those officers who are violating laws should face stricter punishments, and those who have flawless records should find themselves commended more often.
I wrote down my experiences in Baltimore while in jail and mailed over 60 pages of memoirs home. After my charges were dropped, I was unable to sue the city civilly, so I began writing a book chronicling my personal experiences and the corruption I witnessed. My book, Mags to Riches, was written in an attempt to tell my story and hopefully regain my family’s financial losses that I was unable to recover in a civil suit. I began utilizing social media to grow an audience in order to gain readers for my book. I could not have known at the time, but soon after filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the social media pursuit would become my financial savior. In the two years following my arrest, I went completely broke and subsequently became a self-made social media millionaire. I am currently working on a second book which will tell how I made millions on Facebook.
I’ve seen what a corrupt legal system can do first hand and want to share my story with others as a cautionary tale. If we overlook or ignore corruption within our own governing bodies, we risk situations like Baltimore expanding to other cities. We need to recognize the problems with law enforcement.
Corruption affects everyone, however, not everyone has the stamina to fight back or to endure what I endured. That is the reason I want to stand up and say, “Accept that there is a problem, Baltimore and FIX IT!”
Pretty interesting.
Wow, this is interesting! Thanks for posting.
so he took a video of an assault without calling the police? Why did he film it? for laughs?
Remember that Nancy Pelosi’s father and one of her brothers have both been mayors of Baltimore.
Was he doing anything illegal by recording it?
aren’t there laws for not reporting a crime? just asking. I don’t know. if you film it, you kind of put yourself on the spot
This is from Business Insider’s article about Fyk:
Jason Fyk, founder of WTF Magazine and FunnierPics.net, owns a business that generates about $275,000 a month.
Three years ago, Fyk was bankrupt, in jail, and borderline suicidal. He used Facebook to turn his life around.
Fyk’s financial troubles dated to 2005. Fyk had been working in real estate. As the months went by, the market turned. Eventually, it caused him to go into a “financial tailspin,” as he puts it. With a wife and a young child to support, he scrambled to find a new way to generate income.
Some friends approached him about starting a website, and he snatched up the domain WTFMagazine.com. The acronym, they decided, would stand not for What The F-— but Where’s The Fun, and the site would be a home for original, entertaining content. Fyk likens his business to College Humor.
“[Our team] was running with no money,” Fyk said of the digital business’ early days. “We were doing the fake-it-till-you-make-it thing, putting content together and starting to pick up steam, but I had no idea what I was doing.”
Fyk formed an LLC on Sept. 10, 2010, and launched the website in January 2011. “It was just fun, goofy, stupid stuff,” he said. His Facebook pages and websites publish the same kind of content today.
WATCH: Jason Fyk explains his “attempted murder” charge.
Shortly after WTF launched, Fyk found himself behind bars. He’d driven to Baltimore to interview an American stunt group, the Adrenaline Crew, for a story. They were all hanging out in a parking lot, about to drive to the interview location, when a drunken brawl broke out. Startled, Fyk said, he stood off to the side and began filming the fight on his smartphone. When things got serious, he stopped recording and tried to break up the fight. Instead, he got blamed for allegedly planning the altercation and found himself charged with attempted murder.
jason fyk arrest
“It was a stupid drunken brawl,” he said, adding he had met the people involved in the fight only a few minutes earlier. “Granted, people got hit, and granted, it was a fight, but it was never a felony fight. It was misdemeanor-assault stuff.”
Still, Fyk was thrown in jail and had to spend the little money his family had left on a lawyer. Two months later, the charges were dropped and Fyk was released from prison, broke.
“I couldn’t just go get a job at McDonald’s, because my bills were massive,” he said. “My kid held me together. I was almost suicidal. It was a disaster for me. I put my head down and kept pushing forward.”
Fyk tried to think of ways to make a lot of money quickly. His jail story was so strange, he felt it might make for a compelling book. But he wasn’t an established writer, and he knew the only way to sell a book would be to build a following.
“The only resource I had was social media, and it was free,” he said. “I decided to give everything I could toward getting as many eyeballs in my possession. Basically, I needed a distribution list.”
jason fykFacebook had launched Pages for businesses in 2007, but they were slow to take off. Even by 2011, no one was quite sure of their value. Fyk saw an opportunity, though.
At first, he tried to build on just one Facebook page, representing WTF Magazine. Before long, he realized that pages even totally unrelated to his website could be useful as well.
“It didn’t really matter if a page was specific to my brand,” he said. “I could get distribution whether it was through WTF or through a ‘Family Guy’ fan page, for example. As long as I got someone to like a page, they were effectively one more member of the distribution list.”
Fyk set out to build and maintain as many pages of all varieties as he possibly could. His wife thought he was crazy. “I’m sitting there when we couldn’t put food on the table spending all this time on Facebook pages,” he said. “I’m telling her, ‘Look, I know the distribution is going to be valuable.’”
Fyk now owns about 40 Facebook pages and controls more than 28 million “likes” in total. The pages reach 260 million people on Facebook and the “distribution” list sends his website tens of millions of pageviews a month. This earns him multiple millions a year in advertising revenue, which he pairs with other businesses, such as social-media consulting. He employs 16 people and has a ghostwriter working on a memoir.
Fyk, 40, is now a self-made millionaire who’s built his fortune almost entirely on Facebook. It’s a rewarding business, but not without its challenges. He’s found he must play a constant game of cat and mouse with teenage hackers and digital thieves on the social network. Additionally, he must run his business on a field of battle that is constantly shifting because of Facebook’s habit of routinely — and mysteriously — tweaking its algorithm.
Some of the rest of the story ...
1. It was his two friends that were fighting with a ‘lady’.
2. The ‘lady’ had an uncle on the BPD.
The justice system in Baltimore is corrupt. I know because it has been dominated for decades by Democrats.
ouch!!
“aren’t there laws for not reporting a crime?”
No - given that you had nothing to do with the crime and took no action to conceal knowledge of the crime. Destroying the video, for example, might be construed as obstruction of justice - and you can only get away with that if your a high-ranking democrat politician
watching too much Seinfeld :)
Kudos to him, but I don’t find his story very compelling.
I will always believe that police routinely abuse their power. Treat a cop’s relative the wrong way and you’ll find out. Be disrespectful. In other words, don’t fall down and kiss their shoes but instead quote your rights and see what happens.
The cops, and the DAs, routinely ramp up the charges to get you to accept a plea. And if you’re poor and can’t afford an F. Lee Baily type attorney you’re either going away for a long time or you’re going to plead guilty to something you didn’t do. It happens all the time. You’re only hope is if there are two of you and only one cop. He can’t get away with lying so he behaves himself.
The criminal justice system in this country is broken. Because of the mean, vicious thugs the cops deal with on a daily basis, they’ve started to look at everyone the same way.
A few years back some people started calling in to the Chris Baker radio show here in Houston about the cops arresting a bunch of innocent people. Of course, he took up for the cops. Then he started getting calls from people he knew and it turned out the cops had gone of a “crime busting” spree based on illegal drag racing complaints. They arrested everyone they could get their hands on. Including people coming out of restaurants. The city paid a lot of money when it was all over.
I’ve got my flame retardant suit on!
“Lady” = crossdresser?
The DOJ should find that the Mayor and the top cops in the BPD are racist scum and should be removed.
CC
““Lady” = crossdresser?”
No. A female drunk, dancing on tables and getting into fights.
It must have been 1989 or 90 we traveled to Baltimore and stayed in a downtown hotel. We were young and stupid and drinking I think, Long Island Iced Tea at various bars as we made our way in and around Baltimore's inner harbor. All new I believe at that time.
Returning to my future wife's hotel room very late that night and sloshed, we discovered her 35mm camera was gone. Someone had entered the room with a key, and stolen it. Police report. And months later, phone calls and a perp revealed. A hotel employee was convicted they let us know. But we never saw that Cannon A-1 camera again.
The hotel had paid us off for the loss, but the BPD found it at a pawn shop somewhat damaged. Seemed like pretty good police work though.
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