Citizens Are Demanding Accountability
With the American Fork Police Department (AFPD) making national news over the mishandling of the Bricks & Minifigs consignment dispute, citizens showed up to city council meetings and demanded structural accountability.
The controversy stems from multiple, escalating interactions between the AFPD and YouTuber “Reckless” Ben, who was attempting to serve out-of-state court documents to local business owner Josh Johnson. The department’s actions included:
- A questionable traffic stop pulling over Ben and his crew, where later-released dashcam footage directly contradicted the initial police report.
- A multi-hour vehicle search for narcotics, which yielded absolutely nothing.
- An armed, tactical raid on an Airbnb looking for Lego inventory based on a warrant obtained under highly misleading circumstances.
- Retaliatory arrests and charges brought against Ben and his associates.
- An explicit failure by officers to maintain neutrality, effectively allowing Joshua Johnson to refuse service of legal documents simply because he didn’t want them.
When ordered to produce the accompanying bodycam footage under a public records request, the AFPD initially released a heavily redacted version. However, the department subsequently bungled the process, accidentally making the full, unredacted files public.
The complete footage revealed a starkly different version of events than the AFPD described. Internal audio captured officers actively colluding with Johnson, while Lieutenant Quinn Adamson could be heard instructing off-scene units to “scare him a little bit and let him go.” While this massive data breach inadvertently provided the public with transparency, it exposes a catastrophic failure in the department’s digital records management, risking the exposure of highly confidential citizen data in the future.
It Keeps Happening, and the Mayor Is Involved
But as the news cycle continues, public attention drifts. You might think that under this level of national scrutiny, city leadership and law enforcement would meticulously avoid further overreach. Instead, the institutional failures have compounded.
Shortly after, Detective Bronson Kitchen of the AFPD drove roughly 40 minutes outside his city limits to execute an unauthorized traffic stop on I-15 near Centerville. Acting completely outside his lawful geographic jurisdiction and under the color of authority, Kitchen threatened to have the “highway” come and break the driver’s window because he felt it wasn’t rolled down enough. After the video went viral on accountability channels like LackLuster, a formal complaint forced a recorded phone apology from the detective, raising serious questions about whether the incident would have ever been reported internally had it not leaked online.
Weeks later, a late-night dispute regarding a family’s personal mail escalated into another abuse of power. When three AFPD officers knocked on a resident’s door at 10:15 p.m., the family exercised their Fourth Amendment right to refuse to answer.
When the official police footage of this interaction was later released, it was heavily redacted—conveniently omitting critical context. However, the citizen’s own Ring doorbell camera caught what the police tried to hide, providing a much more complete and damning record of the encounter. It was through this unedited audio that the public learned what the officers were discussing on the porch, relaying directives from Lt. Adamson: “Quinn was wondering if we go obstruction with it too, because she’s refusing to answer the door.”
When the targeted citizen subsequently filed a Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) request to see his police record, Mayor Brad Frost allegedly intervened. Rather than adhering to privacy protocols, the Mayor obtained the file and delivered it directly to the citizen’s private employer.
Documented Patterns of Misconduct
Broken Trust and Bigger Issues
Here are separate, major incidents occurring in a short window of time, all pointing to a localized culture of over-escalation and a lack of basic statutory training. The latest incident involves the Mayor potentially violating state records and privacy statutes, drastically increasing the risk of a massive, taxpayer-funded civil rights lawsuit against the city. When discussing this specific file handoff with the Mayor of Pleasant Grove, he noted plainly that his own police chief would laugh at him if he ever requested a private citizen’s police record for an outside employer.
These compounding crises show a deeply blurred line between executive city management and independent police operations. The official video releases prove that the department’s internal review process functions more as a public relations shield than an instrument of real accountability, relying on heavy redactions until independent citizen recordings or accidental leaks expose the truth.
Why are American Fork officers routinely exceeding their jurisdictional boundaries on distant freeways? Why is department leadership instructing street-level cops to manufacture obstruction charges against citizens exercising constitutional rights? And exactly what formal, structural consequences have any of these officers faced behind closed doors?
Where Do We Go From Here?
Because the internal chain of command has proven entirely incapable of policing itself, I am calling for the immediate creation of a Citizen Review Board.
An independent board would be tasked with reviewing complaints made against the AFPD, auditing internal affairs investigations, and examining full, unredacted bodycam footage. While Utah state law (specifically restrictions regarding municipal disciplinary authority) dictates that final officer discipline remains under the absolute discretion of the Police Chief, a Citizen Review Board would hold immense power through public transparency. By issuing independent, public findings on misconduct, the board would strip the department of its ability to hide systemic failures behind selective redactions.
To make this effective, the board must consist of independent community members willing to ask adversarial questions and push back against institutional pressure, rather than political appointees selected to rubber-stamp police behavior. Even with limited statutory authority, their mandate would be to report the unvarnished truth directly back to the citizens.
Beyond a review board, the city should evaluate two additional solutions:
- An Independent Police Auditor: A professional, fractional resource shared with neighboring cities to routinely review departmental procedures, use-of-force patterns, and records management.
- Strict Jurisdictional Constraints: Clear, written administrative limits that forbid officers from leaving city limits for non-felony, off-duty, or out-of-jurisdiction enforcement actions without the explicit, documented sign-off of the Police Chief—who, as an at-will employee, is far easier for the city to hold accountable or terminate.
Send In Your Complaints
Elected officials cannot claim these are isolated misunderstandings when they form a documented blueprint of institutional overreach. If you have had an improper interaction, an unaddressed grievance, or an incident with the American Fork Police Department, your story needs to be part of the official record.
Send your documentation, footage, or experience to contact@utelection.info.
When asked the following questions, the city did not respond.
Can the city comment on allegations regarding executive overreach concerning the transmission of a resident’s private law enforcement files to an outside employer?
What specific training, policy overhauls, or administrative measures have been implemented following Detective Kitchen’s unauthorized, out-of-jurisdiction traffic stop on I-15 near Centerville?
How does the department justify on-scene officers being advised by leadership (Lt. Adamson) to consider criminal obstruction charges against residents for simply exercising their Fourth Amendment right not to answer their door at night?
What concrete steps has the AFPD taken to secure its digital records management division to ensure that unredacted video files containing private citizen data are never inadvertently leaked to a public folder again?
