Body Cam Confession
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“Women will stick together. Women will come up with shit (…) They get butthurt, and they stay that way and become bitter old cat ladies.”
The trash-talking you just heard… it’s coming from a Montgomery County Sheriff’s Deputy… This guy, Patrick Cherry… A thirty-year law enforcement veteran… 13 with Montgomery County.
So, we are watching the way he handled a call for the alleged criminal harassment of a Woodlands woman…
[Body Cam] “Facebook is Girl Mafia. That’s exactly what it is. Girl Mafia 101,” says Deputy Cherry on the body cam.
We’ve done plenty of investigations of the crappy way the family court system treats fathers… But how are women ever going to feel like they are treated fairly if lawmen in Montgomery County act the way this guy did?
[Body Cam] Deputy: I’m Deputy Cherry.
Melissa: I’m Melissa Britten. I just literally went and bought a car because I don’t feel safe right now.
Deputy: Okay.
“Just going back to that time, I was terrified, I was absolutely terrified,” said Melissa in an interview.
Last January, Melissa Britten had broken off ties with the guy she lived with for nearly two years… His name is Jeff Griffin.
“I had just learned really who this man was and what he was capable of, and he was coming at me from all angles,” explained Melissa.
But she had a problem other women have allegedly had… She says he refused to leave her alone after the breakup.
Like on January 10th, when Jeff showed up at her house uninvited. “Jeff, you’re scaring me at this point,” she says on the video.
That same day was the first time Melissa reached out to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department for protection.
There were no charges… And Jeff’s reported harassment supposedly continued with vicious Snapchat and text messages to her family… Even to her kids.
So Melissa took to a private group on Facebook to ask… Are we dating the same guy?
“It was and is intended to be a warning for other women, but it was also I had been full-on being attacked for weeks at this point no one would help me,” she stated.
Melissa said the response from Jeff was a threat of revenge porn… Letters to her family… Even her bosses. Three days later Melissa called the Sheriff’s office again.
“I mean, here’s his most recent. If you don’t take Facebook posts down, I’m going to add to my letter and toast you with everyone I can think of. You have until 5 p.m. today. Then I start writing.”
That’s Melissa asking for help from Montgomery County Deputy Patrick Cherry.
[Body Cam] Melissa: I have not done anything else except for making this post.
Deputy: Yeah, but all I can say is, you know, if you put yourself out there…
Melissa: I’m not taking it down. It’s the only level of safety I’ve had. It’s my only layer of protection.
Deputy Cherry says he will present the case to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office.
[Body Cam] Cherry: I’m going to contact him after I’m talking with you to try to shut this down.
Deputy Cherry heads to his vehicle and starts a phone call with Jeff that lasts more than half an hour.
[Body Cam] Deputy: Hello, is this Mr. Griffin?
Griffin: Who’s this?
Deputy: This is Deputy Cherry with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.
Griffin: How can I help you?
The Deputy does tell Jeff to stop contacting Melissa… That posting pornography about her will get him arrested.
Deputy Cherry advises Jeff that the proper way to deal with the Facebook post is contacting Facebook directly.
[Body Cam] Deputy: You contacting her personally is not going to get you the result that you want.
Griffin: Then I’ll take further action.
Deputy: And the best…
Griffin: The letter that I wrote I’ll just send it to everybody I know.
Deputy: You know, sending messages to everybody she knows, to her family, especially her family members. Oh my God. That’s such a bad idea.
Griffin: Then I won’t send it to family. I’ll just send it to colleagues.
And that’s when the call takes a turn.
[Body Cam] Deputy: There’s other legal recourse. And you should know from dealing with a woman, you’re not going to get what you want.
There it is… The beginning of sympathy for the alleged stalker.
[Body Cam] Deputy: Because you’re a male and she’s a female and society doesn’t look at us the same. Society looks at us as the bad guys. I’ve been through divorce, child custody battles. Trust me, I can tell you I was not perceived as, yeah, you’re the good guy cop. No, no. They twisted the world on me.
So much for keeping your personal biases out of criminal investigations.
[Body Cam] Deputy: That group she’s on, that’s a women’s group.
Griffin: I know. And I can’t even see it. I had people call me and tell me about it.
Deputy: That’s a bunch of men hating women (women hating men) on that group.
Wonder if Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has ever heard the next line… Because I sure hadn’t… And I run a company that airs media investigations of fraud and injustice and corruption on Facebook.
[Body Cam] Deputy: Facebook is Girl Mafia. That’s exactly what it is. Girl Mafia 101.
It goes downhill from there…
[Body Cam] Deputy: You’ve seen this just like I have. Women will stick together. Women will come up with shit. They get butthurt and they stay that way and become bitter old cat ladies.
And Deputy Cherry continues to offer advice… To a guy who has had more than one woman go to court to seek protection from him… Like comments about women being unstable.
[Body Cam] Griffin: There are women who are diagnosed and women who are not diagnosed.
Deputy: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Emotionally unstable. And, you know. But, you know, when you have half the jury that are women. Yeah. They all have some kind of conditioned memory, that they were abused at some point in their life from Hollywood. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing is ever going to go our way.
Toward the end of the chat, it sounds like the lawman and the suspect are buddies…
[Body Cam] Deputy: Because the State will not protect you in situations like this. They will protect a woman, though.
Deputy Cherry recaps some of what he told Jeff when he goes back inside… But he left out the fact that he told Jeff women will stick together and make up shit.
Only now does Melissa know what really happened inside that patrol car. Because we have the body cam.
“I mean, it was honestly a physical experience, it was so upsetting,” said Melissa. “The reality is that he went out to the car and talked to Jeff, who threatened me consistently for over 30 minutes, and the Deputy just coached him on how to not get arrested.”
We wouldn’t know he said it if we hadn’t asked for the body cam under state law.
When the sheriff didn’t turn it over we filed a criminal complaint with da Brett Ligon… The black hole of justice in that county. He refused to act. The County attorney recused himself. Three and a half months after we asked, we got to see the first of many body camera videos we wanted to see.
[Phone Call] Andrea: Hi. May I speak with Deputy Cherry, please?
Deputy Cherry: Speaking.
Andrea: Okay. So, we watched the body cam video from the day that you were asked to investigate…
Deputy Cherry: I’m not going to answer any question from somebody who sensationalizes news.
Andrea: We don’t. But you said that women were butthurt, and they say they…
And then he hung up…
“If your bitter divorce is going to prevent you from being able to protect women, get a different job.”
We asked one of Dolcefino Media’s attorneys to look at the body cam.
“Is Deputy Cherry the person that you want to show up at the scene of a sexual assault and question a victim? Because I wouldn’t want that.”
Family law attorney Kelsey Galbraith says contrary to what Deputy Cherry said… Posting about someone on Facebook doesn’t justify harassment.
But what really stunned her was this conversation caught on body camera.
“The contents of the phone call are abominable. I mean it’s terrifying.”
And she calls the body camera a huge wake-up call for abused women in Montgomery County.
“Most people would never fathom that a law enforcement officer would talk the way that Deputy Cherry did on a body cam.”
It wasn’t the last time Melissa reached out to Rand Henderson’s office for help… Complaining about harassment… Alleged stalking… Even evidence Jeff had hacked her electronics… Erased evidence… No charges have ever been filed.
And Griffin even went on social media to brag about beating three Protective Orders from two different women… Calling himself the Teflon Don…
“Hey Jeff, Wayne Dolcefino, how you doing? Hey, can I ask you if you think that protective orders are funny? Do you think they’re funny? Why did you go on social media bragging about protective orders?” tried to ask Wayne as Jeff was leaving the court.
You first met this Woodlands woman months ago about a different kind of injustice in Montgomery County.
She had gone to court multiple times to get a judge to grant her a protective order against Jeff… But Judge Tracy Gilbert said no… She later learned the deck may have been stacked.
Jeff’s lawyer was Steve Jackson… And Melissa would discover that Jackson was also Judge Gilbert’s lawyer in a personal paternity case… A relationship never disclosed by the judge.
[Body Cam] Deputy: Contact legal counsel.
Jeff: I will. I have a great attorney, a great attorney.
Multiple women have come forward since then to complain about Judge Gilbert…
Adding their names to a growing complaint about the judge to the state commission on judicial conduct… But Melissa didn’t know then about the body camera video that’s added to her outrage.
“Of course, Melissa is not getting anywhere because the people that are supposed to protect her, people are supposed to help her, people that are supposed to investigate these kinds of crimes, they don’t view her as a victim and that’s a huge problem,” says Kelsey Galbraith.
“I’m forever changed. I’m forever changed after this. I will never look at people the same again,” stated Melissa.
