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In 2016, street preacher David Grisham said he would bring his verbal assault on Santa to DFW malls.<\/p>\n
Courtesy photo<\/p>\n
FORT WORTH<\/p>\n
The clickbait-for-Christ crowd came back to Fort Worth the other day trolling for viral video and cash.<\/p>\n
Sadly, there was a law officer willing to help them find it.<\/p>\n
This time, Amarillo-area street preacher and professional instigator David Grisham<\/a> \u2014 best-known for ruining Christmas by shouting at elementary schoolers that Santa isn\u2019t real \u2014 brought his religious roadshow to South Main Street.<\/p>\n Grisham and Irving street preacher Rich Penkoski came to the Trinity Pride LGBTQ+ community festival June 27 on South Main Street ready to roll cameras.<\/p>\n Sure enough, a Fort Worth police officer took the bait.<\/p>\n She blocked them from preaching. Officers even warned them they\u2019d be ticketed \u201cif someone is offended.\u201d<\/p>\n It couldn\u2019t have been scripted better for the outrage machine.<\/p>\n Within days, the video landed on the commercial grievance-for-dollars site LibsOfTikTok with a screaming headline: \u201cFemale Texas Cop THREATENS to ticket a retired officer and Christian street preacher for \u2018offensive speech.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n Female Texas Cop THREATENS to ticket a retired officer and Christian street preacher for “offensive speech”<\/p>\n Cop: “If someone is offended by your talking, then we have a problem…”<\/p>\n Man: “You’re going to ticket us for ‘offensive’ speech?”<\/p>\n Cop: “Yes, I am”<\/p>\n This cop is blatantly\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/qX0UjnRBSL<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 8, 2026<\/a> <\/p>\n Look, the officer was wrong. She was belligerent, too.<\/p>\n But she isn\u2019t the first law officer to choke on the First Amendment.<\/p>\n Law officers of all kinds \u2014 from beat cops to ICE agents \u2014 regularly go overboard to shut down cameras or critics.<\/p>\n But here is one rule for anyone wearing a badge: Behind every street preacher is a very eager lawyer.<\/p>\n In this case, it\u2019s U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dillon, now investigating the Fort Worth police for civil rights violations.<\/p>\n Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have made it clear that preaching, protesting, heckling and videoing are all protected on public sidewalks.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t block a walkway, you can\u2019t incite violence and you can\u2019t violate the noise laws. But you can be annoying.<\/p>\n Fort Worth police should know better, anyway.<\/p>\n In 2016, the city paid Grisham $65,148.92 when another officer interfered with his street preaching during a 2014 Pride event.<\/p>\n This time, police realized right away that they might have made another very expensive mess.<\/p>\n On July 1, the department issued a statement conceding that officers wrongly blocked the preachers, though Grisham was ticketed for using a bullhorn.<\/a><\/p>\n Yet on July 8, a full week after police owned up to the mistake, LibsOfTikTok.com posted the original video as if the city had never responded. That video has now passed 13 million views.<\/p>\n Not until July 10 did LibsOfTikTok post that police had admitted they were wrong. By then, Fort Worth had become the new dartboard for conservative media.<\/p>\n This is the kind of publicity street preachers live for.<\/p>\n Last year, Penkoski was in Florida making news by waving bacon at Muslim students<\/a> during prayer.<\/p>\n Grisham, a former 25-year security officer at the federal nuclear weapons plant near Amarillo, is also the one-man band behind Repent Amarillo\u2019s street crusades outside adult novelty stores.<\/p>\n He staged a video \u201cexecution\u201d<\/a> of a Santa pi\u00f1ata. He also invaded the Santa Claus House<\/a> in North Pole, Alaska.<\/p>\n Maybe Grisham and Penkoski think it helps the cause of Christ to tour the country stirring up outrage by trolling LGBTQ+ events, Muslim students or kids on Santa\u2019s lap.<\/p>\n But we robbed them of our rights.<\/p>\n Then we got smeared.<\/p>\n And we\u2019ll have to pay them money.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t feed the outrage machine.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Fort Worth Star-Telegram<\/p>\n Bud Kennedy is a Fort Worth Star-Telegram opinion columnist. In a 54-year Texas newspaper career, he has covered two Super Bowls, a presidential inauguration, seven national political conventions and 19 Texas Legislature sessions..
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