American Fork called a hearing about a tax increase. The first man at the microphone lives an hour away, and its police department pulled him over there.
PRIMARY SOURCEEvery quote below is from American Fork City’s own recording of its Truth in Taxation hearing, held Tuesday evening. The city published no transcript; this site transcribed the full hearing.
American Fork is asking its residents for 8.48 percent more property tax, $33.41 a year on an average home, to help staff a new fire station. The city came to explain the fire station. That is not what the evening was about. Speaker after speaker stood up and told the council that the thing they cannot afford is the police department. One of them brought the arithmetic. And two of them used to sit on that council; between them, they spent twenty years on it. The council votes on the rate August 25.
What the city came to say
Finance Director Anna Montoya and City Administrator David Bunker laid out the ask. The increase raises $660,000. It pays for nine of the twelve firefighters needed to staff Fire Station 5-3 on 620 South, a house the city is buying and converting into a temporary station. Full personnel cost is about $1.5 million a year; the rest comes from what Bunker called a haircut to every department.
American Fork has raised property tax twice in thirty years, in 2008 and in 2021. Alpine School District is not raising taxes this year.
Before comments began, Mayor Brad Frost read the rules. Two minutes each. Stay on topic. “You may be asked to sit down or your microphone will be cut off if you do not follow these parameters.”
The first speaker knew about the rule
After the opening commenter, Frost called Aaron Booker. Booker walked up and opened with a sentence built for that rule.
“Give me a second to finish this and you’ll see how this is tax related.”
Then he told the council what happened to him.
“My name is Aaron Booker. I do not live in American Fork. In May of this year I was stopped on Interstate 15, one hour north, near the city of Bountiful, by American Fork police officer Bronson Kitchen, under the false guise of an HOV violation. The real intent of the stop was to be an off the books intimidation ploy. He wore no body cam. There was no call to dispatch.”
“From the moment Officer Kitchen approached my car the encounter escalated unnecessarily. He immediately resorted to threats of violence when I declined to comply with his unlawful order. When it became clear that his presence commanded neither fear or intimidation, Officer Kitchen refused to complete the purpose of the stop, despite my numerous requests for a citation so I could handle it in court. This exceeded the lawful scope of an already questionable unlawful stop.”
On the recording of the stop, the threat Booker is describing is audible. The officer asks him: “You want me to have highway come and break this window?” The stop is not a rumor. The channel Lackluster published it on May 22, and 1.1 million people have watched it.
What Booker said next is the part that had not been public before.
“After the encounter I filed a complaint with AFPD. Days later the recording of the stop went viral. Shortly after, Officer Kitchen then called me and delivered a clearly coerced and forced apology. Regardless, I accepted it and moved on, until I obtained the police report. Keep in mind that the report was written days after the apology. It contains statements that, based on video evidence, are categorically false and directly contradict his own admission in his apology.”
The paper trail is public, and it is dated.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| May 2026 | The stop, on I-15 near Bountiful, an hour north of American Fork. No body camera, no call to dispatch, no citation issued. |
| May 22 | Lackluster publishes the recording: “This might be my favorite traffic stop.... EVER”. 1.1 million views. Booker files a complaint with AFPD. |
| May 29 | Lackluster publishes the apology call. Kitchen, on tape: “I do want to apologize to you for stopping you there… I shouldn’t have told you that I was going to have your window broken by another agency.” |
| After the call | Chief Cameron Paul emails Booker the discipline imposed on Kitchen: a directed apology, a letter of reprimand in his file, and suspension of his take-home patrol vehicle, no duration stated, plus a warning about future conduct. |
| Days later | The police report is written, days after the apology. Booker, at the podium: it “contains statements that, based on video evidence, are categorically false and directly contradict his own admission in his apology.” |
| June 12 | Lackluster puts the report next to the dashcam, frame by frame: “Caught Lying On His Own Dashcam - AFTER The Viral Video!” |
| Aug 11 | Booker announces the civil-rights suit from the podium of the city’s tax hearing. Kitchen is still a school resource officer. |
An apology on tape, a written reprimand, and a report that contradicts the apology, written afterward. That is the same shape as the case this site has been documenting all summer: what the officer swore, measured against what the camera recorded, down to the lieutenant’s own calls and texts during the raid. The department disciplined the stop. It kept the report. And it kept the officer in the school.
He was driving home from chaperoning middle schoolers
Booker told the council one more thing about Officer Kitchen.
“Let me remind everyone that Officer Kitchen serves as a school resource officer, entrusted with regular access to children as young as 12 to 14. It is indefensible to allow this officer to continue serving as an SRO.”
After the hearing, in the hallway, on the stream of Frugal Family Flies Again, Booker explained what Kitchen was doing on Interstate 15 an hour outside American Fork. He was driving home from Lagoon, where he had been chaperoning middle school students. Booker passed him on the freeway. That is the whole reason for the stop.
“What he got mad about was that I passed him… He wasn’t going to call in. He wasn’t going to do anything. It was just him to flex on me.”
The school assignment is not background to the stop. It is the trip he was on when he made it.
CONFIRMEDBooker’s statement was made in open public comment and is on American Fork City’s own published recording of the hearing.CORROBORATEDThe stop, the recorded apology call, the chief’s discipline email, and the report-versus-dashcam contradiction are each published in Lackluster’s three videos of May 22, May 29, and June 12, which this site holds transcribed.CONFIRMEDOfficer Kitchen is listed on the American Fork page of giglio-bradylist.com, which describes the apology. That site is compiled by journalists and private citizens; it is not a prosecutor’s designation, and no Utah County Attorney or Attorney General Brady listing of any American Fork officer appears in any public source. Booker called it “the Brady list” from the podium; this site reports it as what it is.
Then he told them he is suing
“Your inactions speak volumes. It signals your willingness to tolerate abuse of authority. Since the city refuses to act voluntarily, then outside legal action will force you to change. I will help motivate you with this reality via a civil rights litigation utilizing the same attorney as Mr. Benjamin Schneider, and others.”
The room applauded. Booker sat down. He was the second person to speak all evening.
Booker does not live in American Fork. The stop he described happened an hour outside the city. The people who will carry whatever it ends up costing were sitting behind him.
The department he is suing already has a federal docket trail.
| Case | Filed | Where it ended |
|---|---|---|
| Boldt v. American Fork City 2:20-cv-00817 | 2020 | Dismissed. |
| Greenland v. Cannon 2:22-cv-00137 | 2022 | Dismissed with prejudice, no findings. Published on this site, docket entry by docket entry. |
| Brown v. American Fork Police Dept. 2:23-cv-00578 | 2023 | Dismissed at the pleadings; the Tenth Circuit decided the appeal in an unpublished order, February 2026. |
| Hulse v. American Fork Police Dept. 2:24-cv-00367 | 2024 | Still open at this site’s last docket review, in June. |
Four federal civil-rights actions in five years, none of which has produced a finding of liability. The lieutenant who led the March raid was a named defendant in the Greenland suit two years earlier, as a sergeant, and was promoted after it ended. The suits described from the podium Tuesday would be the fifth and sixth.
In June, this site wrote that the critic is not fighting this alone. Tuesday, a hearing about firefighters said it out loud.
CONFIRMEDThe four prior federal dockets are public records, cited by case number. Each ended in dismissal or remains pending; no court has found American Fork or any officer liable in any of them.INFERENCEBooker said “the same attorney as Mr. Benjamin Schneider,” and did not name the lawyer. Commentary channels covering the meeting name him as civil rights attorney Solomon Radner. This site has not confirmed counsel of record and does not assert it. What is on the city’s recording is that a second man says he is bringing a civil rights case against American Fork PD using the same lawyer as Schneider.
Then an accountant did the math
Several speakers later Frost called Daniel Soroka, who opened by saying he is an accountant and that he loves numbers. He had run the city’s ask against the city’s exposure.
“I also know that lawsuits are expensive, and we just learned of another lawsuit potentially today. And that costs lawyer fees, that costs settlement fees, and that’s very, very expensive. And there are a number of ongoing lawsuits and future lawsuits.”
“If the settlements, just the settlements, cost seven hundred twenty five thousand, that’s not including the lawyer fees. That’s fifty dollars per resident, because of the city’s incapability of upholding our constitution. That’s not small numbers, and when you add in the lawyer fees, when you add in extra costs, it balloons. And it comes out of our pockets. Out of our children’s mouths. And for what purpose? To protect people breaking the law.”
“Why do the residents have to pay for that? Why are the residents the ones being held accountable when the city does not uphold our constitutional rights? I think police misconduct is part of the budget, and is part of taxes.”
The lawsuit Soroka had just learned of was the one announced from the same microphone, minutes earlier. The liability grew in the room while the city was asking for the money.
Hold the two numbers next to each other. The tax increase raises $660,000, for firefighters. The settlements, by the accountant’s count, are already $725,000, before legal fees. The city is asking its residents for less than what one of them says its police conduct has already cost. Nobody on the dais answered him. The hearing was for listening only.
ASSERTEDThe $725,000 figure is Soroka’s, stated in public comment. This site reports it as his statement and is checking it against American Fork’s published annual financial reports and its risk pool disclosures.
Then two former councilmen stood up
On January 2, 2024, American Fork City put out a press release welcoming its incoming council members. Near the bottom, it thanked the two men who were leaving. Kevin Barnes served from January 2016 to December 2023. Robert Shelton served from January 2012 to December 2023. In honor of their time, the release says, “they were both given a brick (spare) from Historic City Hall as a metaphor for how they have helped build American Fork.”
Tuesday night, both of them were at the public microphone.
Barnes was on the dais for the 2021 increase, and he reminded the council what was agreed back then.
“I was on that side the last time we had a property tax increase… it was kind of informally agreed that we would do more frequent increases and smaller amounts… I think that message was heard loud and clear, at least by me. Bottom line of this is, I think you ought to keep the increase to about four percent.”
Shelton served twelve years, through a dozen of this city’s budgets. At the microphone he introduced himself only as a resident who owns multiple businesses in the city, one of them a financial planning firm. He did not mention the twelve years. Then he graded the budget in front of him.
“When you say you use zero-based budgeting, and say that you’re putting the first priorities in, but the last thing to make it in is public safety, that doesn’t jive. I look at the budget and the increases of what was happening between last year and this year, and there’s a lot of sand being put in before the rocks are being put in. We treat these firemen as political pawns to say that will get public support. Otherwise, why in the world are we hiring a communications person, an admin assistant, $240,000 for economic development, ahead of public safety?”
“To do that the way that it has been done, I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but it very much feels that it’s not being honest and truthful with the residents… If we ever get back to this place of raising taxes again, let’s be honest with the public about what we’re actually raising the taxes for.”
The firefighters are the face of the ask. The man who spent longer on that council than anyone else in the room says they are the pawns of it, and that the presentation built around them is not honest. That is not an activist’s reading of the budget. It is the institution’s own memory, speaking from the floor it used to govern.
One more fact sits next to Shelton’s $240,000 question. Mayor Brad Frost’s own amended conflict-of-interest disclosure, received by the city on May 4, lists his current employer: the American Fork Chamber of Commerce, where he is the paid President and CEO, responsible, in the form’s words, for “day to day operations of the chamber.” On the city’s own council page, the mayor’s assignment portfolio begins with Public Safety.
The economic development spending a twelve-year councilman questioned, and the public safety it was budgeted ahead of, are both the mayor’s: one as his paid employer’s cause, the other as his assignment.
CONFIRMEDBarnes’s and Shelton’s service dates, and the bricks, are from American Fork City’s own January 2, 2024 press release. Their comments are on the city’s recording of the hearing. Mayor Frost’s Chamber role is from his own amended disclosure, filed with the city; his Public Safety assignment is from the city’s Mayor & Council page. The disclosure is self-reported and public; no one here alleges it was concealed.
The rest of the room
John Mohan, a resident of sixteen years who has interviewed every member of the council for his site, told them what he has been publishing.
“I’m hearing about lawsuits. I wrote a piece recently asking for a citizen review board, because what we’re hearing from the police is very different than what we’re actually seeing on video. I’m concerned about that and the cost of lawsuits.”
The video he means is public in unusual volume. The journalist paid AFPD $1,836 for the footage of his own cases, and the department published it to the world.
Greg Hazard described two encounters with American Fork officers: a criminal trespass citation he says was retaliation for asking why an officer was parked in a handicap stall, and a second call in which an officer swore at him and, he says, told him he would traumatize him. Hazard says he holds the paper.
“As a result I received apology letters and ownership from Chief Paul on behalf of the police department in American Fork City. All of this that I have on body cam. I shared how I was victimized with you two months ago, and only Councilman Ryan Hunter reached out to me.”
Julia Rodriguez told the council she has been a Utah resident for thirty years and comes to American Fork for business.
“We have still not seen a positive change in accountability and transparency in the American Fork police department. As much as I love and support the police department, I do not trust this department. I do not trust this city.”
On the transparency she is asking about, this site has reported that the records officer who releases AFPD’s footage shares a home with an AFPD sergeant.
Steve Goodwin, who published the American Fork Citizen from 1980 to 2005, told them what the city’s name now costs him outside Utah.
“From what I see it’s an embarrassment right now. I leave the state, go to different places, they ask where I’m from, I say American Fork, and all of a sudden I get told, what’s going on with the LEGO situation. I don’t even say that anymore. I just say Provo.”
What is going on with the LEGO situation has a public record: the map, the law, the bodycam, and every update on this site.
The family in the room
Tyler Shaw sat through the hearing with his parents, his wife and his aunt. Shaw was the driver of the black Elantra that American Fork officer Cole Richardson pulled over on March 8, the stop that opened the case against Benjamin Schneider. Richardson swore Shaw failed to stop at the stop line.
This site has already measured that. Frame by frame against the patrol car’s own dashcam and GPS, the Elantra came to a complete stop, stationary for at least a second and a half, at a position within seventy centimeters of the stop sign. There is no painted stop line at that intersection. And Richardson’s own GPS shows him rolling the same sign at about five miles an hour.
Shaw’s parents own property in American Fork. After the meeting, his father said what he thought of the evening.
“I like the way the people brought up the police factors in conjunction with the taxes… And then with the idea of the lawsuits, and who’s going to pay for those, that’s in the taxes.”
They live in American Fork. They own property there. On August 25 the council will vote to raise their taxes, and part of what that money covers is the city’s exposure in cases built against their own son.
CONFIRMEDThe stop finding is this site’s own photogrammetry against the patrol car’s dashcam and Axon GPS, published in “Fail to stop before the stop line” and at the law. Shaw’s presence and his family’s comments are from attendee recordings of the hearing.
No clapping
The room applauded when Booker finished. Before the next speaker, Mayor Frost asked them to stop.
“We don’t need claps, we don’t need cheers. Let’s just, I’m asking you not to.”
The woohoos in question belonged in part to the woman filming from the gallery: the host of Frugal Family Flies Again, who goes by Frugal Momma, drove in for the hearing, spoke during the public comment herself, and streamed the whole evening, the hallway included.
“Apparently my woohoos and everybody else’s clapping was too vigorous.”
One police officer was posted in the chamber. Attendees who have been coming since the spring said that at the meetings during the peak of the attention there were five or six.
What other cities have done
Nothing said Tuesday night is without precedent. Other cities have done Soroka’s arithmetic, and acted on it, and the instruments they used are a matter of record.
Eagle Mountain, Utah. When Bunker explained the tax increase, he named the cities American Fork competes with for people and resources: Saratoga Springs grew 62.8 percent, Eagle Mountain grew 53 percent. Eagle Mountain, now larger than American Fork, does not run a police department. It contracts with the Utah County Sheriff’s Office, whose deputies work the city under an agreement the city can size, audit, and end. The growth comparator the city administrator chose does not carry the line item at all.
Maywood, California. In 2010, Maywood’s insurance pool canceled the city’s liability and workers’ compensation coverage over its claims history: $18.8 million in general liability claims in five years, 92 percent of it from the police department. The city disbanded the department and contracted the Los Angeles County Sheriff, and a California appellate court upheld the decision. No referendum did that. The insurer did the arithmetic Soroka did Tuesday, and the department did not survive it.
Isleton, California. The city council disbanded its police department after two critical grand jury reports, when the numbers showed that bringing the department up to professional standards would cost more than the sheriff’s contract that replaced it.
Camden, New Jersey. In 2013, Camden dissolved its police department outright after lawsuits uncovered officers planting evidence and fabricating reports, and courts overturned 88 convictions. A county force was built in its place; every officer had to reapply. By 2019 the city’s homicides had fallen by nearly two thirds.
An insurer, a grand jury, a council, a county contract. Four different instruments, and in each case the finding that came first is the one an accountant stated from the floor Tuesday: the department had become a cost the residents could no longer carry.
CONFIRMEDEagle Mountain’s contract policing is documented by the Utah County Sheriff’s Office itself. Maywood, Isleton, and Camden are documented in the linked court coverage and news records. No speaker Tuesday proposed replacing AFPD; the precedents are this site’s context for the vote, not the room’s demand.
What happens next
The hearing took no action. It was comment only. The council votes on the tax rate on Tuesday, August 25. Several residents asked for the specific department cuts and the firefighter wage schedule behind the $660,000, and were told to leave their names with the recorder. The budgets they were comparing are the city’s own published documents: FY-2026 adopted and FY-2027 interim.
$33.41 a year on the average home is what the city asked for, in the name of the firefighters. Fifty dollars a resident, by the accountant’s count, is what the police settlements already cost. Only one of those numbers was on the agenda.
To be fair, and it matters. The tax increase is for firefighters, and the city said so plainly and in detail: a temporary station on 620 South, nine of the twelve people needed to run it, $1.5 million in salary against a $660,000 ask, with the balance cut out of every other department. American Fork has raised property tax twice in thirty years, and it sits in the fastest growing county in the country. One speaker, Tara Lee Bennett, spoke in favor, because a relative has a medically fragile child and she has seen what a close ambulance is worth. No court has found American Fork or any of its officers liable in any of the matters raised in that room; every officer named here is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and the criminal cases against Benjamin Schneider are unadjudicated. Aaron Booker’s account of his stop is his account. The $725,000 is one resident’s number, offered from the floor. Robert Shelton questioned the honesty of a presentation, not the legality of anything, and he accused no one of a crime; the mayor’s Chamber position is disclosed on a form the city itself publishes. What is not in dispute is what the recording shows: the city convened a hearing about a fire station, and its residents, including twenty years of its own council, came to talk about what the city has been doing with its authority and who pays for it.
Sources: American Fork City’s own recording of the 2026 Truth in Taxation hearing, published to its YouTube channel and transcribed in full by this site; attendee recordings of the same hearing and the hallway afterward, including Frugal Family Flies Again and DFJ; American Fork City’s January 2, 2024 press release on its outgoing council members; Mayor Frost’s amended conflict-of-interest disclosure and the city’s Mayor & Council page; the American Fork page of giglio-bradylist.com; Lackluster’s three published videos of the Booker stop (May 22, May 29, June 12); the Utah County Sheriff’s Office contract-cities pages; court and news records on Maywood, Isleton, and Camden as linked above; American Fork City’s published budget and financial documents. See also the stop, measured and the bodycam record.
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