Back in September, a local weirdo named Patrick Roth made the news, after he shared a now-deleted YouTube video where he toyed with and taunted an OKC cop that he claimed was "sleeping on the job."
Naturally, our crack local news teams jumped all over the story.
Unlike us, the local media didn't seem to care or notice that Ricketts was technically off-duty and working a private security gig with his wife in the car, or that Patrick Roth is a well-know and completely unreliable nutjob YouTube provocateur who routinely harasses government workers and the general public by filming them without consent. The local media had clickable "COP SLEEPING ON JOB!!! OMG!!!" headline and ran with it, leading to so much attention and controversy that the OKCPD had to organize a press conference to address the accusations.
Well, it now looks like the media may have run a little too fast.
On November 4th, Ricketts and his wife filed a defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy lawsuit in Oklahoma County against Roth, one of his cohorts, and three local media outlets – KFOR Channel 4, KWTV Channel 9 and The Oklahoman.