In his weekly highly edited outrage video, formerly homeless YouTuber Jeremiah Payne begged his fans to make his current video “go viral” and for them to call flood a Clarksville, Tennessee, child protective services worker.
The worker, identified by Payne as Karissa Cunningham, approached Payne and his wife Samantha as the couple worked their usual street corner holding up signs saying, “fuck the police” and “defund the police” after receiving a complaint that the couple’s child accompanied them during their protest on an extremely hot day.
Cunningham said the Paynes, who were refusing to identify themselves to her, had been the subject of multiple complaints from someone in the area. That caller reported that they had repeatedly stood on the street corner with their daughter in extreme heat and appeared homeless.
The CPS worker said that she came out to investigate the call and was on the verge of closing the case when she spotted the Paynes on the street corner with their child. The child was sitting under an umbrella on the street corner with her dog and a cooler filled with drinks.
As Cunningham and Samantha Payne talked, Jeremiah Payne yelled that having his daughter in the heat was no different than having her at a hot playground. He asked why Cunningham was not at a playground investigating those parents and Cunningham replied that no one had called and reported those parents.
When Cunningham noticed that Jeremiah Payne was recording her, she said that it was “fine” but that she would have appreciated if Payne had notified her that she was being recorded. Payne responded that he didn’t have to tell her he was recording and that he had every right to record a government official in the course of her duties.
Cunningham again repeated that it was fine and turned her attention back to Samantha Payne. Samantha said that she would not identify herself to Cunningham but had provided her address to the worker. Cunningham said it was fine, and she could get their names from the housing authority, to which Jeremiah Payne exclaimed, “over my dead body!”
Jeremiah Payne told Cunningham that she was trying to take his child away. Cunningham retorted that if she was going to do that, she would have already done that. Payne made a vague threat, and his child yelled that Cunningham was “being a Karen.”
The video abruptly ended at that point with a note that Cunningham threatened if Samantha Payne did not identify her family that police would be called and the couple would have their child taken away. No footage of that incident was shown.
In the prologue to the video, Payne said that Cunningham wanted to do a home visit, and he needed his viewers’ help in deciding if he would let the “child trafficking bitch” into his house for the visit.
He displayed Cunningham’s business card and called on his viewers to contact Cunningham “if they wanted to” but warned them to be respectful in doing so. He told his viewers to let Cunningham know that he “had friends in low places.”
Payne also made the claim that he returned to Clarksville because the rent was cheap and that he was there to expose corruption in the police force. He blamed the involvement of CPS on intimidation tactics by police before he ended his statement.
Payne’s video had 184 views as of press time.
