COP Punches HANDCUFFED Woman 5 Times, Then His OWN Bodycam DESTROYS Him In Court

When you punched that woman in the face five times, you failed your responsibility. And again, what would we have done if we were in your shoes? Who knows, maybe the same. Who knows? But what you did was wrong. It was wrong.

Our digital desk, we’re going to be taking you to a sentencing of a former Brooklyn police officer, the man in the gray suit there, that is Paul Stein. He is charged with and being sentenced on one count of simple assault for punching a woman who was being arrested, was strapped into a restraining chair at the jail. And he proceeded to punch her a handful of times in the face. We will show you that video after the sentencing, but for now, let’s take you live into court in Parma.

“You want to get a copy of that, correct?”

“I did receive, yes, and I had a chance to review it. Thank you.”

“Okay, so we are here today for purposes of sentencing. Mr. Gentile, I’m going to hear first from you.”

“Your honor, thank you. So, as the court’s aware, I’m acting as special prosecutor for the city of Brooklyn. I had the occasion to speak with the attorney for the named victim in this matter, Melissa Tyler. I asked Keith Hanssboro—is his name—I asked attorney Hanssboro if his client wished to come to sentencing, or if they did, and if they did not, if they would like me to read a statement into the record. So, with the court’s permission, attorney Hanssboro sent me an email with a prepared statement from Miss Tyler.”

“Watching the video of what happened is very difficult for me, and it has greatly affected my life forever. While I do believe I deserve justice, I am simply too traumatized to come into the courthouse to face my attacker at this time. I was victimized by Paul Stein when he abused his power as a police officer. I am very afraid that I am about to be revictimized by not getting the justice I deserve, because Officer Stein may be treated better than an average citizen by the criminal justice system due to his prior position of power, which he abused. The fact that Officer Stein was a police officer makes his crime much worse than that of a regular citizen who would violently beat another person who was half their size while they were restrained and defenseless. Officer Stein should not be given preferential treatment during his criminal case because he was a police officer. I will feel fear every time I encounter a police officer in my daily life because of what Officer Stein did to me. I am also upset and offended that Officer Stein, excuse me, has never expressed any remorse for what he did to me.”

“Your honor, that’s the end of the prepared statement that was provided to me. City of Brooklyn has no further information for the court. We’ll defer to the court for sentencing. Thank you.”

“Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Gentile. Now, I wasn’t sure I was going to do this, but I think it’s necessary. I just, so we’re all on the same page and we all know why we’re here today, we’re going to watch the video. Would you put that on for me?”

Dan DeRoos with 19 News: The judge in an interesting move here wants to play the video. She’s probably already seen it several times, but wants to play it out in court again. I do want to warn you, this is pretty graphic to watch. You’re a woman that’s in a restraining chair, she had been arrested on a previous warrant, and was brought into the jail there in Brooklyn. She was a little combative, she wasn’t cooperating, so they strapped her into a restraining chair. She had her ankles restrained, she was already cuffed, handcuffed in the back. You see in the video Officer Paul Stein standing on her feet. She was wearing just socks. He stands on her feet, and at some point as she’s still struggling and trying to move her feet out from underneath his boots, that’s when he strikes her in the face a handful of times. Do want to just give you a warning, this is pretty tough to watch. There’s audio.

“Get off my foot now! Get off my foot now!”

This is former police sergeant Paul Stein, an 18-year veteran whose career is now unraveling inside a suburban municipal courtroom. Stein believes that a split-second reaction to an unruly arrestee will excuse what happened, but he has no idea that prosecutors intend to make him an example. In their eyes, an officer who wears the uniform must maintain complete self-control, no matter what occurs.

As the bench prepares to examine the holding cell video, Stein sits motionless beside his defense lawyer, quietly awaiting judgment. Did he act on pure instinct, or did he commit a crime that demands jail time?

“So, I tell you what we’re going to do here. Our photographer is not going to show the screen, because we had made an agreement to protect the identity of the victim when we originally did a story with her. So let’s watch the story where you get to see the video with her face blurred, so that you have an idea of what happened that day and why this former officer is being sentenced. Take a look.”

“Get off my foot now! Get off my foot now!”

In a matter of seconds, this woman went from being a suspect to a potential assault victim. She asked us to conceal her identity.

“It was hard to believe that that was actually me.”

She was punched in the face repeatedly by a Brooklyn police officer. Now she’s breaking her silence.

“I’ve had nightmares that I feel like stem from everything that I’ve seen and that has happened to me. The trauma, a little bit, yeah.”

The officer is Paul Stein, a sergeant who has since been fired. 19 Investigates obtained this exclusive body cam footage from Brooklyn police. It shows how it all happened.

“It is very difficult for me to watch the video.”

That Channel 19 News aired on September 4th. Police arrested the woman on an outstanding warrant for aggravated menacing. They say she was belligerent and uncooperative with officers. Video shows seven officers immediately surround her when she arrives. They strap her ankles to a restraint chair. Her hands are already cuffed behind her back. Meanwhile, Stein is standing over her, keeping her shoulders pinned back.

“The police officer strapped me to a chair and held me down while one large police officer crushed my feet with his boots. I was in a lot of pain, and I did not have shoes on.”

Video appears to show Stein using his full weight to stand on the woman’s stocking feet. We obtained the department’s restraint chair policy. It doesn’t authorize standing on a suspect’s feet; in fact, it doesn’t mention it at all. You can hear the woman hollering at Stein several times to get off.

“You heard me! Get off my feet!”

But when Stein doesn’t budge, she spits in his face. That’s when video shows the sergeant delivering a series of punches to her head. Police documented her bruises. The woman saw the video for the first time on 19 News. She has since hired attorney Keith Hanssbro. She now plans to sue both the police department and Paul Stein.

“It wasn’t necessary to step on her bare feet with his 250 lbs of weight in his boots, to crush her for 3 minutes while she was screaming in pain, and no one did anything. They let it happen.”

“Would you say that he provoked this?”

“I think he has a duty to de-escalate. And not only did Paul Stein fail that duty, he actually escalated the situation.”

The police chief investigated and terminated Stein in February. A special prosecutor charged him with misdemeanor assault. Stein has since pleaded not guilty.

“You think he should have been charged with something more serious, a felony?”

“A felony, yes.”

We reached out to Stein and his attorney for comment, but we haven’t heard back. The city and police department didn’t respond to our questions about the restraint chair policy. Stein’s pre-trial hearing is set for March 2nd. The woman’s attorney plans to file his lawsuit sometime this summer. We’ll of course keep you posted. Mike Mason, 19 News.

“So that gets us to today. Fast forward now to sentencing on that charge of simple assault. Again, they are showing that video in court. Our cameras are not showing that because you do see the woman’s, the victim’s face, in the courtroom. But so that’s why you’ll be seeing just the members, and that is former officer Stein there in the gray suit. Let’s listen in as they watch the rest of that video.”

The footage playing inside the courtroom documents what happened after Melissa Tyler was brought into the Brooklyn jail on a misdemeanor warrant. Strapped into a restraint chair with her ankles secured, Tyler struggled against the nylon bindings. Stein stepped forward, placing his heavy boots directly onto her bare feet to keep her pinned. Tyler screamed in pain repeatedly, demanding he step off, but Stein refused to move.

When Tyler spat into his face, Stein did not step back or call for assistance. Instead, he struck her five times in the head while she was completely defenseless. Now, his defense attorney must explain how a seasoned police officer lost total control.

As we have our audio back, let me give just a warning. We do know that the victim in this case, in that body cam video, she does use some pretty vulgar language, so we’ll put out that disclaimer here as we listen into the courtroom and they finish up watching the video of her arrest, and then Officer Stein, as you saw, punching her in the face after she spit in his face.

“Get off my foot now!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“Get off my foot!”

“Shut your mouth!”

“Get off my foot!”

“Fuck off!”

“Don’t spit.”

“Fuck you!”

“Don’t spit!”

“Fuck you!”

“I think we can stop it. Believe it goes on for another minute or so. Yes. All right. Mr. Bit Antonio, anything you’d like to say on behalf of your client?”

“Yes, sir. Your honor, please. The first that I would like to say, your honor, is that my client definitely—I can say this for a fact—he definitely has a lot of empathy for the victim in this case. He’s expressed that to me from the very beginning in this case. He’s expressed that to me while we were preparing just for the record, because I know this will get some media attention around. Everybody should know, as the folks in this courtroom know, a lot of them, when someone’s charged with a crime, they’re instructed not to make statements. If my client made any statement to or about the victim, I would be down his throat, your honor. He knows better than that, okay?

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have empathy. That doesn’t mean he’s not sorry for what he did. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t regret what he did. As the court knows, and and I know the court, your honor, well enough to know that when the court says it looked at and considered the entire sentencing memorandum and all the attachments, I know that’s the case. So I’m not going to get up here and read it and go through every document, because I know the court assimilated all that information. But for the record, and it has been made a public record because we did file it as this court requires us to do, um, there’s a letter in that packet from my client, exhibit [inaudible]. He expresses, in my opinion, very articulately everything about this case: how it affected the victim, how it affected him, his entire relevant past, how he found himself here, and how he’s sorry he’s here.

“You know, we can imagine—you’ve been on the bench for a long time, we’ve all been doing this for long enough to know that for someone like Paul Stein, this is the most—and this isn’t ‘poor Paul Stein’ day, but it’s a reality—the most difficult day in his life. Anyone that assimilates all that information in that sentencing memorandum, right, is going to come to the conclusion that this man at 20 years old joined the military. We’re supposed to consider his military record, that’s part of the—it’s in the statute as part of the purposes and principles of sentencing. At 20 years old, went to the US Marines. He fought in Iraq. He served bravely, your honor.

“One of the attachments is the letter from the United States Marine Corps written August 27th of 2004, 23 years ago. I don’t know that you could sing the praises of somebody more than this USMC person did of Paul Stein. And what can’t be lost in this, your honor, is he didn’t write that letter in response to anything from me. He wrote that letter 23 years ago, and he put his thoughts about what a leader and what a good man he is. So he goes to Iraq, and he fights. He comes back here, as we know, again, a lot of people in this courtroom know who are the best candidates to be police officers. A lot of times they’re military people, um, because they have that training.

“And that dovetales into another letter that’s in the file from Ohio Police Officer Training Commission gentleman, uh, Paul Zarowski. Again, this letter is written in 2006, 20 years ago. Zarowski said basically, if I could summarize, he did—he graduated the top of his class in the police academy. He did, he said in his own words, he did better than anybody I’ve ever taught. I thought, when I saw that, it’s on a Brooklyn Heights letterhead, and he worked for Brooklyn, oh, they must know each other. Even though this is a 20-year-old letter, I asked my client, ‘Do you know his number?’ He goes, ‘No, I don’t really know the guy.’ I called Brooklyn Heights PD, they had him call me back, you know, he didn’t even—it was 20 years ago, he didn’t even remember the letter. He said, ‘If you show it to me, I’ll refresh my recollection.’

“So, in other words, this was unbiased, unfiltered opinion about what a great candidate he is. And I’m not going to get lost in, uh, not saying we’re sorry for the victim, because we are. But as the statute says, we look at the totality of the circumstances. We look at the man. We look at the—the overriding question here is, is there any reason for us to—well, first of all, it’s to punish him, let’s get punitive with him, that’s one of the things. And then the other one is to protect society, so kind of like in felony sentencing, but they give us different factors, right? So we look at—I can’t think of one, I can’t think of one reason to believe that’s rational, that’s logical, that would lead someone to believe that he’s a danger to anybody when you consider his military record, his police record, and then all the letters from friends and family that say basically the same thing: he’s a go-to fix-it guy, he’s a guy that we can count on, he’s a neighborhood guy that’s always helping us. Um, so there’s no reason—I can’t think of even one, your honor.

“With that being said, he is—he’s very regretful that the victim went through this, and he’s regretful that he finds himself here. Because guess what? On September 4th of 2025, right, when he woke up in the morning after 18 years in service at the police department, does anybody believe that he thought that this was going to happen? No, it wasn’t pre-planned. None of this was pre-planned. It was instinctively…”

Defense counsel argues that the sergeant acted on pure human instinct rather than malice. In their narrative, Stein endured years of spotless service, including deployments with the Marine Corps in Iraq, before ever encountering such an intolerable personal assault. The defense contends that being spat on is recognized as an assault under Ohio law, triggering an involuntary reflex that lasted only 5 seconds. They claim Stein is already thoroughly punished by losing his career and pension. But as counsel asks the court for leniency, the judge prepares to remind him of the higher standard he was sworn to strictly uphold.

“…because that seems to be the sentiment nowadays, and I hate lawyers that represent cops, ‘They come up to me and they spit in my face. I can’t tell you what I would do. I thought about it. Now I can tell you I wouldn’t do anything.’ But what if some lawyer or some person punched him right in the face and broke his nose? Guess what? That’s felonious assault. We know that a broken nose is felonious assault. One-second snap. But if that same person had the ability to deliberate and think about, ‘What should I do?’, they probably wouldn’t do that.

“And the reason, your honor, that I included that last whole section in my brief—I don’t know if it’s necessary or not, but I got to thinking about that entire scenario. It’s—it’s thought-provoking to me as a lawyer that the case law is so full of cases where people in this victim’s condition spit in the face of police officers. They get charged with misdemeanor assault, they go to trial, they’re convicted, a judge bangs the gavel and says, ‘There’s sufficient evidence to find that you’re guilty of assault.’ Guess what goes to the court of appeals? Every single time. Every single time, the court of appeals says, ‘Reversed, conviction vacated. Spitting in someone’s face is an assault.’

“So, guess what? The lawyer that the person hates that says, ‘I hate you because you represent cops, and I hate cops,’ and spits in the guy’s face, and he punches him—self-defense claim because it’s not assault yet. Yet, judges and juries think, ‘Yeah, it is assault.’ So it’s—it’s an interesting dynamic on this whole thing, judge. It doesn’t control, I hope not, where we’re going with this whole thing. What should control is principles and purposes of sentencing.

“He’s sorry. He’s remorseful. He has empathy for her. This is literally, if you count the seconds on the—on the countdown clock on that video, 3 seconds of response in almost 19 years to an unexpected, vile, disgusting act that confronted him at work. I guarantee you, if he had the chance to think about it, we wouldn’t be sitting here today, and he’d still be working at the police department, rather than now working as a plumber. And certainly no disrespect to plumbers, but he served this community, they—he’s a—he always has been a man that works with his hands, as attested to by some of those letters. He fixes people’s lawnmowers, plumbing, cars, whatever. He’s a guy that does it without being asked to do it.

“So now, and he frankly, he said, you know, as hard as it is, and as hard as it is to come to terms with initially, as hard as it was to come to terms with initially, ‘I’m in a better place now. I’m not in a stressful atmosphere. I—I—I help people.’ He says, ‘I don’t know how many times I still serve people. I serve the public, but I do it in a different way.’ And now he’s out of police work. So the answer to the question is, is he a danger to anybody? No. Should he be punished? I can’t think of why. What would even one day—what would an hour in jail do that hasn’t been done to him already?

“And again, it’s not a pity party for him, it’s a reality situation. He’s lost his job, he’s lost his career. The victim has moved on, the victim has been charged. He has been charged. He’s going to pay the—the price now.

“And one other thought, your honor, um, I’ve been representing police officers for a long time, probably more than 25 years. I’ve represented police officers, I’ve represented in use-of-force cases. You know what this case taught me, what dawned on me was that—and I asked the OSP guy, I asked another use-of-force guy that I know, I asked Paul, I said, ‘Paul, do they train you in the academy or in any after-training as to how to handle someone that spits in your face?’ He said, ‘No.’

“It’s kind of interesting to me that they don’t train for that, because someone—someone analyzing this in the calm of the chambers or an officer something would say, ‘All you had to do—you don’t have to hit her in the mouth to stop the next spit projectile from coming, all you have to do is push her face away.’ Yeah, it’s easy to say. Maybe that’s the thing. But then we get to talking, well, maybe people bite too, you know, in that situation. So I think that’s interesting, there’s no protocol to do that. But regardless of protocol or no protocol, he overreacted, and he knows it.

“And the other thing is, your honor, you saw him on that video after that spitting incident. You could see the spittle hanging on his beard. And as it’s—we mentioned in the brief, it wasn’t just there, and he felt the spray all over his face. He stood there stoically, held her, and waited till they put her in the restraint chair. I’ve had restraint chair cases, they’re very careful about what they do and who’s doing what to the legs and the arms and the waist, and they have a protocol to go through. All he had was his hands on his shoulder, and he’s managing the feet. Not standing on her feet just because they care, so he’s putting pressure on the feet, and he didn’t say a word. He didn’t respond to anything about the wife, the kids, nothing. He just stood there, and his training came back, and he did what he did.

“He can’t change the hands of time, but he would, your honor, if he could. That’s not who he is. And we’re asking this court to pass a sentence that’s commensurate with—commensurate with all of that stuff, including the purpose and the principles. Thank you.”

“Did your client want to say anything?”

“I’ll leave it up to him.”

“I’m going to have you come on up to the podium, council. You come with him.”

“I am truly sorry. I am truly sorry. I served 18 years in law enforcement, had a long career. I reacted to the vile, disgusting act of being spit upon. I am sorry. I’m sorry to my family. I’m moving in a positive direction. I could have chosen to be angry. I could have chosen to become destructive and to just throw my hands up. That’s not who I am. I chose to move forward. I’m building a new career. I’m doing great in my career already. And I just ask for your mercy.”

“Thank you. All right. Um, so I’m going to begin by saying that the woman involved here was clearly non-compliant, right? We—we all saw that, and she was. And she clearly and deliberately spit in your face. Um, her actions, her behavior was, for lack of a better word, it was vile. It was absolutely vile. No police officer, no person should be subjected to that kind of behavior, plain and simple. It, to me, when I reviewed it over the weekend and again today, it was absolutely disgusting. It was absolutely disgusting. And I need you to know that the court sympathizes with you and with any other police officer that has to put up with this type of behavior, because you shouldn’t have to. That shouldn’t be the part of your job.

“And so I struggle with this because I did, Mr. Bit Antonio, I asked myself, like, ‘What would I have done?’ And it’s so easy to say, ‘Well, I would have done this.’ I would have—a million things I could tell you I would have done. But I was not in your shoes. But thinking about it as long as I—I—I did, I just know that even if I said, ‘Okay, I would have punched her in the face too,’ that’s wrong. That’s the wrong reaction. That’s the wrong answer. And—and your—your reaction to that disgusting act was wrong. We—we have to say that. We have to know that. Your position, your oath, your badge, it required, if not demanded, you to make a different decision.

“Again, looking at this case, and this is not easy for me, police—you’re—you were a police officer, a public servant. And as public servants, we are—we are held to a way higher standard than the average person, right? And why is that? It’s because we have power. We have this power that’s given to us with our job: the power to arrest, the power to detain, the power to take away somebody’s liberty. So because we have that power through our public service, as public servants, we also have this tremendous responsibility that we have to uphold.

“And we are expected to have tremendous restraint—tremendous restraint. When they call judges names to our face, we have to have tremendous restraint. If somebody spit in my face, I have to have tremendous restraint. It goes with the job that we’re doing. Now, please do not think for one second I have any idea what you police officers do on a day-to-day basis. I have no idea. I can only imagine, and I can only see what comes in here. The job that you face every single day—I—I can’t begin to put myself in your shoes. But again, when we choose to be public servants, we take on this role, and we are held to a higher standard.

“I’m going to disagree with you a little bit, council. I counted 5 seconds. And so when I looked at this, and I want you to know I read through every page, I read every sentence, I took notes, I underlined, I wanted to get a sense of, ‘Who is this man standing in front of me?’ And this is why it makes it difficult too, because when I read this, I know based on this information that you are a phenomenal person. You served the country, you have family, friends, a wonderful career. And it all now boils down to what I thought was 5 seconds.

“For 5 seconds on September 4th, you lost your restraint. When you punched that woman in the face five times, you failed your responsibility. And again, what would we have done if we were in your shoes? Who knows, maybe the same. Who knows? But what you did was wrong. It was wrong.

“Again, the courts reviewed the file. I’ve gone through what I think is one of the best sentencing memorandums I’ve seen in the past 19 years. It truly gave me a good sense. It also made me sad, because I know that I’m looking at 5 seconds here. But with all due respect, on September 4th, your duty as a police officer was to protect and serve, and you forgot that for 5 seconds. For 5 punches.

“With that being said, the court sentences you as follows: 180 days in jail. 90 days is suspended. $500 fine. Court costs are imposed. 24 months of probation. This is not easy for this court. I struggled over this. But again, the bottom line is we as public servants are held to a very high standard. You did not meet that standard. Your client has 90 days of jail to serve. His jail time starts today. Uh, I’ll meet everyone in chambers because there’s a couple other things I wanted to discuss.”

Dan DeRoos with 19 News: You are looking at a stunned former police officer, Paul Stein, who was just given—as the judge delivers her sentence with deliberate finality, rejecting the defense’s request for full probation on the single count of misdemeanor assault, the court sentences former Sergeant Paul Stein to 180 days in jail, suspending 90 days on condition of good behavior. She orders him to serve the remaining 90 days immediately, remanding him into custody on the spot.

In addition to the jail term, the court imposes a $500 fine, court costs, and 24 months of active community control. As the bailiff takes his jacket and places steel handcuffs securely behind his back, Stein offers no resistance, walking through the secure door to immediately begin his jail sentence.

The severe ruling concludes a rapid and permanent fall from grace for an officer who had spent nearly two decades wearing the badge. Following the September 4th altercation in the holding facility, an internal affairs investigation determined that Stein violated core department protocols regarding use of force and prisoner restraint. Brooklyn police chief Scott Miltner terminated Stein’s employment, stripping him of his rank and ending his police career. The city assigned the case to a special prosecutor to avoid local conflicts of interest, resulting ultimately in a single misdemeanor assault charge. Stein pleaded not guilty, unsuccessfully attempting to argue in court that spitting constituted physical provocation.

The entire case highlights a remarkably stark legal contrast between citizen conduct and the duties of armed law enforcement. Department policies regarding restraint chairs expressly and specifically forbid corrections officers from placing body weight on immobilized prisoners or applying retaliatory force. At trial, the special prosecutor presented surveillance showing Stein standing on Melissa Tyler’s stocking feet for an extended duration while several other officers quietly watched.

While the court acknowledged that spitting carries criminal liability under Ohio law, the judge ruled that an officer cannot answer defiance with closed-fist strikes to the face. The law demands that officers absorb verbal hostility without resorting to physical retribution. The video evidence played a decisive role in stripping Stein of professional protections.

When officers placed Tyler into the restraint apparatus, protocol required continuous assessment and the de-escalation of combative subjects. Instead, body-worn cameras captured officers standing in the doorway while Stein maintained his weight across Tyler’s feet. Investigators noted that Brooklyn police updated prisoner custody policies specifically to prevent excessive compliance techniques. By abandoning those written procedures in favor of retaliation, Stein created an undeniable record that left prosecutors with no legal ambiguity.

The defense emphasized Stein’s background, presenting commendations from his military deployment in Iraq and letters from academy instructors. Counsel argued that two decades of unblemished service should outweigh 5 seconds of reactive anger. Yet, the municipal court established that a distinguished record cannot insulate an officer when force turns into punishment.

The judge emphasized that authority granted to peace officers represents an extraordinary public trust demanding composure under extreme stress. When an officer responds to indignity with violence, the entire integrity of the justice system is compromised.

For Melissa Tyler, the criminal sentencing resolves only one component of the encounter. Following the incident, Tyler sought medical treatment for facial bruising, dental trauma, and severe emotional distress sustained during booking. Her legal counsel, Keith Hanssbro, announced intentions to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against both Paul Stein and the city of Brooklyn under federal law. The anticipated litigation alleges excessive force, failure to intervene by assisting officers, and deliberate indifference in prisoner management. Hanssbro contends that while the criminal court delivered an active jail sentence, systemic accountability requires municipal reform in handling restrained detainees.

Paul Stein now begins serving his 90-day term in a regional holding facility, segregated from general population for his personal safety. After his discharge from law enforcement, Stein attempted to rebuild his livelihood as an independent tradesman, operating a residential plumbing business while awaiting adjudication. That civilian life is now on hold, interrupted completely by 3 months behind bars and two years under the supervision of state probation officers. His police career is permanently concluded, barring him from ever serving anywhere in Ohio law enforcement again.

With Stein serving his jail sentence in Parma, the legal focus shifts directly and entirely to the federal civil docket. Melissa Tyler’s legal team continues depositions to uncover supervisory failures within the municipal department and examine whether previous excessive force complaints went unaddressed. Those civil filings will determine whether the municipality faces extensive financial liability for the actions of its former sergeant. Court Vault will follow the federal civil filings as newly discovered evidence and records enter the public docket.