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Grandmother Faces Trial in Alabama for Wearing Penis Costume to No Kings Protest

When the viral video cooled off, people thought the case against the 62-year-old would be dropped. Prosecutors doubled down.

In the body camera footage, a police officer parks his black SUV on the grass, a rosary swinging from the rearview mirror. He exits his car, moves briskly past a pair of protesters, and points an accusatory finger at the suspect: a 7-foot-tall inflatable penis holding an American flag.

The alleged crime? Unclear. There’s no sound at first, only the silent spectacle of a person in a penis suit turning toward a cop with a stance that says, “Who, me?” A handmade sign comes into view in the person’s right hand. It reads “No Dick Tator.”

The scene in the video unfolded last fall, on a busy road just off a strip mall in South Alabama. The protester was Renea Gamble, an ASL interpreter who bought the penis suit at a nearby Spirit Halloween store.

“Everybody was cracking up. They just thought it was hilarious.”

“Everybody was cracking up. They just thought it was hilarious.”

“Featuring armholes, a sheer face panel, and an internal fan that keeps things erect,” a description on its website reads, “this costume is a guaranteed hit.”

Gamble was just shy of her 62nd birthday when she joined the October 18 No Kings rally in Fairhope, a small city on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. Organized by the local Indivisible chapter, which launched in 2025, the rally attracted some 1,000 people in deep-red Baldwin County, a mostly white, largely rural stretch of the state and one of President Donald Trump’s most stalwart bases of support.

The turnout exceeded organizers’ expectations. It also flew in the face of neighbors and critics who might dismiss protesters as paid agitators. “When you show your face to people that probably see you around town and know you live here, it combats the narrative of, like, [George] Soros busing us in,” said Kayleigh Rae, who founded Indivisible Baldwin County.

Inspired by Portland’s anti-ICE “Frog Brigade” — which turned animal costumes into emblems of resistance — the protest included a couple of unicorns and a blow-up chicken. But the penis was new.

“Everybody was cracking up,” Rae recalled. “They just thought it was hilarious.”

Fairhope Police Cpl. Andrew Babb was less amused.

“I’m serious as a heart attack,” he tells Gamble when the audio begins to play on the 14-minute body camera video. “I’m not gonna sit here and argue with you.”

He demands to know how she could possibly justify such an obscene display: “I would like to hear how you would explain to my children what you’re supposed to be.”

Talking to a colleague over his two-way radio after the encounter, Babb described what happened. Gamble was dressed “like a freakin’ weiner,” he says on the tape, so he ordered her to remove the costume. She refused, invoking her First Amendment rights.

“I said, ‘That’s not freedom of speech. This is a family town.’”

“I said, ‘That’s not freedom of speech. This is a family town.’”

“I said, ‘That’s not freedom of speech,’” Babb continues. “‘This is a family town and being dressed like that is not going to be tolerated.’”

When she started to leave, “I said, ‘No, ma’am,’” Babb says on the tape. “‘Come here, I need to talk to you.’ She pulled away from me, so I grabbed her and put her on the ground.”

The body camera footage tells a different story.

“Am I being detained?” Gamble repeatedly asks Babb, who ignores the question and continues to scold her. “If I’m not being detained, I’m gonna go ahead and leave.”

When she turns to walk away, Babb steps forward and grabs her costume from behind, throwing her on her back. Angry protesters shout at Babb as he forces her to turn over. Two more cops help him pin Gamble on the grass and handcuff her.

“By the time I got there, the cops were stuffing an inflatable penis in the back of their car,” Rae said.

It was, on one hand, hilarious — a slapstick comedy bit brought to life. In the body camera footage, Babb tries and fails to fit Gamble into his own backseat, then hands her off to another officer, who escorts her to a different vehicle. Police wrestle with the oversized costume, ultimately failing to fit the unwieldy polyester penis into the car.

It was also disturbing. Gamble screams in pain in the video as the cops try to push her into the backseat, the handcuffs digging into her wrists. Babb asks where the zipper is and, as he peels off the penis suit, asks Gamble for her name.

She replies, “Aunt Tifa.”

Gamble was one of only a........

© The Intercept