HOUSTON – After 22 years of working as a criminal defense attorney, Tyler Flood said what happened inside several courtrooms at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center Courthouse Tuesday at about 9:45 a.m. was at the same time, shocking, disgusting, and totally unexpected.
He said with the judge on the bench, lawyers present, court staff, and approximately 50 people in the courtroom, right in the middle of the docket call, instead of a lawyer or defendant popping up in the large Zoom video screen behind the judge, up popped an incredibly disturbing video, filling not one but three giant video screens located throughout the courtroom.
What suddenly popped up was absolutely disgusting, he said.
”All of a sudden, a renegade video just popped up on these 50-inch screens all over the courtroom. It was very disturbing, very disturbing porn video, very disturbing,” said Flood.
So shocking and out of place were the images Tyler said that the entire roomful of people just seemed to be dumbfounded by what was flashing before their eyes.
And then after a few seconds, people reacted.
“It was gasps, it was covering of mouths, it was, ‘Oh my God,’ it was, ‘What was that?’ and probably 20 more, ‘What the’s.’”
Harris County court officials sent KPRC 2 Investigates this statement confirming what happened.
”Several Harris County courts at law experienced zoom bombing or unauthorized screen sharing of explicit images during the daily docket this morning. The incident has been referred to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office Judicial Threat Unit.”
Court officials said this is the very first incident of Zoom bombing since Harris County began holding Zoom video court proceedings back in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Just who hacked into the Harris County Courts’ Zoom system is unknown at this time and is under investigation.