Settlement comes more than 6 years after Gary DeMercurio and Justin Wynn's ordeal began.

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Two penetration testers were arrested in 2019 while conducting an authorized red-team security assessment of an Iowa courthouse, despite having written authorization for physical security testing including lockpicking. They spent 20 hours in jail on felony burglary charges (later reduced to misdemeanor trespassing), and the county sheriff continued to publicly allege illegal activity. The case settled for $600,000 after the security professionals sued for wrongful arrest and defamation, highlighting the legal risks penetration testers face even when performing legitimate, contracted work.

County pays $600,000 to pentesters it arrested for assessing courthouse security

How Scientists Respond to Science Deniers

Watching the news from germany it really sounds like in the US its state officials with the biggest ego and narcissistic complex versus the people.
Do you really have so many bad policemen or are the news one sided?

If you like podcasts, Darknet Diaries has an episode on this. Episode 59. The Courthouse

What I am not seeing in the article is to what degree the “judicial branch” communicated with officials like the sheriff about the contracted security services. Another consideration is that there could be some source of disagreement between the “judicial branch” and the sheriff.
Click through to the original article, where you find this:
’ Equally important, Leonard said, is what he believed to be the
overstepping of Iowa officials who retained Coalfire. When the sheriff
confronted the men that night, he said: “The State of Iowa has no
authority to allow you to break into a county building. You’re going to
jail.” ’
This looks a lot like a beef (corn-fed, its Iowa) between the county sheriff and the state.