Backstreet Boys member Brian Littrell – who filed a lawsuit against a Florida county, accusing the sheriff’s department of refusing to keep public beachgoers off of his private beach – says trespassers are “running” up his property and “coming after” his family.
“This is a truth issue. It’s a fairness issue of the backyard of my place being a sanctuary,” Littrell, 50, told Fox News’ Dana Perino during an appearance on “America’s Newsroom” on Wednesday.
“This lady in the video that you showed, traveled past two or three public beaches just to get to this place to cause issues for my family,” the musician continued, referring to the body cam footage of a Walton County police officer asking a beachgoer to leave Littrell’s property. “It’s property rights, this is what we’re talking about. I bought this place many years ago and they obviously know who I am. They’re coming after my family. They’re coming after my son, they’re coming after my wife. You know, we play fair. We should be on here talking about the success of Backstreet Boys, but we’re talking about people invading my privacy. It’s unfortunate.”
Littrell’s attorney, Peter Ticktin of Ticktin Law Group, said, “You have these left-leaning people who think that everyone should have nothing and everyone will be happy. These people have to go across scantily populated public beaches in order to get to Brian’s property … this is not just Brian’s problem. It’s also his neighbors’.”
“These people are there just here to cause trouble,” he added. “They don’t think people should be able to, people that have great talent, that work really hard and end up succeeding, and they get enough money to finally get their dream, the American dream, they get their home, they get a beach behind their home and then these people need to squat on it. We already had to sue once to find the boundaries and show that it went all the way to the high watermark. Now, what we have are these people who are encouraged almost by the sheriff’s department…”
Littrell, who just kicked off his Las Vegas residency with the Backstreet Boys last weekend, said he’s focused on addressing the violations of privacy that continue to occur.
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“We’re just talking about things being fair,” said Littrell. “It’s kind of like me figuring out where you live and sitting in your backyard and waiting for you to come out so i can film you or entice you, it’s just unfair. As a law-abiding citizen and a taxpayer, the property is deeded in our name. We pay taxes on it, so we deserve the rights of anybody else who owns the property. It just so happens that I’m famous with the Backstreet Boys. People started finding that out, the public is screaming my name, running down, wanting to take pictures, it’s violating property [rights].”
In the lawsuit, Littrell said that to protect the “peaceful enjoyment” of his property in Walton County, Florida, on the Gulf Coast, his limited liability company, BLB Beach Hut LLC, has put up “no trespassing” signs as well as tables, chairs and umbrellas showing where the property line starts on the beach, according to the lawsuit obtained by Fox News Digital and filed in a Florida court recently.
The lawsuit seeks a writ of mandamus to require the sheriff’s department to keep the alleged trespassers off of his beach.
Littrell wrote in the lawsuit that he has been forced to hire security to protect his land and family, and filled out a Walton County Trespass Authorization Form, authorizing the sheriff’s department to warn and prosecute trespassers on his property.
“Despite BLB’s numerous requests and the execution of the required forms, the sheriff has refused to come to the Subject Property to enforce the law and remove the trespassers, to charge the trespassers, or to take any action, at all, thereby refusing to do their duty,” the lawsuit claims.
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The lawsuit says that on May 4, a sheriff’s deputy spoke to an alleged trespasser on Littrell’s property, but didn’t remove the trespasser or cite them, merely saying that the alleged trespasser “‘doesn’t agree with private beaches,’ going on to characterize BLB’s insistence that its constitutional rights be upheld as ‘lunacy,’ to use one of the words used by a deputy of the Sheriff’s Department.”
The lawsuit also claims that on June 5, an alleged trespasser grabbed legal documents related to the dispute out of the property manager’s hand “and scattered the papers into the wind across the beach.”
Littrel said BLB also contacted the sheriff’s department twice that day regarding the “aggressor,” but the department “refused to send any officer.”
He claimed that the sheriff’s department is now “openly defying BLB’s requests for assistance to protect its constitutionally protected property rights,” claiming that deputies were overheard on two separate occasions saying that the sheriff was “proud of not issuing any citations for trespassing on the property.”
Littrell claimed that a deputy had come to the property, but hadn’t taken any action against the alleged trespasser, and “body camera footage shows multiple instances of disrespect against BLB’s agents by the responding officer.”
The Walton County Sheriff’s Office told Fox News Digital the department doesn’t “comment on pending litigation,” adding it “prides itself on handling every situation, call for service, or interaction with professionalism using a customer service approach. This has always been our philosophy and will continue to be moving forward.”
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Littrell told Fox News Digital in a statement: “We bought a home here on this private beach on the Gulf of America in order to be able to vacation in quiet, to be able to enjoy our time without any attention or drama. Unfortunately, we had no idea that there was already a battle which had been happening for years.”
He added, “The really scary thing is we have provided to law enforcement all the things they asked of all the private beach homeowners to enforce the law and they will not bother to do their duty to protect the homeowners. They will not do the job they were hired to do when hired and sworn in under oath to … protect the citizens and enforce the law.”‘
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Fox News Digital’s Brie Stimson and Larry Fink contributed to this post.
