23 ms·

'First Amendment Auditor' Sues NYPD over Right to Record in Police Stations

85 points by jawns 3y ago

thefurdrake 3y ago
Kinda feels like more people should be doing this, but interacting at all with cops in America carries a nonzero chance of being abruptly murdered for no reason, so it's scary.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Interacting with any person raises your risk. The more people the risker.
  - thefurdrake 3y ago
    Gosh yeah, I guess there's no room for consideration of magnitude.
    - chungy 3y ago
      You're probably at a lower risk of being murdered with a bad cop than with your own family members.
      - thefurdrake 3y ago
        Yes, but people in general don't weight their families as much of a danger as strangers. Interacting with cops has become scary for people.
      - FireBeyond 3y ago
        In a fascinating irony, more than 40% of cops admit to instigating domestic violence at home (which begs the question of how many more have, but don't admit it?).
      - derstander 3y ago
        > You're probably at a lower risk of being murdered with a bad cop than with your own family members. Sure, and I’m much more statistically likely to be hurt by a dog than mauled by a lion. But I’m not going to give up my dogs and start wandering into lion cages at the zoo. With travel, we often talk about deaths per x miles traveled. I think in this case a reasonable metric would be deaths or injuries per x minutes of interaction.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        > You're probably at a lower risk of being murdered with a bad cop than with your own family members. If you have a cop as a family member, you are at an elevated risk of each of those, and much of that is the special risk of getting both simultaneously.
      - banannaise 3y ago
        Most automotive collisions happen within 50 miles of your home. (You interact with your own family members many orders of magnitude more often than with the police; as such, raw numbers here would be wildly misleading.)
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      You could apply that same criticism to your original post. What do you think the chance magnitude is of being killed for filming a police lobby? 1 in 10? 1 in 10 billion?
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        The chance is non-zero, and that is unacceptable.
        YellOh 3y ago
        Is this your actual argument? You will accept nothing less than literally zero? Surely you realize that this is impossible among any group of people (including police) in literally any place on Earth. What would your proposed policing system look like?
        rolph 3y ago
        in my case, it would not only enforce the law, it would obey the law, be culpable for breaking the law, and would actively route out criminals, and gangs that manage to enlist.
        YellOh 3y ago
        I think approximately everybody agrees with these ideals, but approximately nobody agrees on how to achieve them in the real world. Or agrees about comparative importance - ex. weighing being culpable for breaking the law against ability to enforce the law, if you see the discussion below about qualified immunity.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        >I think approximately everybody agrees with these ideals Maybe in vague theory but in the past several years, every time a cop shoots someone without just cause there are a lot of people defending them. Hell, they get donated millions to defend themselves in court! Strangers send money to a random cop so he can afford expensive legal council to keep him from being guilty of a crime. Surely that can't be read as everyone wants accountability right?
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    This doesn't meaningfully diminish the problem here: the police in the US are heavily armed, and are trained to manufacture pretext for violence (cf. any number of videos where police shout "stop resisting" or "hands up" repeatedly to people who are already complying). Ordinary people, even ones who might hurt you, are aware that doing so comes with the threat of the law. The police are the law, and as such are emboldened towards violence when antagonized in ways that the ordinary public is not.
    - yuliyp 3y ago
      Well ordinary people have an option of just walking away that police officers generally have a duty not to, meaning they put themselves into tense situations in the course of doing their jobs.
      - woodruffw 3y ago
        This is a common misconception: under the Public Duty doctrine, the police have no obligation to intervene in any particular public instance of crime[1]. Their duty to the public is a “general” one, which makes it an extremely weak duty. [1]: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/police-civil-liability-failure-protect-public-duty-doctrine https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/police-c...
        seanw444 3y ago
        As well as being consistently reaffirmed by various courts that the police have no constitutional duty to protect the public. Only the people in their immediate custody.
        woodruffw 3y ago
        That duty to protect in custody is also frequently not respected[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abner_Louima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abner_Louima
      - usednet 3y ago
- Teever 3y ago
  I'd love to see people work with lawyers to develop tactics and techniques that can be scaled up to involve groups of people.
mrguyorama 3y ago
Some of these "Auditors" are just trying to stir shit up with cops for views, but plenty have done real work asserting our basic rights when interacting with cops
- insanitybit 3y ago
  Feels like advertising just fundamentally destroys journalism.
  - tehwebguy 3y ago
    In this case it protects it. An auditor relying on a day job is at great financial risk by auditing. One that lives on ad revenue is free to keep auditing. Plus, if police keep their emotions in check the auditor will likely have to look for a day job and have no more time to bother them!
- Daviey 3y ago
  And the best way to disempower auditors is not to react to them. When the police learn not to react to lawful activities, the "auditing" movement will be dead. The "plenty" will be happy with this situation, because that is what they want. I am certainly no auditor, but last week I felt uncomfortable with how a stop-and-search of a person of colour was being conducted in England last week, so I filmed it from a reasonable distance. There was no provocation from me, and the police didn't react - which is the right thing, and makes a boring video (which I had no intention of uploading anyway). Despite this, when one of persons friends got close (~15 feet away) to talk to him (which is entirely lawful with a stop-and search), one of the police pushed (with force) him away. I interjected and told the constable he "could use words, rather than force", and his response was "I could have pushed harder if I wanted". If the constable was willing to have this type of interaction on camera, imagine what it could have been like if it wasn't filmed.
  - TheRealPomax 3y ago
    Not really the same thing as walking into the police station with the only reason you're doing so is to film the police as they work, or even heckle them with the camera rolling to see if you can rile them up enough to point your finger and say "ha! see? got you!".
post_break 3y ago
Auditors are seen as annoying antagonists, just like the people who open carry in places that cause the police to get panic calls. But without them the police get too comfortable breaking the laws with no accountability. I don't have the time, money, or balls to be an auditor, but the ones who know the laws and do it without bothering the general public are good in my book. You should know what a Terry stop is. You should know you have the right to remain silent, know what the true meaning of "I got 99 problems but a bitch aint one"
- tehwebguy 3y ago
  Yes, they are doing a public service. Nobody going about their day should have to take a bullshit case to the supreme court (or even district court). These folks help change policy intentionally instead of someone just living their life having their day / week / career / life ruined.
- kyleyeats 3y ago
  The fact that the line is associated with Jay-Z (it's an Ice-T lyric he stole) AND people think it's actually about a dog is one of the most impressive PR accomplishments in music. Bravo, Jay-Z's PR team in the #metoo era.
  - post_break 3y ago
    Ok? https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jay-zs-decoded-excerpts-the-best-bits-91363/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jay-zs-decoded... Don't care for his music, the person, but my point still stands that you can't be held up for a drug dog at a traffic stop is a real thing you should know and according to Jay Z himself it's exactly what it's referencing. Whether he stole the hook or not doesn't really matter in this context, and has nothing to do with #metoo, I don't even know where that fits in as well. https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/239513-court-rules-cops-cant-hold-suspects-to-wait-for-dog/ https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/239513-court-ru...
    - kyleyeats 3y ago
gremlinsinc 3y ago
If people can't exercise their first amendment rights in or around police officers/offices, maybe police shouldn't be allowed their 2nd amendment rights, and only allowed non-lethal firearms. Many other countries do well with that limitation.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  The second amendment does not apply to government officials acting in their course of duty.
- abeppu 3y ago
  While I of course agree that you should be able to exercise your first amendment (and other constitutional rights) around police officers, and I would also like to see fewer officers carrying deadly weapons, I don't see why they should be related? If you exercise your legal rights and the police beat you with a baton, or cuff you and kneel on your neck for several minutes, or just detain you for the maximum number of hours without charging you, that's still a meaningful problem.
madengr 3y ago
[dead]
josu 3y ago
This is his YT channel, he goes by Long Island Audit: https://www.youtube.com/@LongIslandAudit https://www.youtube.com/@LongIslandAudit
chayesfss 3y ago
[dead]
zapataband1 3y ago
"undermines the privacy of people who interact with the criminal justice system and compromises the integrity of ongoing investigations." Crazy how dishonest this response from the police is. Public buildings have restricted zones that the public cannot enter, they are clearly defined by the law, such as a public lobby vs someone's office.
digitalsin 3y ago
Some of these 'auditors' do OK work (referenced auditor not included), and I think it's necessary. Unfortunately many of them think that part of auditing is treating public servants like complete garbage to try and get a negative response that they can capitalize on with views and attention. This completely defeats the purpose of the work that should be done, and treating public servants as less than is unacceptable, whether it's a LEO or a clerk at a local town hall. These public servants might be wrong when they say you can't film in a particular area, but that is an opportunity for education and not an opportunity to treat them like crap, and it happens constantly with these people. The 'frauditors' love to remind public servants that they work for them and then use that as an argument to talk to them like they are the lowest forms of life on the planet. It's disgusting and I hope the auditors out there that are doing this work respectfully and honestly are the ones that get the attention in the future.
- tehwebguy 3y ago
  Seems like if the cops keep a cool head and follow the law there’s no content, no? Funny how the absolute bare minimum requirement that one would expect for police would make most of this simply disappear (obviously some of these are about actual laws which are unconstitutional, which may need to be handled in court post-arrest)
- jawns 3y ago
  One of the things I've noticed with Long Island Audit is that he treats people quite respectfully -- until they start talking disrespectfully to him. At that point, he does veer into name-calling ("tyrants" is a frequent insult) but that's about as disrespectful as he gets. But having watched his videos for more than a year, I can understand his frustration. Public servants routinely mistreat him. They bark orders at him that they have no authority to demand, they treat him as hostile for not immediately deferring to them, and at times they even physically lash out at him. After having that happen repeatedly, I'm sure he's fed up with it, and so I can overlook some verbal expressions of frustration.
voakbasda 3y ago
I once had to go to my local station to get a copy of a police report that resulted from harassment by a neighbor. I was legally open-carrying my sidearm and had a camera on my hat recording the interaction. While I was waiting for the report to be printed, two uniformed officers emerged from the back room and started interrogating me; they obviously were trying to intimidate me and get me to say something that would allow them to arrest me. It was incredibly unnerving and put me off from ever wanting to set foot there again. I felt lucky to not have been arrested and charged for no legitimate reason. As far as I am concerned, the police are a gang of thugs and crooks. They cannot be trusted.
- StrictDabbler 3y ago
  I am trying to think of a good reason to open-carry into a police station apart from "making a point". You won't be the "good guy with a gun" in an active shooting. You won't be robbed. You won't be attacked. If you draw your gun at a police station for any reason you will be arrested or killed. Like, technically in my state I have the right to open-carry a rifle past a school while wearing a ski-mask as long as I'm off-property. Completely legal. If I did that while picking my child up from school to "assert my rights" surely you'd think I was being insane, confrontational and threatening because I could have no legitimate interest in doing so. It seems very odd to not just leave your gun in the car. Perhaps you're a principled pedestrian or cyclist? That I could see.
  - indymike 3y ago
    > I am trying to think of a good reason to open-carry into a police station apart from "making a point". It is legal to do so?
    - dangus 3y ago
      It’s legal to do all kinds of dumb things that you shouldn’t do. It’s legal to walk around topless in NYC, but don’t be surprised if you don’t like the reaction you get when you do so. I wonder how many second amendment originalists eat donuts and ice cream for every meal because it’s legal?

85 points by jawns 3y ago

Kinda feels like more people should be doing this, but interacting at all with cops in America carries a nonzero chance of being abruptly murdered for no reason, so it's scary.

ipaddr 3y ago
Interacting with any person raises your risk. The more people the risker.
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  Gosh yeah, I guess there's no room for consideration of magnitude.
  - chungy 3y ago
    You're probably at a lower risk of being murdered with a bad cop than with your own family members.
    - thefurdrake 3y ago
      Yes, but people in general don't weight their families as much of a danger as strangers. Interacting with cops has become scary for people.
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      In a fascinating irony, more than 40% of cops admit to instigating domestic violence at home (which begs the question of how many more have, but don't admit it?).
    - derstander 3y ago
      > You're probably at a lower risk of being murdered with a bad cop than with your own family members. Sure, and I’m much more statistically likely to be hurt by a dog than mauled by a lion. But I’m not going to give up my dogs and start wandering into lion cages at the zoo. With travel, we often talk about deaths per x miles traveled. I think in this case a reasonable metric would be deaths or injuries per x minutes of interaction.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > You're probably at a lower risk of being murdered with a bad cop than with your own family members. If you have a cop as a family member, you are at an elevated risk of each of those, and much of that is the special risk of getting both simultaneously.
    - banannaise 3y ago
      Most automotive collisions happen within 50 miles of your home. (You interact with your own family members many orders of magnitude more often than with the police; as such, raw numbers here would be wildly misleading.)
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    You could apply that same criticism to your original post. What do you think the chance magnitude is of being killed for filming a police lobby? 1 in 10? 1 in 10 billion?
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      The chance is non-zero, and that is unacceptable.
      - YellOh 3y ago
        Is this your actual argument? You will accept nothing less than literally zero? Surely you realize that this is impossible among any group of people (including police) in literally any place on Earth. What would your proposed policing system look like?
        rolph 3y ago
        in my case, it would not only enforce the law, it would obey the law, be culpable for breaking the law, and would actively route out criminals, and gangs that manage to enlist.
        YellOh 3y ago
        I think approximately everybody agrees with these ideals, but approximately nobody agrees on how to achieve them in the real world. Or agrees about comparative importance - ex. weighing being culpable for breaking the law against ability to enforce the law, if you see the discussion below about qualified immunity.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        >I think approximately everybody agrees with these ideals Maybe in vague theory but in the past several years, every time a cop shoots someone without just cause there are a lot of people defending them. Hell, they get donated millions to defend themselves in court! Strangers send money to a random cop so he can afford expensive legal council to keep him from being guilty of a crime. Surely that can't be read as everyone wants accountability right?
- woodruffw 3y ago
  This doesn't meaningfully diminish the problem here: the police in the US are heavily armed, and are trained to manufacture pretext for violence (cf. any number of videos where police shout "stop resisting" or "hands up" repeatedly to people who are already complying). Ordinary people, even ones who might hurt you, are aware that doing so comes with the threat of the law. The police are the law, and as such are emboldened towards violence when antagonized in ways that the ordinary public is not.
  - yuliyp 3y ago
    Well ordinary people have an option of just walking away that police officers generally have a duty not to, meaning they put themselves into tense situations in the course of doing their jobs.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      This is a common misconception: under the Public Duty doctrine, the police have no obligation to intervene in any particular public instance of crime[1]. Their duty to the public is a “general” one, which makes it an extremely weak duty. [1]: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/police-civil-liability-failure-protect-public-duty-doctrine https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/police-c...
      - seanw444 3y ago
        As well as being consistently reaffirmed by various courts that the police have no constitutional duty to protect the public. Only the people in their immediate custody.
        woodruffw 3y ago
        That duty to protect in custody is also frequently not respected[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abner_Louima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abner_Louima
    - usednet 3y ago
Teever 3y ago
I'd love to see people work with lawyers to develop tactics and techniques that can be scaled up to involve groups of people.

mrguyorama 3y ago

Some of these "Auditors" are just trying to stir shit up with cops for views, but plenty have done real work asserting our basic rights when interacting with cops

insanitybit 3y ago
Feels like advertising just fundamentally destroys journalism.
- tehwebguy 3y ago
  In this case it protects it. An auditor relying on a day job is at great financial risk by auditing. One that lives on ad revenue is free to keep auditing. Plus, if police keep their emotions in check the auditor will likely have to look for a day job and have no more time to bother them!
Daviey 3y ago
And the best way to disempower auditors is not to react to them. When the police learn not to react to lawful activities, the "auditing" movement will be dead. The "plenty" will be happy with this situation, because that is what they want. I am certainly no auditor, but last week I felt uncomfortable with how a stop-and-search of a person of colour was being conducted in England last week, so I filmed it from a reasonable distance. There was no provocation from me, and the police didn't react - which is the right thing, and makes a boring video (which I had no intention of uploading anyway). Despite this, when one of persons friends got close (~15 feet away) to talk to him (which is entirely lawful with a stop-and search), one of the police pushed (with force) him away. I interjected and told the constable he "could use words, rather than force", and his response was "I could have pushed harder if I wanted". If the constable was willing to have this type of interaction on camera, imagine what it could have been like if it wasn't filmed.
- TheRealPomax 3y ago
  Not really the same thing as walking into the police station with the only reason you're doing so is to film the police as they work, or even heckle them with the camera rolling to see if you can rile them up enough to point your finger and say "ha! see? got you!".

post_break 3y ago

Auditors are seen as annoying antagonists, just like the people who open carry in places that cause the police to get panic calls. But without them the police get too comfortable breaking the laws with no accountability. I don't have the time, money, or balls to be an auditor, but the ones who know the laws and do it without bothering the general public are good in my book. You should know what a Terry stop is. You should know you have the right to remain silent, know what the true meaning of "I got 99 problems but a bitch aint one"

tehwebguy 3y ago
Yes, they are doing a public service. Nobody going about their day should have to take a bullshit case to the supreme court (or even district court). These folks help change policy intentionally instead of someone just living their life having their day / week / career / life ruined.
kyleyeats 3y ago
The fact that the line is associated with Jay-Z (it's an Ice-T lyric he stole) AND people think it's actually about a dog is one of the most impressive PR accomplishments in music. Bravo, Jay-Z's PR team in the #metoo era.
- post_break 3y ago
  Ok? https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jay-zs-decoded-excerpts-the-best-bits-91363/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jay-zs-decoded... Don't care for his music, the person, but my point still stands that you can't be held up for a drug dog at a traffic stop is a real thing you should know and according to Jay Z himself it's exactly what it's referencing. Whether he stole the hook or not doesn't really matter in this context, and has nothing to do with #metoo, I don't even know where that fits in as well. https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/239513-court-rules-cops-cant-hold-suspects-to-wait-for-dog/ https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/239513-court-ru...
  - kyleyeats 3y ago

gremlinsinc 3y ago

If people can't exercise their first amendment rights in or around police officers/offices, maybe police shouldn't be allowed their 2nd amendment rights, and only allowed non-lethal firearms. Many other countries do well with that limitation.

sidewndr46 3y ago
The second amendment does not apply to government officials acting in their course of duty.
abeppu 3y ago
While I of course agree that you should be able to exercise your first amendment (and other constitutional rights) around police officers, and I would also like to see fewer officers carrying deadly weapons, I don't see why they should be related? If you exercise your legal rights and the police beat you with a baton, or cuff you and kneel on your neck for several minutes, or just detain you for the maximum number of hours without charging you, that's still a meaningful problem.

madengr 3y ago

[dead]

josu 3y ago

This is his YT channel, he goes by Long Island Audit: https://www.youtube.com/@LongIslandAudit https://www.youtube.com/@LongIslandAudit

chayesfss 3y ago

[dead]

zapataband1 3y ago

"undermines the privacy of people who interact with the criminal justice system and compromises the integrity of ongoing investigations." Crazy how dishonest this response from the police is. Public buildings have restricted zones that the public cannot enter, they are clearly defined by the law, such as a public lobby vs someone's office.

digitalsin 3y ago

Some of these 'auditors' do OK work (referenced auditor not included), and I think it's necessary. Unfortunately many of them think that part of auditing is treating public servants like complete garbage to try and get a negative response that they can capitalize on with views and attention. This completely defeats the purpose of the work that should be done, and treating public servants as less than is unacceptable, whether it's a LEO or a clerk at a local town hall. These public servants might be wrong when they say you can't film in a particular area, but that is an opportunity for education and not an opportunity to treat them like crap, and it happens constantly with these people. The 'frauditors' love to remind public servants that they work for them and then use that as an argument to talk to them like they are the lowest forms of life on the planet. It's disgusting and I hope the auditors out there that are doing this work respectfully and honestly are the ones that get the attention in the future.

tehwebguy 3y ago
Seems like if the cops keep a cool head and follow the law there’s no content, no? Funny how the absolute bare minimum requirement that one would expect for police would make most of this simply disappear (obviously some of these are about actual laws which are unconstitutional, which may need to be handled in court post-arrest)
jawns 3y ago
One of the things I've noticed with Long Island Audit is that he treats people quite respectfully -- until they start talking disrespectfully to him. At that point, he does veer into name-calling ("tyrants" is a frequent insult) but that's about as disrespectful as he gets. But having watched his videos for more than a year, I can understand his frustration. Public servants routinely mistreat him. They bark orders at him that they have no authority to demand, they treat him as hostile for not immediately deferring to them, and at times they even physically lash out at him. After having that happen repeatedly, I'm sure he's fed up with it, and so I can overlook some verbal expressions of frustration.

voakbasda 3y ago

I once had to go to my local station to get a copy of a police report that resulted from harassment by a neighbor. I was legally open-carrying my sidearm and had a camera on my hat recording the interaction. While I was waiting for the report to be printed, two uniformed officers emerged from the back room and started interrogating me; they obviously were trying to intimidate me and get me to say something that would allow them to arrest me. It was incredibly unnerving and put me off from ever wanting to set foot there again. I felt lucky to not have been arrested and charged for no legitimate reason. As far as I am concerned, the police are a gang of thugs and crooks. They cannot be trusted.

StrictDabbler 3y ago
I am trying to think of a good reason to open-carry into a police station apart from "making a point". You won't be the "good guy with a gun" in an active shooting. You won't be robbed. You won't be attacked. If you draw your gun at a police station for any reason you will be arrested or killed. Like, technically in my state I have the right to open-carry a rifle past a school while wearing a ski-mask as long as I'm off-property. Completely legal. If I did that while picking my child up from school to "assert my rights" surely you'd think I was being insane, confrontational and threatening because I could have no legitimate interest in doing so. It seems very odd to not just leave your gun in the car. Perhaps you're a principled pedestrian or cyclist? That I could see.
- indymike 3y ago
  > I am trying to think of a good reason to open-carry into a police station apart from "making a point". It is legal to do so?
  - dangus 3y ago
    It’s legal to do all kinds of dumb things that you shouldn’t do. It’s legal to walk around topless in NYC, but don’t be surprised if you don’t like the reaction you get when you do so. I wonder how many second amendment originalists eat donuts and ice cream for every meal because it’s legal?