The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Taya Graham:

Hello, this is Taya Graham and welcome to this breaking news edition of the Police Accountability Report. Now, as I always make clear, this show has a single purpose, holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible. But today, we will achieve that goal with a little bit of a twist and a surprise, an exclusive interview with a controversial cop watcher who was just released from a halfway house in Colorado after spending five years behind bars. His name is Eric Brandt. He’s a Denver activist and advocate for the homeless, also a prolific YouTuber who built a large following with his antics on the streets and his successes in the court. Now, Eric’s thought copwatching isn’t for everyone. His tactics were flamboyant, to say the least.

Some said they were simply over the top. Law enforcement often deemed them illegal. In 2021, Eric was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of telephonic harassment of Denver judges. The charges with results of serious threats that were made over the phone. However, the sentence was also considered extremely harsh at the time, and Eric apologized to those affected. And now, due to good behavior and perseverance, we have the breaking news. Eric was released today, and we’re going to be talking to him for his first interview since his exit from the aforementioned halfway house. But first, I want to check in with my reporting partner and co-host Stephen Janis. Now, Stephen, Eric is not just someone we covered, but he was also the subject of our most recent documentary, I Am But the Mirror of the Story of American Copwatching. Can you tell us a little bit about the documentary and Eric’s role in it?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, it basically was about Eric because when Eric received such a harsh sentence, we though we had to tell his story in depth. So I spent years becoming an Eric Brandt expert. I would say unequivocally, I am the foremost Eric Brandt expert in America at this point. So if anyone

Taya Graham:

Wants to talk – At least on the

Stephen Janis:

East Coast. Yes. But I mean, Eric’s story was a story of great achievement and great tragedy. And he was extremely creative, but also controversial. And I think as you said, he received this very harsh sentence. So it really gave us a prison to look at copwatching in general because copwatching is a very creative sort of organic movement. Eric was a part of it. And looking through the lens of Eric’s experiences, I think made the film really interesting. So I was appreciative of having that access to his life. And now, like I said, I’m ready for my interview on NBC, ABC, anyone wants to talk about Eric Brant, come to me. I’ll talk.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Now, before I get to Eric, I just want to say Eric was one of the most colorful cop watchers we have ever seen. He is a Navy veteran who served his country and he’s also a prolific filer of very successful lawsuits. But more important today, he was released from a halfway house. It marks the end of a five year ordeal for him. Eric, welcome back and thank you for joining us.

Eric Brandt:

Thank you, Taya.

Taya Graham:

Now first, Eric, I have to ask, how are you feeling and what was going through your mind when you finally walked out that door for the final time?

Eric Brandt:

Sorry.

Taya Graham:

I can understand it. I’m sorry, Eric. I know it can be tough to talk about. Just take a moment if you need it.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, take a moment, Eric.

Eric Brandt:

Sorry guys.

Stephen Janis:

No, no.

Taya Graham:

It’s okay. Take a moment.

Stephen Janis:

Of course. Of course.

Taya Graham:

We understand. Absolutely. At five years and finally having this moment, there are a lot of emotions that must be coming to the

Stephen Janis:

Forefront. Do you want us ask another question or?

Eric Brandt:

Well, I guess you saw it now that I just had the release. Yeah. Wow, that kind of hit me. Yeah, you asked me what I was feeling and I was like, oh, I guess I am having a feeling. Yeah. It’s

Taya Graham:

Understandable.

Eric Brandt:

It’s been the last two weeks have been surreal, right? Honestly, I’ve been like blah. I know that the date is there. I don’t have anything else to do. I just work. I know that I’m going to have a computer, so I don’t want to do any of my litigation work on the phone. It’s too hard. So I’ve just been blah, milling around for the last two weeks and that’s crazy. I know. And today I had administrative things that I had to do and I’m sorry that I lost it on your camera.

Taya Graham:

No, it’s okay. It’s completely understandable.

Stephen Janis:

I remember Eric when we were talking maybe a year ago, you thought the parole board was not going to grant you release. What do you think finally convinced them? I know you’ve been on great behavior and you hit every achievement you were supposed to inside the system. What do you think kind of finally pushed you out that door?

Eric Brandt:

I don’t know what eventually convinced them to release me. I’m a little surprised that I wasn’t released earlier. The risk instruments suggested that I should have been. So I really was pessimistic about it. And then when I got the halfway house, I was surprised the halfway house application went by very quickly. Once I was in the halfway house, parole was likely at that point. And I know that you and I talked about things. I didn’t really share a lot of that with the public at the time because there were certainly opportunities for people to try and sabotage that. But

Once I was at the halfway house, I had a pretty high degree of comfort that they would choose to release me. And then I had my hearing and it went status quo. It went what the instruments should have suggested, which is release upon completion of the halfway house program. I think that’s what the public expects, right? If they release you early before you finish the program, they’re like, “What’s the purpose of the halfway house program?” If they were to have delayed that further, then they would almost have to justify that publicly. So I think that that was really the only appropriate answer. And you and I knew about this, of course, some time ago, but again, we kind of kept it under wraps for a while.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. Eric, I hate to take you back to the past, but it’s something that a lot of us have difficulty imagining. If you could just talk about what those past five years incarcerated were like, how did you survive them and what did you do to help work towards actually getting out?

Eric Brandt:

Well, for one thing, I’m not criminally minded, right? So I’m in with a bunch of criminals. You get to know these people. A lot of the guys that are in there, they’re in there for a reason. And all of my instruments scored pretty low on things and my requirements and my needs were a lot lower than a lot of people. I have good education, so I wasn’t in a lot of the educational programs. So my situation was a little different. Behaving is actually easy to do. And I know that when people look at my work, what they see is misbehavior and they really have to delve deeper. And then I think that you guys did a pretty good job of that with the documentary, which I recently got to see finally. But there’s a lot that was going on there. So it wasn’t misbehavior because it was misbehavior.

It was misbehavior or civil disobedience, if you will, for a purpose. And so the classic things that I didn’t have the sexual misconduct issues that are prevalent in there. I didn’t have the theft. I didn’t have the violence, the frauds, drugs, all of these things that are really what the majority of the people I was around were involved in, that just wasn’t me. So behaving was always easy for me and my five-year track record shows that. So what did I do? I used my time to help develop programs. I helped develop a veterans program. We did a lot of service. We did a lot of community service, not just in service to the guys in the prison, but we actually extended that and did community service in the local community.

Taya Graham:

Didn’t you help pack up Thanksgiving dinners for families outside of the prison?

Eric Brandt:

Oh yeah, absolutely. We got feedback from that immediately too. We raised money internally from the inmates and we were able to raise enough money to put together. The first year we did it, we made 40 boxes and it was a complete Thanksgiving dinner box for a family. So everything that you would have at Thanksgiving was in this box. And we got immediate feedback. One guy, his wife had just passed and he didn’t know what he was going to do. And then we got a thank you card from a family whose house had just burned down. They were moved into a hotel room with their three kids. They had nothing except for the Thanksgiving dinner box.

Stephen Janis:

Wow.

Well, Eric, was there ever. I remember talking to you when they brought you down to Louisiana for that other case. Was there ever a time when you kind of gave up hope or you felt like we’re not. Because I remember being really worried about you in that particular part. And just so people know who are watching, we talked to Eric at every point that we could while we were working on the film and just trying to keep in touch with him. Was there ever a point where you’re like, “I’m never getting out of here,” or you ever felt like this wasn’t going to work out for you?

Eric Brandt:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. When I went in, 12 year sentence, I was pretty harsh and I always believed in the back of my mind that there would always be something else. They would drag something up from somewhere. And so then when they grabbed me for Louisiana, I was like, “Yep, this is what I expected.” So I already pretty much knew going into it that that was going to be the rest of my life.

Taya Graham:

Eric, I have a question. There were a lot of people who stood by you during this incarceration and they were ready to stand by you for the full 12 years. What do you want to say to those supporters who stuck by you during your incarceration? What would you want to say to them?

Eric Brandt:

What is wrong with you people?

Taya Graham:

That’s an Eric Brandt answer. Yes.

Eric Brandt:

I can’t even begin to quantify or even understand the tremendous amount of sacrifice that so many people have made. And we have as a group consciously. Again, you and I have had so much communication in the last five years that we haven’t shared with the public and for good reason, but I’m perpetually blown away at how much support there is. I couldn’t have done it without you guys and I couldn’t even begin to list all of the names. I’d almost feel embarrassed if I listed one because I wouldn’t be able to list all 5,000 of them. But I would get things out of the blue from people. Marita Gladson, I’ll tell you about Marita Gladson. She sent me cartoons and jokes on a nearly weekly basis for the entire time. Oh my

Taya Graham:

Gosh. That’s

Eric Brandt:

Amazing.

To the point there where we would come downstairs and check the list to see if we had mail for the day and the officers would be in there and they would see me in the hallway and they’d wave me over because they saw Marita’s envelope and they knew they were going to get their Marita jokes that day. They recognized the Marita envelopes. Lacey R. Abby Irizarry, Melody, Johnna, Aaron, Joe Cool. I mean, some of these people, do you have any idea how angry these people would get if I didn’t call them by a certain time of the day? And you know how I knew they were angry is because the captain would call me to the office and want to know why he was getting phone calls.

Taya Graham:

There you go.

Stephen Janis:

That’s cool.

Taya Graham:

It just shows how much concern these folks have for you.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

I was going to ask you, because I never really got a chance to ask you this, but when you were in that courtroom and they gave you 12 years, because I did a lot of research, I could not find a sentence for threatening speech without some act of violence, which you did not do anywhere across any case I could find. I couldn’t find a case even remotely close. I mean, people threatened congressional members of Congress and got in two or three years. What did you think when the judge handed down that sentence and why was it 12 years?

Eric Brandt:

I’m stunned. To this day, I find it stunning. I turned to my lawyer and I said, “Did he say consecutive?” And she’s like, “I think he did.” We didn’t even comprehend it at the time. And you have to maintain a certain kind of decorum in that circumstance, and it was really my intention to accept my consequences with dignity.

Taya Graham:

I just want to pivot here a little bit because we haven’t really had a chance to speak to you publicly about the film that featured your story. Now you’re not the only cop watcher in the story, but you are a central figure. Now, okay, I’m not saying you have to necessarily give the film a thumbs up, but how did you feel watching your life unfold on screen?

Eric Brandt:

Well, so full disclosure to everybody, when I was in Louisiana, you guys sent some draft work to my lawyer. It hadn’t been through any post-processing. It wasn’t complete, but you sent it to her in case there was anything in there that we could use for mitigation. I thank you. I appreciate that. So I had the opportunity to see it or to see parts of that. I got to see it once through just really briefly. The first thing that I noted to my lawyer was I said, “Thank goodness it’s not all about me.”

Taya Graham:

It was

Eric Brandt:

Such a great story and so much of that story was not me. And that’s the point, right? I’m only on this stage for a brief time and the world is run by those who show up, and it was nice to see that there was momentum and good happening in people’s lives. It was so nice to see so many different positive aspects of all these people that are in union with my circle, but they’re doing their own thing. I was just so thankful that it wasn’t about me. Thank you. I’m

Taya Graham:

So glad. It was such a pleasure to work with you and to, like you said, one of the things that we learned through doing the documentary is that there was this circle of people that you touched that sort of reached out kind of like a constellation all across the country. And it was kind of amazing to see the effect that the copwatching and the copwatching community was having in communities all across the nation. So it was really beautiful.

Stephen Janis:

One thing I was making, I was like, the whole idea of YouTube is the minute you go on YouTube, things just go downhill and you don’t connect. But you guys were the opposite of that. It was like you went from YouTube into real life connections where

Eric Brandt:

You

Stephen Janis:

Were – It’s amazing

Eric Brandt:

How many of those connections are still active.

Stephen Janis:

I know.

Eric Brandt:

It’s impossible for me to respond to everybody in a given day. It’s just so much going on and there’s so many people involved and these are real people with real lives and yet still somehow find time for each other. And that’s what I really got out of your program was that things are really kind of good out there. People are living lives and that’s all we can hope for is that people live a good life.

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, I didn’t want to just fall into the same narrative of the YouTube spiral, which is sort of the mainstream media take on it that, oh, these are people who were like-minded in their pushback against what they felt was a faulty government, and they were able to help connect with each other in ways that were not possible without YouTube. So that’s why I focused on that part of it. I didn’t just do you got sentence. That was the beginning, but really the end was about what came out of those relationships. It’s cool to hear you say that you still have them, right? I mean, you’re still connected to these people.

Eric Brandt:

And what I think is really great is that so many of these people, they’re able to live their lives and then we touch and our gears mesh for a little while and then we live our lives. So we’re not dependent on each other. If you go off and do your thing, you’re not going to ruin my life. You’re not going to ruin my life. You’re going to enrich my life while we’re connected, and I am happy that you’re enjoying your life when we’re not connected. And so a lot of folks, we touch and then we go and we touch and we go. And even a lot of people that maybe there wasn’t a great super mesh, it’s still there. I think that’s how human connections work.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I agree. One thing I wanted to ask you about, I’ve always wanted to ask you this, you have a lot of fans and a lot of critics and some people who say Eric Branch just went too far. I don’t care what he wanted or how he felt about the homeless or police. What do you say to them now? Given the perspective you have of more time, how do you feel about the people who are like, “I think Eric Branch is into the antics. He’s not really fighting for something specific, but just making a show.” How do you answer them now?

Eric Brandt:

Well, I suppose that’s a compound and complicated question.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, sorry.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah. Well, first of all, I was never in it for the antics, right? The street theater was the vehicle. Sorry, our rooster is apparently objecting to the interview over here.

Stephen Janis:

He doesn’t like your answer?

Eric Brandt:

No, the rooster of. I have a critic right here. No, I mean, I don’t know how you address critics. I have. I’m sorry, guys.

Stephen Janis:

No, it’s okay.

Eric Brandt:

He’s got to get his girls under control here. I’ve actually spoken with a lot of my critics, and I have a lot of critics who have turned. I would say critics that have turned friend or at least friendly, and that’s important. So the reality is I’ve never been afraid to sit down and talk with somebody intellectually, but sometimes it’s really hard to open the door, and sometimes the contrast is important too. So for example, if you look at my five-year institutional record, they make notes, they put things in the notes, you can read that and you can see the character of the person. And what you see in there is a lot of interactions with would-be foes, right? These are cops. It’s the government, it’s the man. The reality is that you are the government.

I am the government. This is government by the people, and governed by the people only works when the people bother to show up and do it. So when we have put trust, and frankly, a lot of money in the hands of these strangers, then yeah, we need to have good relationships with them. And different kinds of message and different kinds of activism at different stages requires a different kind of hat to be worn, and I’m very good at wearing the hat that’s necessary or that the work tells me it needs to be worn at the time. So what would I say to my critics? I would say, “Come have a conversation with me.” I’m not going to put any of my critics on blast. They might not appreciate that, but those of you that are watching, you know who you are, and we’ve had some good conversations, and I would have those conversations again.

Taya Graham:

It’s interesting you were talking about wearing the different hats, because one of the difficult parts of the film was trying to show how many successes you had at filing lawsuits, and you had a really big win with Liberty Freak, making case law that I believe enshrines in the 10th circuit, the right to film police. I think this came out when you were incarcerated, that’s when that ruling came out. So what are your thoughts about this win, and do you have any other lawsuits that are still cooking?

Eric Brandt:

I don’t have any that are still cooking. We had some pretty good ones going and the defendants died, and that pretty much puts an end to the litigation because you can’t get damages out of a corpse. I think I’ve had now, in my entire career, I’ve had three or four defendants die before trial. That’s terrible for a lot of reasons, and your questions don’t get answered because the litigation becomes moot. When I came to the halfway house, for the last two years, I’ve had no litigation open. I do have an active litigation right now that I can’t really talk a whole lot about.

Taya Graham:

You

Eric Brandt:

Can read what’s been filed on Pacer, that’s as much as I can give you now, but that litigation is earned, and there are some questions that need to be answered there. I lost track of the question. What was the question? Litigation successes.

The point of the work is not to have a litigation success, right? There’s no such thing as a successful litigation. All litigation is injurious, and so I wouldn’t encourage people to do litigation or to go into it for the litigation. The risks are very high. Take the liberty freak when Irizarry versus Yahia, for example. I was the primary author of that initially because we were together, and you may recall that I actually was found guilty for that incident, and so therefore I lost my part of that lawsuit under collateral estoppel. It was barred because I had been found guilty, and I, in fact, got a six-month jail sentence out of that. So this guy tries to run me over, and I ended up with a six-month jail sentence out of that, but Abboty didn’t. Abody didn’t even get charged, so his continued to move forward.

When the judge granted the officer’s qualified immunity, that’s when things really sped up. We learned that a lot of people watch these cases. The attorneys that wanted to take up that appeal crawled out of the woodwork for him. So getting it to the 10th circuit, yeah, that was my work in collaboration and collateral with Abody. Is that a great success? Well, no, there’s no such thing as a litigation success. It would’ve been better if it had been legislated instead of litigated. So I don’t consider litigation to be a success. Good litigation is difficult, it’s expensive, it’s risky, and you really don’t know what the outcome is going to be. As strong as you. You’ve got a slam dunk case. Slam dunk in the real world is like 80%. You’re not going to get better than that. You could get a weird adverse ruling and lose a perfectly good case, or more importantly, you could have a really good question with the wrong judicial environment to bring it in, and you could end up with a bad ruling.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, we end up in the Fifth Circuit, which is also where good lawsuits go to die.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah. I’m pretty sure that the Fifth Circuit placed a moratorium on brains. I read that somewhere.

Stephen Janis:

Which for people that don’t know, Fifth Circuit basically covers Texas.

Eric Brandt:

I know.

Stephen Janis:

I’m just letting people know who don’t know because we’re talking about 10th Circuit would be the Denver area.

Eric Brandt:

Let me tell you one of the great comedies in my life is the Ninth Circuit.

Stephen Janis:

Which is where? Which is, just so people know.

Eric Brandt:

Okay. This is where the comedy comes in. The Ninth Circuit includes Idaho and California.

Taya Graham:

That’s a little

Eric Brandt:

Schizophrenic.

Taya Graham:

Wow. Wow.

Eric Brandt:

And it’s dominated by the San Francisco side, so those poor libertarians up in Idaho have to endure this liberal shit. Can I say shit on TV? I’m sorry.

Stephen Janis:

No, no, no. Speak the truth. No, I

Eric Brandt:

Do find that to be judicially comedic.

Stephen Janis:

Wow.

Eric Brandt:

Litigation successes though. I mean, the litigation is necessary sometimes, unfortunately, and it’s part of how we push back. There’s virtually never any accountability at the street officer level, and that’s unfortunate. And how much better would the world. Do you have any idea how many hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on attorney’s costs in Irizarry versus Yahia?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, you had the electronic frontier, you had the Cato Institute.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, you had amicus briefs that were supporting you from really great

Stephen Janis:

Institutions. From really high powered organizations that probably have very expensive lawyers, I would imagine.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah. I hope that didn’t buzz through on you. I’m rejecting a call. I’m sorry. Yeah. Even in my case with the jury nullification, we had the ACLU come out from New York. Wow. They were given time to speak at the questioning of the Supreme Court here, Colorado Supreme Court. We had an amicus brief again from the Cato Institute, surprisingly. And if you took. Well, let’s take a look at the Westminster case. I was arrested for speaking about police brutality at the public microphone. It took six years to get to trial. Six years.

Taya Graham:

The

Eric Brandt:

Federal jury was impaneled. They found the city guilty or liable. In civil court, it’s liable. They found him liable of violating the First Amendment by dragging me out of the podium and arresting me for trying to talk about police brutality at my public microphone time. And I will tell you that I did tell the mayor it would be in his best interest if he let me finish my speech. That case cost the city of Westminster about $400,000 just in attorney’s fees alone.

Taya Graham:

Incredible.

Eric Brandt:

And the judgment was fairly small. It was $12,000. So you want to talk about litigation successes. There’s not a lot of money in civil rights, right? I wasn’t beaten. I was in jail overnight.What’s the real injury here? The real injury is to the community. It’s to the constitution. So while prosecutors like to say, “Oh, all these crimes, the victim is the community.” Well, that’s also true with civil rights violations, but they don’t pay out. So the fee shifting, the ability to recover attorney’s fees if you win is great. That can help convince cities to settle with you, but unfortunately, that’s money that does not go into officer training.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, good point.

Eric Brandt:

So we have a bunch of officers that we’re going to presumably say that at least a substantial fraction of them go into the business because they want to do something good for the community. And what they end up is they end up in this morass of, “I have to write my report a certain way so that I don’t lose my case.” That takes a few years for them to figure that out. So the reports go from being detailed and honest to being vague and boilerplate and embellished, and they’re not really remembering the incident. They know how to write the charges for the eight big charges that they file on a daily basis, and it’s really not refreshing their memory. It’s just one of the things. So they become jaded, and you have to remember that they’re being trained by a population that believes that they’ve been taxed enough already.

So we’re giving them the absolute most training that we can squeeze out of a population that is taxed enough already. Now, layer that onto the litigation costs. So Westminster, instead of being able to pay $400,000 for officer training, they instead paid lawyers to take that money out of their community. Those property owners were taxed for that.

That cost of litigation passes right onto the bill with no representation. Cost of litigation is the one thing that they tax you on that you don’t have a say because it has

Taya Graham:

To be

Eric Brandt:

Paid. So the community paid for that. Did they really get a half a million dollars worth of training out of that? And I seriously I don’t really question that. So what’s the word there? Again, there is no such thing as successful litigation. All litigation is an injury to the community and to everybody involved.

Stephen Janis:

Well, Eric, let me shift gears a little bit here. What do you think, you remember people called you a copwatcher. I think you were a copwatcher. I don’t know if

Taya Graham:

You’ve

Stephen Janis:

Been able to follow it from prison, but what do you think about the copwatcher movement at this point that you were a big part of? And in some cases it seems like it’s like James Freeman took down his YouTube channel. There’s been a lot of, I think, commotion in the community. Do you think it’s still as viable as it was five years ago or is it kind of waning or what do you think?

Eric Brandt:

Well, let me first be honest that I don’t have enough time to watch all of these channels. Right,

Stephen Janis:

Of course.

Eric Brandt:

So I guess I’ll give you some off the cuff observations that I’ve made in the last few months that I’ve been able to do that. First of all, when you put yourself out there and you put yourself in the public light, not only do you have supporters, but you also have critics.

And worse than critics is you have the silent enemies. You have the people that are watching your channel just to find the grew up. No, I’m talking about when your life is completely on blast all day long, then you have placed a target on your back. The guy in Texas, the head of the police union, Grimaldi or whatever his name is, I remember him saying once, “We are sick and tired of having a target on our back every day.” And I’m thinking to myself, “Well, stop putting it there.” Well, that’s the same thing with a copwatcher. You’re sticking your neck out. You are exposing yourself to liability. You’re exposing yourself to them taking a tiny little jaywalking ticket and turning it into a prison sentence. You have to look at the great risks that are there. If you have a family, if you have kids to pick up from school and you get arrested doing activism, social services is happy to give those kids a ride and you’ll see them in six months maybe.

If you have a mortgage, you can’t. We’ve seen a lot of cop watchers. I’m using the term copwatcher very loosely. I’m not famous.

Stephen Janis:

I’m famously

Eric Brandt:

Despised labels, but I’ve known a lot of activists, we’ll call them activists, that have lost their employment over their activism. So cops do go to these employers and say things to them and try to do that. That’s another reason why I’ve not shared where I’m employed because I don’t want turmoil with my employer. Does that make sense? That totally makes

Stephen Janis:

Sense. Because

Eric Brandt:

There’s risks there. There are mala factors out there. If we say that 99% of the population is good and 1% is genuinely malevolent, then if you have a channel with a hundred thousand people, you still have a thousand malevolents out there working against you and you’re just one person. Yeah. I haven’t thought of that way. There’s a lot of risk there. And so it’s not at all a surprise to me that some of these activists are flash in the pan, if you will. They do their little activism, they get into a little bit of trouble, then they’re done. And that’s as much as we can expect out of a population, that’s a tax. People can only handle so much tax and so much pressure. It requires all kinds. I will say, I don’t think I’m a big fan of the standing on the side of the road with the Zoom lens in the dispensary.

I’m not sure that I’m really advancing the First Amendment. I may be creating animosity with the First Amendment if we’re basically going after private citizens. And I’m not a big fan of the watch these people freak out until the one asshole gets sauced. I’m not a fan of that. I don’t think that that’s advancing the First Amendment very well. I think that that’s trying to make money in clicks and views. I’m not finding a lot of value in that work, but that makes me the critic and they have to make their own decisions. So

They’re there and I think that we have to tolerate it and accept it whether we like it or not. And you may like it, I don’t know. And your viewers may like that stuff. It does seem to get noticed, but that’s not my fan. My attack is against the government. I want government actors to be made aware and I want the public to be aware of the government misconduct because they’re the ones that ultimately make the decisions. They make the pressure. If you’re out there on the street creating the scene, then there are people in the back that are talking about it. If you don’t mind, I’ll talk to you about the power of how these things make it to the dinner table conversation. I had jury selection going on in an incident in Westminster, this is now about a decade ago, and we’re questioning the jurors.

And one of the jurors says, “I don’t know if this is the same guy, but my kids came home from school a while back and they were talking about a guy with this big sign and with this uncomfortable message. And we had to explain to our kids that this was not the language that we espouse, this is not how we like to live in our lives, but they used it as the teachable moment to explain the function of the First Amendment and the Constitution. So who am I to say that a particular incident does not reach the dinner table in a certain way?” And ultimately those are the people that talk in the background and that’s where the real power comes from. So I think that copwatching is still active and alive. I still see it. I do like some of these channels like John Eagle’s channel and Audit the Audit channel where they kind of go in depth on the story and they seem to put a lot of work into that.

And I would certainly, what’s that channel? She’s got the hair. We were talking with her earlier today. Oh, the police accountability report, that one.

Taya Graham:

I’m glad I’m on your list. Of course

Eric Brandt:

You’re on my list. But these are also important, right? So you have this street antagonism and then we have Tea Graham coming into us with the intrepid reporter in the field, Stephen Janice, and they kind of break down an incident or they break down a story. There’s a lot of money that goes into that kind of journalism. And so it’s so complicated and there’s so many moving parts and it’s really important for people to appreciate all of them.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, we confronted that, but go ahead Tea, you had the next question.

Taya Graham:

I wanted to ask you something because we’re talking about criticism and I was just wondering, just looking back on your life, on your activism, do you have any self-reflection or criticism for yourself? Because I know, for example, I was there when you were in the courtroom in Colorado and I saw you make a statement apologizing to the folks who were affected by your speech. But looking back now, do you have any criticism for yourself or is there anything you would change?

Eric Brandt:

Oh, that’s a complicated question. Do I have criticism for myself? Absolutely. And a lot of criticisms are internal. Some of them we’ve talked about. Yeah. I mean, nobody gets it right all the time. And that’s kind of the problem when you’re out there with the spotlight on you 24 hours a day is that all of your flaws are out there. And I’ve owned my flaws. I tell people I’m bulletproof. Everybody knows I’m a schlub, right? I mean, pick the negative moniker and I’ve probably done it at least once. So that makes me essentially bulletproof. You can’t attack me. Go ahead. Try to insult me. And you have to, to a certain degree, have that kind of attitude if you’re going to go into this. You have to have a thick skin. You have to be able to handle it. I will confide in you now today that what really pushed me over the edge was them taking Otto’s kids.

Taya Graham:

That

Eric Brandt:

Was existential to me. That was so horrible. And that was too much vicarious trauma for me to endure that broke me.

Stephen Janis:

I’m sorry, Eric.

Taya Graham:

I understand that. A lot of people were very deeply affected by that.

Eric Brandt:

Oh, horribly affected. That was a horrible, horrible thing. And just because he was with us, all that, I’ve seen all of that case from both sides. I’ve seen all the body camera footage and none of it made it any easier to swallow. It made it harder. It was even harder if you knew the backside of it. So I’ll tell you that the biggest criticism is that I had too much going on at the same time. I mean, my strength was that they would kick me down and I would get right back up. And I had so many things that were being juggled and then the auto incident was just more than I could bear.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Just so people who are watching, just so they know, Otto, the watchdog, he took his kids camping and they separated him from his kids accusing him of –

Eric Brandt:

For three years.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, for three years. So it

Taya Graham:

Was an ordeal. And that’s for Otto’s First Amendment activism. Otto was primarily, essentially police would approach him for holding signs. He was not putting a camera – Still approach him. He still out there. He’s still out there holding those signs, but putting cameras in people’s faces. He wasn’t approaching police officers. He was merely standing on the side of the road holding signs. And that was the beginning of his persecution.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, Eric, so what’s next for you? I mean, we’re kind of wrapping up and listen, we appreciate your time.

Taya Graham:

Oh, absolutely. Oh,

Stephen Janis:

I appreciate your time. What’s next for you? What’s your future look like? I mean, people want to know, what are you going to do next?

Eric Brandt:

I had intended to get out and go to the ranch and build my ranch. And there’s a lot of work that needs to be done there and that’s my forever home. That’s what I want to build.

Stephen Janis:

With a septic tank, right?

Eric Brandt:

With the septic tank, right? My life’s ambition is a pile of shit and I’m excited about it. Well, I think it’s – Oh, you guys

Taya Graham:

Are

Eric Brandt:

Going to have to bleep out a lot on this video, aren’t you? Yes. I

Taya Graham:

Think it’s absolutely wonderful that you’re creating a life for yourself where you’re going to be able to live off the land and give back to the land, help cultivate your chickens, maybe grow some food. I’m really into pepper stuff myself, ready for the urban apocalypse. So I definitely appreciate being able to live off the grid. Well, if

Stephen Janis:

There is no population left

Taya Graham:

There.

Eric Brandt:

I want to essentially build a biodiverse zone.

Taya Graham:

Yes.

Eric Brandt:

My goal is 50 trees a year for 10 years.

Stephen Janis:

Oh,

Taya Graham:

That’s

Stephen Janis:

Great.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Very nice.

Eric Brandt:

I hate to say, I have a certain amount of experience and education and expertise, so you’re not going to see Eric Brandt running down the street with sparkly purple toenails and a giant fuck the cop sign. That’s just not in the cards. So

Stephen Janis:

Those days are over. Those days of crazy YouTube videos are over.

Taya Graham:

No more Pikachu outfits.

Eric Brandt:

Maybe Pikachu.

Taya Graham:

Don’t give

Eric Brandt:

Up Pikachu. My situation is now different, right? I can’t tolerate another prosecution. The most minor thing now, if I lose, would be a very major thing for me.

Stephen Janis:

Eric, well that- That’s great. I kind of had a feeling that you weren’t going to stop working on this type of reforming the criminal justice system. And I commend you and laud you for that. That something you’re doing when you just got out. But we really appreciate you joining us today. Absolutely. It’s been fascinating discussion. We have very much enjoyed covering your career and film. Yute, you want to

Taya Graham:

Take up? And also being one little part of that constellation, of that Eric Brandt constellation. We’re grateful for you helping us be a part of that community. So thank you, Eric.

Eric Brandt:

Thank you so much for being there.

Taya Graham:

We really appreciate you joining us and sharing your thoughts and your feelings during this critical moment in your life. And we really appreciate your candor about copwatching and the criminal justice system and your own personal reflections about what you’ve been through. Now, Steven, for me, there’s not going to be any rant today for me. I mean, I thought this was a really profound conversation. I feel like there’s nothing I have to say here. I mean, love them or hate him. Eric is always insightful and thoughtful and kind of a mad genius, but not just about his own work, but the broader issues that prompted his activism. But Steven, before I walk us out, do you have any thoughts about our discussion?

Stephen Janis:

Well, it’s just interesting that Eric has projects already kind of percolating to do reform. It’s interesting to see that the activists within him did not die in prison. It came out. And also, well, I think a lot of people don’t understand the trauma of being incarcerated.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:

And to see Eric’s emotional reaction should be, I think everyone should see that because it’s not a big deal. It’s not a small deal to put someone in a cage and confine them. And Eric showed how that affected him. And I think we should all recognize that. Absolutely. We have to be careful about how we run our criminal justice system for a variety of reasons. But the emotional toll it took on him really moved me. And also the fact that he understood that we tried to connect the dots in his life and others and show it in a way that wasn’t just mercenary or that we use the conflict to create a story, that we showed a story of some positivity and some true emotional connections. So I was really glad that he saw that because I worked very hard to try to bring that out of the film.

So it wasn’t just about crazy cop watchers. As Eric points out, they’re people with lives.

Taya Graham:

Steve, that’s a really good point. I mean, we could have made that documentary incredibly sensationalistic, but instead what we wanted to show was the community that was there. And I’m really glad that Eric was so open with us. Okay. We’re going to keep you up to date on Eric and his work, putting his life back together, and also his upcoming litigation or legislation. We’ll see what happens. And we’re also working on new episodes of the police accountability report, which we hope to debut soon. So please stay tuned. And finally, our camera will be in the courtroom when a judge hands down his decision in the dramatic trespassing trial of Long Island Audit. This was after the popular cop watcher defended himself against charges that he broke the law when he knocked on the door of Connecticut State Trooper Brian Fahey. And as always, please be safe out there.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to this breaking news edition of our Police Accountability Report livestream. Now, we decide to do the show because there have been serious widespread disruptions across the 1A and Copwatcher YouTube community, namely a broad and still unexplained demonetization of an array of channels related to both copwatching and First Amendment auditing. Whether this is targeted, random, part of YouTube’s overhaul to its partnership system, what it means for some very popular activists is what we will unpack today. And to help us, we’ll be joined by two influential copwatchers, Long Island Audits, also known as Sean Paul Reyes and Wright’s Crispy or Finn Vargas. Both have been instrumental members of the Copwatcher movement and both have been affected by YouTube’s mysterious move to end their ability to monetize their content, at least on YouTube for now. But before I get to them, I want to check in with my reporting partner, Steven Janis, who has been researching and reporting on what’s happening.

So Stephen, thank you for joining me indoors. Tay,

Stephen Janis:

Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be indoors. I don’t plan to stay here, so let’s get this going.

Taya Graham:

All right, so let’s get right to it, Steven. What is the scope of this move by YouTube and perhaps its origins?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, we’ve been debating that and it seems like it kind of came out of nowhere. There was no warning to any of the channels and it’s really difficult to decipher because YouTube has not made any public comments on why this has happened, but it has caused a lot of distress in the Copwatcher community. We’ve been hearing from many channels about this. People that we know, people that we’ve been talking to for years have reached out to us and told us this is happening, but no one seems to know why we have a theory we’re going to talk about in a second, but it’s just kind of like out of nowhere.

Taya Graham:

Oh, and I also want everybody watching to know, as you can tell, this is very live and we’re going to do our best to put your chats on screen and to also read your comments whenever possible. But let me just get back up right into it. I just want to say hi to the mods out there, Lacey R and Noli D. Thank you guys so much for being here. Okay, let’s get back to it. Dave, if you don’t mind putting up on the screen the graphic that shows the copwatchers and auditors. So if you take a look, there are some familiar names here like ANCAP Copwatch. There’s also James Freeman, John Felax, NC Tyrant Hunter, and of course Long Island Audit and Writes Crispy. Now, these are some of the channels we have been able to confirm directly. There really is quite a bit of uncertainty.

And let me also say this, if you are one of the channels affected, please reach out to us and let us know so we can compile an accurate and definitive list as we want to cover this closely. And I also want to say a special thanks to Friends in Code for providing us with some very valuable information. Agreed. But of course it’s not just who was affected, that’s a big question, but why? Now the YouTubers who told us they have been affected said the email they received was nebulous to say the least. Dave, if you don’t mind putting JPEG2 on the screen.

So I’m going to read some of it and then we can discuss a theory Long Island audits discussed and that you’ve been doing some reporting on. Okay? Yep. So let me just read this first. It says in the email or rather on the screen, “Your channel isn’t earning right now. After reviewing your channel using a combination of automated systems and human reviewers, we found that does not follow YouTube channel’s monetization policies. Our review found that your channel contains the following, violations of creator responsibility policy. Your channel has violated our creator responsibility policy.” Stephen, what does that even mean? It

Stephen Janis:

Doesn’t mean anything really. It’s a very nebulous, like you said, sort of definition. I dug deeper into it and it was something about reputational harm, very, very things that would be part of the normal process of journalism or reporting. I mean, anyone could create reputational harm by just reporting something that someone disagrees with or having a conflict or having a conversation. So it’s really, really loose, vaguely worded, and I think that’s the point. I think it gives YouTube a maximum flexibility, just kick people off of monetization however and whenever they want. And I don’t think it has any guidelines that are useful to any channels in terms of how to follow these. I don’t think you can follow them. So it’s really, I think, purposely vague.

Taya Graham:

Stephen, how has the Copwatcher community and the First Amendment activists responded?

Stephen Janis:

Well, a lot of anger because I think there was no warning or no sort of like, you need to do this or you need to do that. I mean, and these channels have been up and I would note that all the channel, their videos are still out there. Now, sometimes YouTube, when it really is offended by a video, will take it down or force you to take it down or take down your channel for copyright strikes, all sorts of things. But this just kind of came out of nowhere. And I think that’s why that’s feeding, I wouldn’t call it conspiracy theories, but some thoughts about there’s something behind this more than just YouTube trying to enforce its creator responsibility. I think people feel there’s something deeper there going on and something more nefarious. And I think that’s why we’ve been looking into it.

Taya Graham:

Now, there’s a theory that has emerged thanks to Long Island audits that you have been reporting on, Steven, and that we, of course, will discuss with him shortly, but we want to try to lay it out for you first. Now, as we’ve reported before on the show, Sean Paul had a fraught encounter with a powerful police union official named Lou Savillo. Sean Paul had visited police headquarters to ask about lawsuit settlements for police brutality, but the visit turned chaotic fairly quickly. Now, Long Island Audit was arrested and the ensuing fallout actually caught the attention of the New York Post, which blared headlines claiming that the resulting YouTube posts had led to angry phone calls to the Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association members. Now, Reyes was eventually arrested, but Savillo is actually more powerful than just the head of a local police union. And it’s possible the dispute escalated.

Turns out he’s the president of an organization called UCOPS or the United Coalition of Public Safety. And in that capacity, he weighed into a national controversy that may have given him behind the scenes leverage. So Stephen, we’re going to watch the video where Savillo endorses Todd Blanche and discuss the theory about how his influence may have played a role in what we’re seeing on YouTube. Dave, if you don’t mind playing clip three, the Savillo clip. I’m

Speaker 3:

Lou Savillo and I’m the president of UCOPS. UCOPS is a coalition of law enforcement unions that represents over 100,000 active and retired law enforcement officers. Recently, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. We discussed how police officers are being threatened, doxed, and even targeted for violence in their own homes. The AG expressed strong support for our law enforcement officers and stated that prosecuting these crimes would be a top priority for his administration. Todd Blanche has a keen intellect. Moreover, he has a discerning nature. He also is even-handed with justice, making him the perfect candidate for our country’s top prosecutor. This is why UCOPS and the thousands of police officers we represent are urging the United States Senate to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General. Thank you.

Taya Graham:

Okay, Steven, I know you’ve had some run-ins with police unions. I’m sure you have something to say here. Well,

Stephen Janis:

No, the important thing to remember here is Todd Blanche at that point was facing a lot of pushback. He was the acting Attorney General and was trying to get the Senate to approve him to become full confirmed Attorney General. And he was facing a lot of headwinds because he would not renounce Trump’s sort of $1.76 billion giveaway fund to people who had been supposedly wronged by government, the weaponization fund. So he was in really, really kind of rough waters and he was looking for help. And then this organization called UCOP steps in and says, “Hey, we should endorse this guy. He’s great. All 100,000 police officers are behind him.” And I think it was a very important moment for Todd Blanche’s confirmation.

Taya Graham:

And you know what? We also got a copy of a July 9th letter sent to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, that offers a full throated endorsement of Blanche. Now, Stephen, why is this important? What was going on with Blanche who at the time was acting attorney general? He

Stephen Janis:

Was just really searching for a life raft because a lot of Republican senators were like, “We’re not going to approve you.” Tom Tillis from North Carolina was like, “We are not going to approve you if you don’t renounce Trump’s weaponization fund.” And of course he wouldn’t do it. He parsed on it, he kind of danced around. But then these guys come in and say, “Hey, this guy’s great. All the cops, 100,000 cops,” which I’m going to get to about that being sort of a very flimsy claim, “are going to support you.” And I think so they were trying to bail out Todd Blanche, who’s a very powerful man.

Taya Graham:

I want to discuss a bit what he said in the video that police officers are being doxed and harassed. And I think that’s curious that he brought this up specifically, and you’ve also been doing a little digging on UCOPS organization highlighted in the letter that Lou Cevello just said he’s the head of. So what have you found?

Stephen Janis:

Well, so UCOPS is supposed to be this big organization that represents 100,000 police officers, but only was started in 2025. It has about $60,000 in revenue. It has about four or five people who don’t work for a full-time or volunteer. So it’s, I would say sort of an AstroTurf, which is claiming to represent tons of people, but being a little bit of an artifice because they don’t have any money, they don’t have any staff, and there’s no information on their 990s, which is their tax form, about how many members they have. So UCOPS kind of came out of nowhere, and I think that makes it a little bit of a strange thing to say, “Well, I represent UCOPS, which represents 100,000 police.” There’s really very little evidence of that.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So I think we’ve established a connection between a powerful police union president and the most powerful law enforcement officer in the country, namely the Attorney General of the United States of America. But to connect the dots further, we’re going to bring one of the guests, the man at the center of the controversy, and one of the most popular copwatchers out there, Long Island Audits, also known as Sean Paul Reyes. Sean Paul, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us.

Long Island Audit:

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So first, I’m just going to say a quick acknowledgement to Chuck Bronson, Noli D. I think I see Johnny Bravo out there. People are showing up and I’m hoping they’re showing their support as well. So let me ask you just to start out, how are you doing and how did you find out about your channel being demonetized and how is it hitting you? I mean, how are you dealing with it personally?

Long Island Audit:

Well, as you know, I’m usually on the road as I am right now, and my brother-in-law actually called me multiple times and I called him right back. I was in the middle of something and I was like, “Are you all right?” And he’s like, “Hey, every First Amendment auditor is getting their channel demonetized. Is your channel demonetized?” And I was like, “No, I don’t believe so.” So I opened up my YouTube studio and my phone app and it said you were removed from the partner program. So that’s how I found out. It was definitely shocking news for sure. I’ve been doing this for five years now, built a platform of over a million subscribers and just never had a violation. Till this day, my YouTube studio says no violations whatsoever. So I’ve never had a copyright strike, never had a violation.

Taya Graham:

Incredible.

Long Island Audit:

And they demonetized me.

Taya Graham:

Oh, wow. That’s incredible. I’ll just say I know some channels that have gotten strikes from personal experience. There is some other news related to your work that occurred yesterday. So you really had quite a day yesterday. You were found guilty of trespassing. Can you talk a little bit about what happened?

Long Island Audit:

Yeah. So Judge Guinari in the Danielson Superior Court found me guilty of criminal trespass in the third degree in the state of Connecticut. He found that as a matter of law, the private road dead end to no turnaround sign was not a vehicle sign. He said in his decision that he rejected my argument that that was a sign meant for vehicles. I think it’s pretty clear from the verbiage on the sign that it is really pretty clearly meant for vehicles. So I’m hopeful on appeal, but this is part of the process. The process is the punishment. They brought this judge in out of nowhere. I’ve been switching through judges so quickly, different judges, different jurisdictions. The process is the punishment and I’m going to continue to, hopefully in the process of an appeal, we can get a win here, but I don’t think anybody really believes that that sign was meant for a pedestrian.

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, Sean, this is hard to believe because there’s sort of a presumption that you can go up and knock on someone’s door. If they tell you to leave, you leave, you’re fine, which is what you did. I mean, there’s Supreme Court precedent here. Why did the judge ignore the law in this case? I mean, did he ignore the law?

Long Island Audit:

Yeah. I mean, his interpretation of the law, because in this case, his interpretation’s the only one that matters as of right now. His interpretation of the law is that unless if there is some sort of animosity between you and the person beforehand, then therefore you lose that privilege to conduct a knock and talk because you should know that you’re not welcome because of the alleged animosity and prior problems. But to me, if I’m a tenacious reporter, which I think I am, and I follow up on these stories, there’s a lot of public officials that one could argue in a court of law that have animosity with me and therefore I lose all my privileges.

Stephen Janis:

I was just thinking that because if we’re reporting on someone, they don’t like what we’re reporting, they’re aware of that, they’re angry. And I have shown up at people’s houses and places of work and stuff when I’ve been writing stories that have been critical of someone who could easily make the case that there was so-called animosity. I mean, has that ever been explored as far as you know? Because that strikes me as a really fine line and really gets into First Amendment monitoring and deciding what is conflict and what isn’t. I mean, is that something that’s been explored?

Long Island Audit:

I believe, Steven, that this is a case of first impression. That’s what it’s called in the legal world. And I think that this is something that the judge is just ruling on his own. I couldn’t find any case law where it takes away your privilege of a knock and talk animosity. And he did find that there was animosity he did find. And again, on his part, there’s a lot of animosity. I just talk about him on my channel and talk about what he’s done and what I’ve found out through investigations. And at the end of the day, I love my family and I don’t think about him after work. I’m just putting him up on there. He’s a bad man, but there’s been many, many, many bad men in law enforcement that I’ve come across over the last five years. Patrick Psycho, Ryder, Danbury where he said he would kill me 20 years ago.

There are so many examples and I would knock on any of theirs door. It wasn’t personal. I’ve knocked on dozens of government officials doors at this point.

Taya Graham:

Right. You know what? Before I ask you this question, I just wanted to make a note that one of the people that was trying to confirm the real press, NH NOW, yes, they were also demonetized. So it is hitting people out there. Wow. Sean Paul, I was wondering what are some possible consequences for you? I hate to ask, but are you going to be sentenced and could you face jail time?

Long Island Audit:

So I was already sentenced after I was found guilty by Judge Guinari. The state’s attorney did not ask for any jail time when they were making their case. Brian Fahey’s adult daughter and his wife spoke at the sentencing and the judge sentenced me, ultimately decided to sentence me to 90 days of incarceration, but suspended and one year probation. They actually have a little funny insight is that they were like, “Okay, well you’re going to transfer your probation to Suffolk County obviously, right?” And I was like, “No way. I will traverse all the way to Connecticut before I put my probation in Suffolk County with Lucivilo.”

Stephen Janis:

Okay. Well, let’s get back to YouTube and I’m very sorry that happened to you. We’ll be waiting to see what happens next. But do you think it’s a coincidence you had this encounter with Lucivillo and then suddenly Todd Blanche. I mean, he endorses Todd Blanche and then suddenly YouTube, which has been known to do carry the water for the Trump administration, decides to start demonetizing copwatchers and otters. Do you think that is a coincidence?

Long Island Audit:

I personally don’t think it’s a coincidence. It’s my theory. Could it be any other reason? Sure, it’s a theory. I’ll say that, but there’s a lot more things that go into it. Lucivillo and the union that he leads has been talking nonstop in the last weeks on radio programs that they own about directly targeting the monetization of these YouTubers. And they specifically mentioned YouTube, they specifically mentioned monetization, and this was just as late as two weeks ago. They were talking about these things and then this happens. I think it’s clear that the administration under Todd Blanche, the Department of Justice rather, I don’t think they would have an issue with sending a letter or an email to Google. And also the district attorney in my county actually subpoenaed Google for the last 14 months on a violation trespass case for the last 14 months of my earnings, and Google handed over everything immediately.

Really? And

Stephen Janis:

Google didn’t push back on that at all? At

Long Island Audit:

All. Motion to quash. Before I could even submit a motion to quash, which was only a couple days later, the district attorney had a disc full of all of my subscriber information. Your

Stephen Janis:

Subscriber information? What?

Long Island Audit:

No way. I don’t know about individual subscribers, but I don’t know if they mean, because it says subscribers with an S, but in parentheses. So I don’t know if it’s every single person or just me or maybe just my members on the channel. I don’t know exactly what it entails. I haven’t gone through the disc. My lawyer currently has it, so I have to go through it and that’s one of the many things on my plate rightnow.

Stephen Janis:

That is extremely invasive. I mean, that is extremely scary and not good.

Long Island Audit:

A non-trespass case, I obviously was leaving, the video shows that, but a trespass case to get 14 months of financial information from Google. Again, the common denominator with the police union president, the district attorney here is all that they’re focusing on monetization, financial aspect of YouTube.

Stephen Janis:

Now those charges were dropped or the ones from the encounter at the PBA, at the Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association headquarters, those charges were dropped, right?

Long Island Audit:

The criminal charge was dropped, but what they do is they’ll drop it to a violation of the law, which is not a crime, and they’re prosecuting me on that right now. So basically on a non-crime, they got the subpoena as well.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. It sounds to me like just a fishing exhibition that was facilitated by a bogus charge. But sorry, Tay, go ahead.

Taya Graham:

No, it’s okay. I just wanted to let you know, if you guys see me looking down, it’s because this chat is amazing and I’m learning a lot of information here. I just found out that I for an eye free press is on the list. NC Tyrant Hunter, who I’m glad to see. Good to see you, NC Tyrant Hunter, says he can’t even get into his Google account. So this is hitting people. This is really scary. This is really scary. I even saw that the Batoosize channel had been demonetized, but it has just been restored. So perhaps that’s a sign of hope. Sean Paul, I want to ask you, what’s your thoughts on the reasons provided for the demonetization by YouTube, like violation of creative responsibility policy? I mean, why is this happening now? Because copwatchers and First Amendment auditors have been on YouTube for at least a decade.

Why is it happening now and what do you think that policy means?

Long Island Audit:

As you stated earlier, it’s very vague. I read the policy obviously, and there’s nothing really that stands out, just basically reputational harm on or off the platform. It speaks about actions being taken off the platform as well as on the platform. It’s extremely vague. I’ve never had any violations or copyright strikes on my channel in the last five years since the channel was started. So I have no idea. I have no idea what else it could be, what type of reason Google has behind doing this massive demonetization of channels like First Amendment auditor channels. I have no idea.

Stephen Janis:

Have you appealed to YouTube and communicated with them or heard anything back from them? Have they given you a message or have you at least appealed or what’s going on in terms of YouTube and your communication with them? So

Long Island Audit:

I still have time to file an appeal. I wanted to wait and see what would be the result of some of my peers that already had submitted appeals were going to be. So now that some appeal decisions are coming back, I plan on filing an appeal in the coming days. And contrary to popular belief, just because I have a million subscribers doesn’t mean I have any sort of special connections with YouTube. Right,

Stephen Janis:

Right. And what have your peers said? Have people won their appeals? I mean, I know Batusai, I think won his appeal. Has anyone reported to you what has happened to them in the appeal process? So

Long Island Audit:

The only person I’ve spoken to about the appeal process was Philip Turner, and he had told me what he appealed and how he got his monetization back. I know there’s Rogue Nation had done an appeal. I don’t know what’s the status of that, but there are a couple people out there that did appeals and I don’t know the status of them though.

Taya Graham:

Okay. I just want to shout out Chuck Bronson out there and I see the Humboldt Squid. Good to see you. Humble Squid. You know who you are. I know who you are. Good to see you. But Sean Paul, back to you. I know I keep on going back and forth between the chat, but I just want to make sure everyone knows out there how much I appreciate them being part of this live chat. So I would just want to do something to kind of strengthen the idea of ties between Google and the current presidential administration. So for example, Google Maps did change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, which I think suggests they’re willing to comply with any requests from the current administration because for example, MapQuest didn’t do this. So what do you think is the potential role of those folks in the administration?

Long Island Audit:

I think it’s definitely possible that I wouldn’t put it past Attorney General Todd Blanch for sending at least a letter to Google saying that maybe we classifying these people as domestic terrorists. They use that term a lot for a lot of different people that they do not like or who do have different points of views for them. They automatically label them domestic terrorists. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an incoming memo or there is one already that in existence that First Amendment auditors are domestic terrorists now. But at the end of the day, we really don’t know. It’s all speculation, but there are some sort of connections between the police union president and Todd Blanche. And I think it’s quite hypocritical because he talks about these violence docs, specifically violence against law enforcement officers, but he supports an attorney general who would give money and who has participated in the pardons of individuals who have used violence against law enforcement officers.

So I think it’s very hypocritical on his part. I think he says that just to serve his own ends and he doesn’t really care about law enforcement officers.

Stephen Janis:

Just a note, I have watched hundreds of thousands of hours of copwatcher videos, never seen anyone come close to what happened on January 6th in terms of what the people that they pardoned, that they cleared, that they wanted to compensate with taxpayer dollars who were beating cops. And so I’ve never seen anything, anything remotely. In fact, I’ve never seen a cop watcher strike or in any way threaten a police officer in that way. So the hypocrisy, Sean, is insane, right? I mean, that’s insane.

Long Island Audit:

Yeah. They try to gaslight the country. They’re trying to gaslight Americans and they want to be the heroes and the victims at the same time.

Stephen Janis:

Now we reached out to UCOP, this supposed organization with all volunteer, five volunteers and no money. And we asked them – The

Long Island Audit:

Police union has a lot of money though. They have 15 –

Stephen Janis:

Well,

Long Island Audit:

Yeah, we’ll get to that.

Stephen Janis:

But the UCOP thing is really weird. Do you think that’s some sort of ASO turf or what do you think that is? Because it just doesn’t seem like it’s a real org.

Long Island Audit:

I haven’t looked into it as deeply as you have focusing on the police union, but I mean, if it doesn’t have any members listed, again, I’ve looked into Lucivillo, the president of that organization apparently, and the players of the PBA. And there’s internal affairs reports where he’s alleged to have told officers to lie, picked officers up from DUI arrests. There’s so many different things I wouldn’t put past him for any sort of nonsense. And

Stephen Janis:

I want to make a point here that I hadn’t made before because I went through all the Suffolk County finances. Suffolk County and New York State have some of the highest property taxes in the country. And one of the reasons for that is policing. The Suffolk County budget said that $1,400 per household is what that police department cost. So your work to expose this is so important because people, I mean, I think they’re getting fleeced. Why do they have the highest property taxes in the country? Because they have state troopers retiring for $100,000 a year salary. I mean, isn’t policing tied to the fact that you guys are suffering with some of the highest tax rates anywhere? Yeah,

Long Island Audit:

For sure. I mean, it’s crazy that they talk about so hypocritically, they talk about the monetization side of First Amendment orders while having $15 million in assets. The police union in Suffolk County is quite hypocritical. $15 million in assets and I believe only $2 million in liabilities they claimed on their forms. So $13 million and they bring in $5 million every year in revenue. But then the police department, that’s just the union. The police department has a whole hundreds of millions of dollars. And if you’re counting – It’s a billion dollar a

Stephen Janis:

Year. Suffolk

Long Island Audit:

County. If you’re counting all law enforcement in Suffolk County, yeah, it’s over a billion dollars a year. Crime infested

Stephen Janis:

Long Island.

Long Island Audit:

Right, exactly. And again, what they do, Steven, is they like to gaslight and push their police propaganda. This is why they have podcasts. They’re reaching out into social media. It’s because they want to push this propaganda that, oh, Suffolk County’s one of the safest counties in the country. But at the same time, the Suffolk County, I’ve been lifelong resident of Suffolk County. Suffolk County’s one of the safest counties in the country because of the people of Suffolk County, not because of the law enforcement officers.

Stephen Janis:

Exactly. And if you want to equate public safety with the number of police, it doesn’t add up. So I think that’s why, as you pointed out, they have this propaganda arm. I’m sorry, Tay, I didn’t – No,

Taya Graham:

That’s okay. All right. I’m going to ask a question that might sort of put you on the spot, Sean Paul, so forgive me for doing this, but let me ask you, if they respond, would you be willing to debate Lou Savillo on the Real News if we could hook it up? Oh,

Long Island Audit:

He would never do that, but yes. Well, listen – It’s worth asking. I have video of him saying that he would come on the channel, so maybe you could play that for him when you asked him. You come on your channel, but I would love to debate.

Taya Graham:

Brian would be neutral third party?

Long Island Audit:

I’ve seen his debating skills and it’s just propaganda mush, so I would love to.

Stephen Janis:

Okay. Well, that’s a date.

Taya Graham:

We can set that

Stephen Janis:

Up. If we can do

Taya Graham:

It, we will. I promise. So I know you had another question for Sean.

Stephen Janis:

No, I think we’re done.

Taya Graham:

Are you good? I mean, I just want to make sure because – Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, I don’t want to keep him for too long.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

And so when do you file your appeal on your trespassing case? What is the next step for you? Yeah.

Long Island Audit:

So the next step is I’ve been talking to multiple attorneys. I’ve had multiple attorneys with me this entire way. So these attorneys are, now that their retainer is over, we’re speaking about getting a new retainer for them to file the appeal. And I’m excited. I think it would be a bad precedent in Connecticut to allow any sort of vague signage to be used as some sort of notice under that statute. So I’m hopeful and I plan on fighting it the whole way. This is part of the journey. You win some, you lose some, 14 arrests and one criminal conviction for now. I think that’s a pretty good record to have.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. And Sean, before we let you go, Sean Ray, sorry, what do you see the future of copwatching? We were talking before the show and you and Chris, we were talking about we’re going to keep going, which is going to eliminate one of the greatest sort of arguments the frauditer, anti-copwatcher community makes that you guys are just about clicks and views. Are you getting any feeling among copwatchers that people and auditors are going to keep going regardless and not just give up because of this? I

Long Island Audit:

Hope so. And at the end of the day, I think it’s such a disingenuous argument to make it about monetization when the fraudater, the trolls out there talk about monetization when all of these people, how am I supposed to conduct a proper investigation and travel and do all these things when I’m facing an organization that has not only the power of the law on their side, but $15 million in assets to use against me to do what they need to do? That’s why I purchased the billboard truck. I’ve invested into my company. And at the end of the day, it is a company, but it’s a mission as well. And I’m happy to continue the mission and it’s definitely going to change a little bit depending on whether I get my monetization back. But I think even now, it’s just going to change because I’m going to do more long form content now.

I’m going to do more more over the legal things, show you the videos that necessarily wouldn’t be good for the algorithm, but I know a lot of people appreciate. So it’s going to expand the investigation. I think that’s

Stephen Janis:

Great. I

Taya Graham:

Love it. Yeah. And

Stephen Janis:

Also, it might be interesting to FOIA Groton or whatever part of Connecticut it is, see how much money they spent prosecuting on trespassing charges. That’d be interesting. Yeah, we’ll probably do that. We’ll probably do that.

Taya Graham:

Sean Paul, I can’t wait to see that because just like you said, there are things that when you have to bow to the algorithm that you can’t put up because you know they won’t get views or investigations that you want to do that are going to take a lot of time. And so you might put it on the back burner. I’ve had that experience and it’s painful to do that. And so this might really set you free. And I think we had Lacey R. Put your Patreon in the live below. So if people want to support these coughwatchers who are losing their channels, now’s your time. Full

Stephen Janis:

Disclosure, I’m a Patreon member of Line Isles. Just so everyone knows,

Taya Graham:

I’m

Stephen Janis:

Biased, but-That’s

Taya Graham:

Journalistic ethics to say the truth there. Journalistic ethics. I’m

Stephen Janis:

A $25 a month Patreon member.

Taya Graham:

I

Stephen Janis:

Thought you said 10. No, it was 25. I went all in. I appreciate it. No pizza this week.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So we want to thank you again. I mean, you literally had to stop on the road to speak to us, so we really want to thank you for your time and we absolutely wish you the best of luck. And thank you for taking the time with us, especially because you’re kind of going through it right now. So we really appreciate you coming on. Guess

Long Island Audit:

What? I still got the smile on my face. I’m still healthy, still got my family, still have my good friends and good people in the space that are working really hard like you guys and Rites Crispy that you guys are going to talk to.You guys are doing great work and I’m happy. The trolls needed one little happiness in their life. I’m happy for them. When you live with your life with such misery and pain, I mean, it’s just every day you need a win once in a while, so enjoy it.

Taya Graham:

I think they will savor it while they can. Thanks again, Jean-Paul. We really appreciate you. Come back.

Stephen Janis:

Come back soon. I will.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So Stephen, we’re going to continue our discussion with Copwatchers who are caught up in YouTube’s questionable shift in policy. And we are so happy to be joined by Finton Vargas, otherwise known as the creative force behind the popular channel. Writes Crispy. Hey, Writes Crispy. Thank you so much for joining us.

Rights Crispy:

Hey, thank you, Taya. Thank you, Steven. Thanks for having me and thanks to everybody in the chat, everybody who’s watching now and in the future. I appreciate you.

Stephen Janis:

We appreciate you. We appreciate you coming on.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. And

Stephen Janis:

Being patient.

Taya Graham:

Yes. And so first-follow.

Stephen Janis:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Taya Graham:

So first, let me just do a wellness check with you. How are you doing and how are you dealing with the decision of YouTube’s to demonetize your channel?

Rights Crispy:

Thank you for your concern and thanks for asking. But as I’ve always told everybody, I do well by doing good in my profession. This is just a bonus hobby for me. I don’t do this for money. It’s a nice bonus to have, but as we were saying before, now the trolls don’t have a reason to say that we’re doing this for the money. And if we are, what’s the difference between major news networks that get a lot of ad revenue for their sponsors and everything? I think trying to find a villain in somebody who gets paid in America, it’s what country do you think this is? We make money doing things. But I’m doing all right, thank God. And I know that Rogue Nation did get a response back from YouTube saying that they’re going to escalate it. So it wasn’t a decision, but it was a response.

So that’s good.

Stephen Janis:

What does that mean, escalate? Does that mean they’re going to continue considering it or what does that mean?

Rights Crispy:

I guess the person who received his appeal said that they were going to send it to a higher up.

Stephen Janis:

I see. Okay. Well, that’s better than having the door shut right

Taya Graham:

Away. Right, exactly. It’s a step in the right direction. That’s good to hear. But

Stephen Janis:

I mean, to your point, when you think about if you took the collective monetization of every YouTube auditor out there, it wouldn’t amount to the budget of one metropolitan police department.That’s

Taya Graham:

The truth. Or

Stephen Janis:

Let me tell you this much. When I was a reporter dealing with police departments, they had multiple staff members, like seven or eight, nine, 10 people whose only job was to deal with the media or the press and to get their point of view out there. They had massive multimillion dollar budgets to hire people who were only job was to harass us or tell us we were wrong or yell at us or call us up in the middle of the night. So what YouTubers bring in is pennies on the dollar of what the police unions and the police departments have to spend. So why are people always giving you a hard time about making $20 from a YouTube video? Yeah, it’s

Rights Crispy:

Not just the police, but I’m working on a few stories. Like I told you guys before we started, I’m not going to stop doing this. I have some really important stories that I have to get out. And I stopped feeding the algorithm on YouTube years ago. I think my last paycheck last month was a couple hundred bucks and before that, I don’t remember when I got paid before that. So it’s not something that I’m getting paid off, but I am doing a lot of good work and I’m getting it out there. And like I told you guys also, the only thing I want people to pay is attention. We have a lot of big stories coming out on the Wrights Crispy channel.

It’s not just police. Like I was saying, there are government agencies that have do nothing jobs and we discover that we find their credit cards being used for wasteful purposes and we point that out. I have an attorney here, our city attorney, he also is an attorney for eight municipalities. He gets paid about $20,000 a month. That’s $160,000 a month if that’s what all the municipalities are getting. And he’s not advising the cities correctly. They want to put in data centers, they want to keep flock cameras up even though our Department of Transportation has stopped it. But I don’t want to get off on a tangent. I want to –

Stephen Janis:

No, no, it’s interesting.

Rights Crispy:

It’s

Stephen Janis:

Interesting.That’s great accountability work, man. It needs to be done.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:

And it’s not getting done in many communities because of YouTube and the algorithm and the way our ecosystem is kind of constructed around conflict

Taya Graham:

And

Stephen Janis:

Not like

Taya Graham:

This all reported. The way the attention economy

Stephen Janis:

Works. So let me get you, I just was curious what you thought about some of the ideas that Todd Blanche might be doing this at the behest of police unions or that police unions have been advocating for this and that they gave Google like, “Hey, you got to kick some of these people off monetization.” Do you give any credence to that or what do you think of that theory?

Rights Crispy:

I wouldn’t put it past them. Again, I thank you both for the work that you’ve done since I’ve known you, but especially last September you were in DC and you were interviewing the victims of the Epstein files. Oh yes. That’s one of the main reasons why I got into this. I know that none of those trafficking rings operate without some corruption in our government involved. And for Todd Blanche to say that it’s not a crime to party with Epstein when there are young kids in that room, yes, it is. That’s who we’re dealing with. And if we want to think about how he goes and meets with somebody from Google, I don’t put it past him. Like I said, the narrow-mindedness of these tech companies, look at what happened, the old Twitter, which is now X, remember they banned somebody in Canada for using the wrong pronouns.

However, they allowed the Taliban to continue their channel or their. So the narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy is ridiculous, especially in our modern cruelty. America has become a cruel and vicious place.

Taya Graham:

We

Rights Crispy:

Reward the shallowest, the loudest, the meanest. And for them to think that we are the ones who are being offensive by knocking on a door. I’m flabbergasted at what happened yesterday in Sean’s trial. I mean, that’s clearly established. You can go and drop off a UPS package. You can go and knock on a door and ask for answers.

Stephen Janis:

Politics, when people go and knock on doors and say, “I’m here.”

Taya Graham:

Or if you have a Bible in your hand and you want to talk to people, you’re allowed to knock on doors. It’s an American

Stephen Janis:

Tradition,

Taya Graham:

Even

Stephen Janis:

In a. A door to door salesman. Yeah.

Taya Graham:

I just want to ask you, have you heard from any other channels about this? Because you might have noticed, I’ve been looking down into the live chat. Some people have been demonetized. Other people have luckily missed the swinging sword over their head, the sword of Damocles there. Have you heard from any other channels? What are some of the things you’ve heard from your fellow cop watchers?

Rights Crispy:

Yes, I’m in a group chat. I was actually speaking with Nasty Nathaniel. Shout out to Nasty Nathaniel. When I got a call from Rogue Nation who asked me if I had gotten demonetized, we all checked at the same time. Then we went to the group chat. We were all like, “Hey, you guys checked and everybody’s…” Except for I think a few, Chuck Bronson, I don’t think was affected. Rogue Nation’s other channel was not affected. Major Lee Awesome. He has a lot of new, good content on there. But going back to when I started this, I saw Aurora, Colorado. There was a doctor that was trying to move some Boy Scout equipment in his own office building, and there was a police officer parked in his parking garage. Do you guys remember that?

Stephen Janis:

I’m sorry, I don’t, but –

Rights Crispy:

Well, he was confronted at gunpoint and he gave this speech after everything blew over. He said, “Use your white skin, use your straight teeth, use your education, give your money until it hurts. Give your freedom until you lose it.” And I took that to heart and I’ve done all that. I’ve given more money into this than I’ve gotten out of it. So it’s really not about the money. And the J-Town Press, Lana, just last year alone or the year before I think, she paid, I think $75,000 in records requests and other such fees for getting the story out there. That’s two Florida school teachers’ yearly salaries.

Stephen Janis:

That’s amazing.

Rights Crispy:

And that’s one DMV supervisor’s yearly salary.

Stephen Janis:

One thing you brought up about Todd Blanche and the Epstein victims, Tea’s reporting in Washington DC, the way she made sure that we were there and the way she talked to almost every single victim, I just wanted to acknowledge was an amazing thing to witness. Thank you. And she was there for every moment. I mean, I was right behind her, but – With the camera right there. She was leading the way and I’m glad you saw that because Tea was just amazing about really getting the stories and getting to know the people.

Taya Graham:

And for the record, TikTok was not always fond of my clips.

Stephen Janis:

But to your

Taya Graham:

Point – That’s

Stephen Janis:

Another story. Todd Blanche pretty much dissed the victims. He would only meet with them for an hour or something and it was very, very. That’s another knock against this whole administration, the way they treated, the way Pam Bonnie wouldn’t look at the women. I don’t know if you have anything to say about it.

Taya Graham:

No, it was incredible to see all of those women who, in doing this, I don’t think people realize when those Epstein victims came forward, or survivors perhaps is a better word, when those Epstein survivors came forward, these women have to relive some of the most traumatizing experiences of their lives publicly. They have to talk about something that’s probably one of the worst things that’s ever happened to them. And then they have to deal with the scrutiny of the public with people think, oh, they just want to do a lawsuit for money or oh, they’re just doing this because of a political reason. And these women have been suffering for years. These women have been reaching out to the FBI and the DOJ for years. So it was just heart-rending to see people literally turn their back on these women.

Stephen Janis:

And to your point –

Rights Crispy:

People are talking about these women and trying to question their integrity and why are they. Think of them 20 years younger. That’s who they were when this was happening to them. And I read this story in December 2018 from the Miami Herald and it put a knot in my stomach and I haven’t been able to untie that knot. And now that everybody knows what I’ve known for the last eight years, it’s sickening to see that we are in the age of apathy. People are just looking past it. Keep telling that story, Taya. I will. Thank you. Steven, please keep it up.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank

Stephen Janis:

You. And it points to why you have to hold law enforcement accountable. They’re not always heroes, right? Because as you point out – Sometimes you got to motivate them a little bit. As the stories were told to Taya, people reached out to law enforcement. Law enforcement ignored them. Yes, they did. And in 2008, they gave Epstein that sweetheart deal of 18 months of being overnight in prison, but he was still abusing women. He was actually

Taya Graham:

Still abusing women at the office he was allowed to go to during the day when he was supposed to be in prison.

Stephen Janis:

To say we don’t need cop watchers is absurd.

Taya Graham:

I completely agree. Alex

Stephen Janis:

Acosta

Rights Crispy:

Is the DA for the SAO who gave him the sweetheart deal, right?

Taya Graham:

Alex

Rights Crispy:

Acosta then became the labor secretary under term one of Trump.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. And

Rights Crispy:

Now guess where he is? He’s on the board of directors of Newsmax. So if that’s where you guys are getting your news, shut it off.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. I actually didn’t know he was on the board of Newsmax. Thank you for that. Good fact. Not that I was watching, but.

Rights Crispy:

Back to the YouTube money thing, you were talking about what are they doing about this? Can somebody sue or anything? I know that the Federal Trade Commission is doing an investigation on the bait and switch aspect of it where they’re telling people, and Steven was mentioning how vague it is, these rules that we have to follow. There’s so many things that we can or can’t do. And it’s weird because we’ll watch a channel and there’s somebody spraying somebody with a garden hose in the garden section of Home Depot, and they’re fine. They don’t have a troll channel to bother them at all, and they get away with all that. We are holding our government officials accountable and people start looking at us. We’re not taking a penny of their tax dollars. The person who is taking their tax dollars is not doing their job right.

We’re showing them that, but they’re focused on us.

Stephen Janis:

That’s such a good point.

Taya Graham:

That’s an excellent point. I just want to ask you if you had any thoughts on the violation of the Creator Responsibility Clause. I mean, what do you think that even means and how do you think it applies or doesn’t apply to your channel or to Copwatchers? I mean, this clause is really odd.

Rights Crispy:

Yeah, I was taken aback. Again, when I started, I tried to model myself after more moderate channels like Jeff Gray, Honor Your Oath, Civil Rights Investigation, and Rogue Nation. I really liked their approach, and I saw people doing what I thought was just getting a chip off their shoulder. I tell cops, “Hey, we need those guys too to test your bearing.” But I just decided on my first audit, I said it, “I’m not going to be that way. I’m going to be professional, courteous, respectful, and I’ll give what I get. I’m not just going to be a sucker. I’m going to go up there and I’m going to hold their feet to the fire if I have to, but I’m going to do it in the most respectful manner that I think is possible.” We’ve seen a lot of people take that approach after I started doing that, and I’m glad to have inspired a lot of people to do it that way because that way we can actually make a positive change, I don’t think in our government, but in our country with people so they can see us doing what they should be doing and get them to hold their local municipalities accountable.

But we also have seen people chasing and feeding the algorithm, and they couldn’t pander any harder with their trying to provoke people. I mean, I get that a lot of people who I work with have taken that approach. They’ve gone to dispensaries and stuff. I say heroes work there, leave them alone.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, no, I’ve seen some of those videos and I can’t really figure out what the hell that’s all about. But to the Copwatcher community and the people who are doing the work like you’re doing, the government accountability specifically, do you think this lack of stability in the monetization ecosystem and YouTube in general is going to. What is it going to do to the future of this community that has been very important to keeping police in check? What do you think bodes for the future for people who do this?

Rights Crispy:

Well, it will get rid of a lot of people who do depend on this. They are working with YouTube. That’s their livelihood. And I’m not saying that they’re just making clicks and views. They do good work. It’s just they need to pay their bills.

One of the OGs, the guy, I think his first audit or Copwatch was in 2009, Tommy from Mass Accountability, that guy has really put in a lot of good work and he exposed the “shit list” in Salem, Massachusetts, and he’s out there right now and he’s trying to make money off of YouTube. I don’t know if he was hit. I haven’t talked to him, but he would struggle if he didn’t have that YouTube income. I know he’s doing good work, so it sucks to lose somebody like that. If somebody realizes, “Oh, I can’t make a quick buck off of this,” and I’ll start doing something else that is just questionable or that some people don’t like, they’ll find something else to do. They won’t do it in the YouTube genre. Tuapri was a prankster and did pranks and stuff, and then he jumped into the auditing community.

So they’ll move around, they’ll find something else, they’ll find another way to get paid, but we are going to lose good citizen journalists.

Taya Graham:

Wow. I think you make such a good point because it’s kind of funny. There are people who say, “Oh, well, this is just for money or just for clicks or views.” And it’s like, “Well, I thought this was a capitalist country, and if you did work, it was okay to be paid for said work.” But the thing is that I don’t think a lot of people realize so many folks who run these channels barely make enough money to cover their camera equipment or to even bond out of jail if they get thrown into jail. People really are not making tons of money out there. People are doing this because they really care. And so it hurts to think that this well of activism that was so grassroots, so natural, just really just came from the ground up, could be shut off at the source because these places like YouTube, they essentially are digital commons.

This is where we can go now. And if they turn off the spigot, they basically control what narrative the rest of the country sees. It’s just really disturbing. But I just wanted to get back to Long Island Audits for a second, just to get your thoughts on the verdict of Long Island Audits trespassing case. Do you have any concerns about how his case was treated? Because essentially was just going up to the door and knocking, and now he could potentially be facing time behind bars.

Rights Crispy:

Yeah, it’s repugnant on its face for that judge to have done that, but I’m shocked. We have a broken system. Oh, no.

Taya Graham:

News flash for me, right? Big newsflash for me.

Rights Crispy:

Right. No, that’s what I tell people in every situation when we’re dealing with the government is don’t pin your hopes on an illusion that you’re going to make a change and they’re going to be like, “Oh, you know right, you’re right. McDonald v. Rundle, take those cuffs off of him. You can go home.” No, you can go there with all the facts and all the law in the world. If the guy in the row behind the bench is feeling some kind of way about you, you’re not going to see justice that day, and you’ll have to take it to appeal where it’s, I think, a little bit more scrutinized. But look at how did we get qualified immunity in the first place? It had to be fought all the way up to the Supreme Court that a Black man could eat in a restaurant. They could segregate.

I mean, not segregate, they could integrate, and the cops didn’t want to do that, so they arrested him and they took it to court and they were like, “Nope, I know what the feds said, but here in our beautiful state, we want to keep it that way.” And then they took it all the way up to the Supreme Court, and even in the Supreme Court back then, they said, “Fine,” begrudgingly gave him his right to eat wherever he wanted, but from now on, cops have qualified immunity, and that’s how they got it, is from that Jim Crow law that was being enforced. I’m

Taya Graham:

So glad to explain that. It was basically

Stephen Janis:

Like the Ku Klux Klan law, 1983 federal law that was supposed to allow people to sue public officials to enforce their constitutional rights. The ironic fact is that qualified immunity, which has been a barrier in many circuits to. Yeah, that is ironic. So what’s the future? What’s the future for copwatching and what’s the future for you? Just kind of closing out the last question.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, I was going to ask

Stephen Janis:

The question. I’m sorry, Steve.

Taya Graham:

No, it’s the same question. We’re just seeing in sync.

Stephen Janis:

How do you see the future unfolding and

Taya Graham:

What’s

Stephen Janis:

Going to happen because of this, what we’re calling the great demonetization of YouTube? Well,

Rights Crispy:

I think a lot of people will get re-monetized, and hopefully I will too. It’s a nice bonus, like I said. If not, we can’t be stopped. We’re going to keep on going. I have stick it to the maniosis. It’s fatal.

Taya Graham:

Oh, I love that. I’ve never heard that before. I really like that.

Rights Crispy:

You watch School of Rock.

Stephen Janis:

What makes you think that you guys are going to win the appeals? What do you think is on your side?

Rights Crispy:

Well, for instance, I think it’s a machine algorithm that made all these decisions. I don’t think it was one person going around and watching every one of our videos. I think if anybody had gotten a yellow flag or something before on their channel, that might have affected us. Because again, why would they only do some copwatchers and not all of us? I think maybe some music or something might be affecting. I think it’s something technical, but again, I wouldn’t put it past all those clowns that we mentioned before and the police unions because they really love to hate us. And the other quote that I was saying, I have it here, it’s to be hated for loving freedom has been the weirdest experience of my life.

Stephen Janis:

That’s so interesting.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, I think I understand as a journalist, you write what you think is the truth, and then people hate you for it, and you have to reconcile that. You have to learn to work through that, that, well, I’m giving my best representation of the truth, which I would hope would be beneficial to the community, and there are people that just have vested interests in a power structure, and they hate you. And what’s weird about it is that institutions like policing have people who will go out and attack you who seem to have no reason to do so or no vested interest in the institution, just seem to be blinded by the propaganda, right? I mean, it’s like –

Rights Crispy:

I have two theories of one of two or both, either they don’t have the guts to stick it to the man like we do or stand for their rights, and they hate seeing somebody else showing them that they can and they don’t. Wow. Or they want to kill the messenger because we’re showing them that their heroes are actually cowards or jerks and they don’t like it, or both. And I think –

Taya Graham:

That makes a lot of sense.

Rights Crispy:

To inspire people. I’m here to let people who are like-minded know that they’re not alone. I also love to turn people around. People ask me all the time, “Oh, why’d you do this?” And when I explain it to them, I’m like, “Oh, wait a minute. Hold on.” And they get educated. My wife and I sing the Bonnie Taylor, “Turn them around,” because we turned them around, and that’s one of my favorite things. Shout out to Wolfie Gladly, who taught me how to be positive with the trolls and just have fun with them and let them know to search inward for the source of your misplaced anger. Wow.

Stephen Janis:

That is a good

Rights Crispy:

Way to approach it. Be aware of your own anger. Why are you mad at me? You don’t know me. I didn’t do anything to you. That

Taya Graham:

Is a very evolved way of handling it. Yeah, that’s very evolved and very healthy way. To be able to deal with the

Stephen Janis:

Negative comments.

Taya Graham:

Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, we appreciate you taking the time.

Taya Graham:

We appreciate you so much. We’re so glad you joined us. We’re so glad you were willing to be flexible with us. We appreciate your work, and I hope you keep us updated, and that if you hear from anyone else in the Copwatcher community, let us know how it’s going. Are people still continuing to get demonetized? Because as we showed earlier, there’s a chance that even though you said it might have been just an algorithmic thing all at once, there could be someone who’s putting their thumb on the scale. Well, the

Rights Crispy:

2A community was also hit. I’m sorry to interrupt. No, the 2A. Oh, the

Taya Graham:

2A? Interesting. Oh, really? Because I reached out to HBO Matt to see if he came. Well, HBO Matt

Stephen Janis:

Did get demonetized,

Taya Graham:

Right? No, no, no, he wasn’t. I spoke to him. I messaged him as of two days ago. He was not. He wasn’t demonetized. I don’t know if that’s changed, but I did know the 2A community got hit too. So 1A and 2A.

Stephen Janis:

Anyone here from Corners News?

Taya Graham:

I asked him about Corners, but actually I’ll reach out to him later. Yeah. And just please keep us updated because if we can, we’d like to be a resource for everybody. And also, we want to see how far this goes. Is it hitting 1A? Is it hitting 2A? Do we need to worry about any of the other As in our constitution? Do we need to worry about them? Yeah.

Rights Crispy:

It was HBO Matt who told me the gun channels got hit too.

Taya Graham:

Wow. Okay. All right. Well, I’ll check in with him again. Finn, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you so much. Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

And keep doing the great work you’re doing.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Citizen journalists

Stephen Janis:

Are the best.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. I appreciate you. We have utmost respect for it.

Rights Crispy:

Dittos. I mean, you guys are inspirational. Thank you.

Taya Graham:

Aw, thank you. Thanks to everybody. That’s really kind. That’s really kind. Thank you. Oh, wow. That was right to Krispy. That was so great. Well, I guess I shouldn’t comment on our own interview. I though his interview was really wonderful. Well, it’s interesting

Stephen Janis:

To hear people. What inspires me is people do this under the most difficult circumstances, take on power with just their own sort of wits and the limited resources. Very limited resources. They’re undaunted. I know. And that, to me, is inspiring because journalism is a weird thing. It’s not like being a lawyer or something. You’re not accredited or something.

Taya Graham:

You’re in a gray zone. Yeah,

Stephen Janis:

You’re in a gray zone and it’s not something that makes you rich,

Taya Graham:

Famous

Stephen Janis:

Or anything. It’s just you get the –

Taya Graham:

Unless you’re

Stephen Janis:

On

Taya Graham:

Cable news.

Stephen Janis:

Right. But it’s something that gives you satisfaction from doing the work on

Taya Graham:

Behalf

Stephen Janis:

Of people.

Taya Graham:

You’ve got to care about it.

Stephen Janis:

And that ethos is pervasive throughout copwatching and other forms of YouTube accountability. And it’s kind of cool and really heartening to see that. Some people just get it, this bug, and they want to let the community know what’s going on, and they want to hold people accountable. And it’s just great to see it, that it’s still a spirit in this country, sort of a civic tradition, I think. We’re fierce accountability people, and to see other people just do it, and no matter what, they’re going to keep going, is pretty awesome.That’s

Taya Graham:

A really great way to describe it. That’s a civic tradition, that it’s kind of in the blood of Americans, that we care about. The First Amendment, all the amendments, our Constitution, the Bill of Rights. It matters to us. Those of them who go out to protect it in their own way, I think that’s really

Stephen Janis:

Normal. None of

Taya Graham:

Them went to journalism

Stephen Janis:

School, right? They’re not people who had

Taya Graham:

The

Stephen Janis:

Traditional training, but they figured it out.

Taya Graham:

They sure did.

Stephen Janis:

And then once they figured it out, they became very passionate about it. Just like we did.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, exactly. As journalists, that’s why we’re passionate as journalists. And so it’s great to see other people develop that same passion. And

Stephen Janis:

I was an English major, so whatever.

Taya Graham:

Well, Steven, I think that was a really intense discussion about an important topic. Absolutely. And I think all of us, meaning journalists and cop watchers, all of us understand how fragile and tenuous the right to push back against power is, which is why at least in the past, the courts have given great leeway to people over what they post and how. Do you have any final thoughts you want to share before I do my warning rant alert?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, thank you for the warning. It’s interesting because this debate is over the economics of an information ecosystem, and the control that YouTube has is kind of difficult to parallel with anything I can think about. When you start a newspaper 50 years ago, you could put it in boxes out in the sidewalk, you could mail it to someone, you could have subscribers through the post office, but now YouTube has become the only place to monetize this kind of content besides Facebook and TikTok, but the kind of serious long form content. And so I think that’s kind of scary, right? That’s kind of Philip K. Dick kind of dystopian that this one particular attention machine can sort of cast people off and that creates a very unstable kind of economic system and ecosystem for people to create information and to report back to us. So this is in many ways very, very disturbing.

And then Long Island, I was talking about the subpoena of people’s subscribers and getting into that. I don’t know. I don’t think YouTube is going to represent, given the way they have responded to the Trump administration and changed Lake Ontario to Lake America and how quickly they have caved, I don’t think they’re the right people to be defending en masse a ecosystem of First Amendment information. I think they are a bad actor in this in some ways. They have created a devastating attention machine, but I don’t think they have the same ethos of protecting the ability of people to express their use. And all these channels have never been taken down or anything. They’ve been there and then all of a sudden. So it just shows you how precarious this is. It seems great on one level that everyone have their own YouTube channel, but now it’s very precarious and it’s a little scary to say the least.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. Steven, I think you made a really great point about how there is a concentration of power. And I really think that it’s important to point this out Because a world where the control of the distribution of information is bound to just a few private companies, that’s a dangerous world because that means, like I mentioned earlier, they can control the narrative. They control what we see, what we watch, what we learn, what information we take in. And that is a type of power I don’t think that’s ever been seen before in history.

Stephen Janis:

Maybe back in the day.

Taya Graham:

Right. Back where there were medieval peasants and only upper class people were literate or something. Okay. Maybe back then that was controlling the narrative. Ever

Stephen Janis:

Since the

Taya Graham:

Printing

Stephen Janis:

Press, it’s been more

Taya Graham:

Diffused.

Stephen Janis:

And now it’s oddly gone in the other direction in many ways, just evidenced

Taya Graham:

By

Stephen Janis:

What’s happened.

Taya Graham:

That’s a really great point. And I guess what I’m going to do is just start my little rant. Is that okay?

Stephen Janis:

I’m okay. I’m here.

Taya Graham:

I’m here. I’ll get

Stephen Janis:

The popcorn.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, buckle up. So what I wanted to share with everyone is that I think the idea that keeps occurring to me as we discuss what YouTube has done to copwatchers and First Amendment auditors and apparently Second Amendment auditors is fairly simple but has some complex implications. And that is, it’s hypocrisy, just the blatant and contradictory use of the notion of creator responsibility as a justification for taking away the ability of YouTube activists to monetize their work. I mean, the idea in principle sounds reasonable enough. When you read the words and discern the logic behind them, they don’t seem irrational, but then you start thinking. And then the question becomes unavoidable. Like really Google, the company that gave us Alex Jones and the flat earth conspiracies, the company that has been monetizing conflict for decades and profiting off lies and embellishment and fabrication since it was birthed and now out of nowhere, they’re suddenly concerned about this sort of nebulous sense of decency without any warning or outward provocation.

The oligarchs who run this obscenely rich company seem to become uncomfortable with content that holds power accountable in ways that are not always pretty or easy to watch. Well, I mean, Google, where was that moral qualm when child victims of the Newtown Massacre were being accused of being crisis actors when their parents were being doxed and hounded by Jones and his legions? It took Google quite a while to deal with that mess if they actually did it all. But all this debate over content, creator responsibility and the nuances of Google standards misses another really important point. Something that the powers that be would like to ignore, but we’re not going to let them. Who actually made copwatching possible and even necessary? Well, it wasn’t Wright’s Crispy or Joe Cool or Long Island Audits or Out of the Watchdog or Friends in Code or Eric Brant or Noli D or Lacey Art.

They didn’t create the environment of the law enforcement industrial complex that made policing one of the most powerful institutions in America. No, they didn’t. Power, inequality, and the police themselves invented copwatching. It was their overreach and abuse of the law that demanded a response from the people subject to it. It was their power drunk officers and biased judges and poorly constructed laws that sewed the general discontent that made any of this, basically all of this possible. I mean, let’s remember, copwatchers and 1A auditors wouldn’t garner millions of views if people didn’t tell Google through their watch habits that auditing content was relevant to their lives. YouTube’s merciless algorithm doesn’t dole out watch time to videos that no one is interested in. The platform is not a charitable foundation constructed for the public good. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It is the most efficient, reactive, adoptive, and yes, destructive attention machine ever constructed by human beings.

It’s the most elaborate ruthless flame for a moth of human cognition that has ever been devised. People watch the aforementioned YouTubers because the algorithm has determined they want to. Copwatcher videos get traction because of YouTube’s own technology and it’s crafted an audience that wants to see cops held accountable. And if you think police power is not a problem that requires people with cell phone cameras to address it, just consider something. The most recent police shooting in Pennsylvania and the role video is playing in its adjudication. 22 year old Glenwood Earl Seicher was walking to a friend’s house after a pub crawl when he stopped at the wrong address. After he knocked on the door, homeowners called the police fearing that someone was breaking into their house. Turns out that wasn’t true because Pyscher was actually sitting quietly on their back patio when police arrived. Enter Sean Farrell of the upper Potsgrove police.

He arrived on the scene, told the young man to show his hands, which he did peacefully and then inexplicably shot him twice in the chest killing him. Farrell has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, but here’s the most important point. When backup arrived on the scene, Farrell told the fellow cops that that young man had been shouting and gesticulating wildly, that he was screaming and threatening and all of it was not true. It was an absolute lie. But imagine if Officer Ferrell didn’t have body-worn camera, imagine if there was no video, what would’ve happened then? Well, I can tell you because I witnessed it here in Baltimore before cell phone cameras became ubiquitous. Nothing. Nothing at all would happen. No changes, no questions, no justice. Sure the family would’ve protested. His friends would’ve sworn up and down that he was a good kid incapable of scaring a cop, but it wouldn’t have mattered.

The officer would’ve been believed and an innocent man’s murder would’ve gone unavenged. So when YouTube or Google decides to shut down the ability of cop watchers to monetize their videos, it’s not just an inconvenience. It’s shutting down the people’s flock camera, so to speak, the cameras that are documenting power and the abuse of it. The one instance where the camera is turned on them, not us. And that is why this great demonetization should concern all of us. It’s not just about cop watchers. It’s not just about auditors or crazy YouTubers. It’s not just about who gets to shout the loudest or act the craziest. It’s about who has the right to tell our stories, who has the means to represent us. It’s about our voice and who hears it and who doesn’t. And that’s why here at the Real News and the Police Accountability Report, we will continue to report for you.

I want to thank – Wow. Was that all right?

Stephen Janis:

That was quite the Rantea.

Taya Graham:

I was moved. I couldn’t help it. After seeing this happen all week, we’ve been talking about it. We’ve been seeing people’s channels struck down and I was a little fired up. But

Stephen Janis:

You make a really good point because I covered a lot of police brutality and a guy would get shot in the back and police would come of sort of furative movements or whatever. It didn’t matter what anyone in the community, even people who witnessed it didn’t matter what they said.

Taya Graham:

10 witnesses and it wouldn’t matter.

Stephen Janis:

Until there was video. And that changed everything just like in our city, of course, with Freddie Gray, when people had the video of him being dragged into that van, Freddie Gray who died in police custody and the subsequent uprising. Without video, it just didn’t matter. The police always had the benefit of the doubt and a lot of, I think, bad shootings or criminal shootings went unprosecuted because of that. Absolutely. So your point about the camera and whether or not we need cop watchers, I think answered that question, I think for anyone.

Taya Graham:

Thank you.

Stephen Janis:

Just wanted to say that.

Taya Graham:

I really appreciate that, Steven. Thank you.You’re welcome.

Stephen Janis:

You’re

Taya Graham:

Welcome. Well, I have to thank Long Island Audit and Rice Krispies for joining on Rice Krispies. I called them Rice Krispies. Rice Krispy, sorry. Rice Krispy for joining us. And to anyone out there who might be experiencing demonetization on YouTube, please reach out to us. Even if you’re not a Copwatcher or First Amendment activist so we can try to understand the scope of this problem, you can reach out to me directly at par@therealnews.com or leave a comment here in the comment section. I’m going to be going through the comment section later. I’m going to be giving out hearts. I’m going to be looking for a comment of the week, but I also really want to see if there are people who’ve lost their channels. I want to be able to reach out to you or at least make a note that this has happened to you because I really want to keep track of this.

I have a running list and I want to confirm as many demonetizations as possible so we can really get a handle on what’s happening here. Agreed. I want to thank our moderators, Noli D and Lacey R. For their help. Thank you, Noli D.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you.

Taya Graham:

And of course our friends in the studio, Dave, Max, James, Jocelyn and Ryan. And of course, I have to thank my amazing co-host, Steven Janis, who knows better than anyone the power of pointing a camera at a powerful person. So thank you, Steven.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. And thank you to the studio. Thank

Taya Graham:

You David and Max

Stephen Janis:

And everyone for helping out.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, they do. They were heroic. Oh my gosh, Cameron. Sorry Cameron. Thank Cameron.

Stephen Janis:

Don’t forget Cameron. Cameron was very helpful.

Taya Graham:

We appreciate you all. And so I want to thank everyone watching who took the time to stay with us to the end. Like I said, I promise to go into the comments later and respond to comments. And I’m going to try to do a comment of the week. I’ll probably have it out midweek. So take a look. It might be yours. My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. And as always, please be safe out there.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Taya Graham:

My name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report livestream, the great American Copwatcher debate edition. Tonight, we are going to be exploring the controversy surrounding a popular Copwatcher, Long Island audit, specifically his encounter with Suffolk County Police Union officials that was the subject of our last episode. Now, a confrontation that started with Sean showing up at union headquarters to ask questions and then escalated when union officials stormed out of the building and put Sean Paul into handcuffs. Let’s just watch a few seconds of the encounter to set the scene.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Have you seen me leaving? I immediately began to leave. Lucivillo, would you like to come on? I am leaving. Would you like to come on the channel? I’m leaving. I am leaving. You seem to leave me? I am leaving. I’m leaving. I’m leaving. Lucivillo, you go on talk, you go, I’m leaving. I am leaving. Immediately begin to leave. That’s how the law works. Yes, I’m leaving. Get off the property. I am leaving. I’m getting off the property. You are trespassing. I am leaving. You will be placed. I am leaving. I am leaving. I’m going to place you under arrest. Do what you need to do. I’m identifying myself as a police officer. So do what you need to do. I am leaving. You need to leave. I am leaving. You’re such a tough guy. Do it then. Do it. Do it. I’m leaving. I’m leaving.

I’m leaving. Not resisting. I’m not resisting. Have you seen me leaving?

Taya Graham:

Okay. Now this video and our discussion with Sean set off a heated debate and it was so, let’s say lively that Steven and I decided that we needed to do a show to respond to your comments and discuss their implications. And luckily we were also able to get the man himself Long Island Audits to participate. But before we get to Sean, I want to give you a sense of the format of the show and how we’re going to handle the debate. And remember, this is very live, so please bear with any technical difficulties we might have. And I’m going to do my best to put on any comments from the live chat on the screen as we go through. So over the past week, Steven and I have been reviewing hundreds of comments on our YouTube channel and on Facebook and selecting what we hope is a representative sample of your thoughts.

Our goal is to select what best represents the framework of the discussion about Sean Paul’s work. And we’re going to show them on the screen. I’ll read them and then Sean, myself and Steven will discuss. But a big part of that is going to be what you think. And I mean the police accountability report community, in my personal opinion, is one of the most thouhtful and insightful collection of rebels. And yes, rebels I think is the right word on YouTube. Believe me, we feed off your ideas and your insights and tonight we need you to chime in. So Steven, first off, welcome to The Great Indoors.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you so much. Oh God, it’s some nice to be inside. Although yeah, it’s good to be back. It’s good to be back in the studio. Yo didn’t even have to coax me. I came in voluntarily.

Taya Graham:

Yes. Well, we gave you some coffee and left out some candy and he just followed them in.

Stephen Janis:

Free coffee. Though Max said it might come out of my paycheck, but that’s okay. It’s good coffee.

Taya Graham:

But look, before we introduce Sean, why don’t you explain a little bit why you felt like this debate needed to continue? What struck you as the critical question at the heart of it? So

Stephen Janis:

The critical question for me is the question of dissent, right? Democracy doesn’t function without free, fair dissent. And to me, journalism is the epitome of dissent because it’s saying the oligarchy truth is not the final truth. We can challenge that truth with a different reality. And when I see Sean entering the space of power and being challenged, just to ask a question, I think we have to ask critical questions about how do we preserve dissent and what this is really about. I mean, why would they just storm out at him and not allow him to ask a question? And to me, one of the defining points of this is we cover inequality in another show called the Inequality Watch. And I think as wealth becomes more and more concentrated in this country, I think the fight over the truth is going to become more important and therefore dissent is more important.

And to me, journalism is quintessential dissent. It’s organized, constructive and thoughtful dissent. And that’s what Sean was doing. I mean, he was just showing up to ask a question. That is our only army. He wasn’t ambushing them or doing anything. He just had a question. He did have a big truck. Yeah, I’ll admit that was kind of cool. We’ll talk about that. But it was just dissent. And to me, that’s what this is about. I mean, if they could take away our ability to show up at a building and ask a simple question about what they are doing with taxpayer money, then we’re done.

Taya Graham:

Then

Stephen Janis:

The oligarchs have won. So that’s why I though it’d be interesting. And I want to debate the people who somehow think that journalists are a pain in the ass. So hopefully we are. Yes. Anyway, that’s my though.

Taya Graham:

Thank you for asking. Technically, journalists are supposed to be a pain. We’re supposed to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Exactly. And honestly, what you mentioned is something that is a classic part of journalism, which is to follow the money. And I believe that’s what Sean Paul was trying to do. He’s just trying to find out where taxpayer money was going. But before I bring him in, let me just first shout out some of the people that I see in the chat. I’m going to look down here. I see Noli D. Thank you so much for being here. Lacey R. Thank you so much for being here. I think Joe Cool’s here, which is amazing. Oh wow. Joe Cool. Amazing copwatcher. And there’s another copwatcher down there. I’m not sure if I should shout him out. Yes, you should. Should I shout out the name?

Yeah. Eric Brant. Wow. Eric Brant, the man is in the chat. So we definitely have some copwatchers here who I’m sure have a lot of strong and thoughtful and insightful opinions about the nature of cop watching and journalism. Oh, and let me also say hi, Katie Keyne. It’s really great to see you again. Okay. And you too, Prairie745. All right. Now, without further ado, I want to bring in the man himself, Long Island Audit, also known as Sean Paul Reyes. Sean Paul, thank you so much for joining us.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Taya Graham:

We are so happy to have you. So now first, before we completely dive in, there’s been an update with the arrest that occurred during your encounter with the leadership of the Suffolk County Police Union. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

So the update is that the criminal charge of trespassing in the third degree that I was originally arrested for has been dismissed by the district attorney’s office. That charge required that the property being closed in a manner to exclude intruders, i.e. An offense. It wasn’t the case for that property. So they dropped it down to a trespassing charge, which is a violation, not a crime, which requires unlawfully entering or remaining on a person’s property, on private property. So that’s where it stands. And I mean, we can get into more detail on the order of protection and ex parte hearings, but I’ll defer

Stephen Janis:

To you. I mean, I don’t really understand. You were exercising your First Amendment as a journalist. You have some privilege to be able to go to places and knock on doors where you’re not wanted, right?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Right. Yeah. So generally the Supreme Court case, I don’t really remember what it is right now, but there is a Supreme Court case that even with a no trespassing sign, the public and people say, “Well, you don’t get extra rights because you’re a journalist or a YouTuber or whatever they want to call me.” And that’s the topic of today’s discussion. But generally, anyone has a license or privilege to approach someone’s door and do a knock and talk. You can knock and ask questions the same way a law enforcement officer can knock on your door, same way the solar panel, Girl Scout cookies, whatever. People knock on people’s doors and ask them questions. Once that privilege, that license or privilege has been revoked by the private property owner, then you must vacate the property.

Stephen Janis:

Which is what you were doing. But anyway, not to digress, Saya, go ahead. Sorry.

Taya Graham:

Okay. And let me just give a shout out to HBO Matt. HBO Matt, great to see you there. Another cop watcher. Wow. 1A and 2A auditor who’s in the chat as well right now. We got to shout out all those people out there doing that work. Okay. So Sean, now here’s the tough part. We’re going to start going through the comments. Now we’ve tried to pick a representative sample. And though I will say in general, more people support you than not. Some of your critics are pretty adamant that your work doesn’t benefit the community. So let’s start there. Okay. Let me hit you with comment number one. Okay. A clout chasing provocateur whose approach is ambush journalism. Real journalists make an appointment. People at work don’t just drop everything because this YouTuber shows up. Wow. Okay. So Sean, let me start with you. What do you think?

Is this a valid critique?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I don’t think it’s. I think anybody’s opinion is valid. Everybody can have their own opinion on what I do and how I go about it. So I’m not going to say that their opinion is invalid, but I would push back on their opinion that it’s ambush journalism. I mean, I’m asking questions. I don’t have to make an appointment. I can just walk up and ask the question. And really, to the person who made that comment, do you think if I would have called and made an appointment, they would have let me in and give me an appointment? Let’s be real here.

Stephen Janis:

I’m just laughing. Sory. I’m

Taya Graham:

Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.

Stephen Janis:

But go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Sorry.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Okay. No worries.

Taya Graham:

It just seems unlikely. Yes.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. More likely than not. They wouldn’t just, “Hey, yeah, we’ll pency in for 2:30,” right? Especially with the questions that I’m asking. I’m not asking, “How does it feel to save lives every day and put your life on the line, Mr. PBA president?” I’m asking why hundreds of millions of dollars of Suffolk County taxpayer money, hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 15 to 20 years have been put in the pockets of other people who have had their rights violated. So that’s my tax dollars. I’m a lifelong resident of Suffolk County. I’ve been investigating the police union and their power structure, and it comes from their donations to the legislators, to the county executive. There is more to the story than just showing up with my billboard truck. And again, I will say that most journalists don’t have a billboard truck. I do. And if you want to paint me out as it’s advocacy journalism, whatever word you want to put in front of journalism, it’s still objectively journalism, opinionated journalism, advocacy journalism.

It’s still journalism. Journalism is asking questions, doing investigations and disseminating that of matters of public interest to the public. Maybe it doesn’t interest you, but it interests me and it interests a lot of people out there, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people across my social media platforms. So if you don’t like the topic, you can tune into your favorite journalist that you want. I highly recommend the police accountability report here. Well, thank

You. But at the end of the day, ambush, whatever adjective you want to describe how I operate, it still doesn’t make what happened to me any less unlawful and any less a violation of my First Amendment rights.

Taya Graham:

Steven, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, I mean, I don’t like the word ambush because I don’t think asking a question. Ambush has militaristic overtones, but if we had to make an appointment with every person that we wanted to ask a question that they didn’t want to answer, we wouldn’t have a job. Now, we cover Capitol Hill, right? Reporters roam all around confronting people who don’t want to answer questions. The entire process is about people showing up when you don’t expect them. That’s the whole way it works. There’s no journalism without the so-called ambush. And so I don’t like that term because that’s not what you were doing. You were asking a question which is about as passive as you can get. But yeah, so that’s just BS because almost our entire work centers on the fact that we can just walk up to someone and put a mic in their face.

If we can’t do that, we can’t do our jobs.

Taya Graham:

Steven, I really do have to agree with you on that. I mean, we show up to all sorts of places without an appointment. I have to say, on occasion when I have asked for an appointment, there was a particular time in Trenton, New Jersey where I made an appointment with their press information officer, told her I was going to be there, and she ghosted me. Just a little TikTok about the fact that I had made the effort to travel there, confirmed everything with her. She wasn’t there. And perhaps she should have been at her desk and she wasn’t. But I can tell you within eight hours, my entire TikTok account was banned and taken down. We’re just posting – Questions are not

Stephen Janis:

Ambushed.

Taya Graham:

Questions

Stephen Janis:

Are.

Taya Graham:

So it can be difficult for a traditional journalist to get an appointment. And even just reporting on the fact I didn’t get the appointment, got my TikTok account banned, which I think was a little mean, to be perfectly frank. I agree. But before I go on to the next criticism, I want to shout out Ophelia Moonrose. I thought you had a great comment there. Big G audits, good making case precedent in your state. That’s awesome. So one of the criticisms that we’ve seen of auditors like Sean is that they’re all after clicks and views, but I thought this was an interesting take on that critique. So let’s put up comment number two. Okay.

And also, I apologize if I mispronounce names, please give me some grace there. I’ll do my best. Gerek Diffelton says, “Clicks and views, spreading awareness and capturing focus for issues you want the public to see is exactly the point of journalism. Sean uses outrageous reality to catch attention and the New York Post uses lies and misinformation.” Now, Sean Paul, I think you said something quite similar, right? And Steven, can a journalism org survive without clicks? No. I mean, if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did the tree fall? I mean, if no one sees your journalism, does it even count? Yeah.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. I mean, my response to that is obviously all journalists want clicks and views. All media outlets want clicks and views. And I can give you just a recent story. CNN ran a story on First Amendment auditors just recently, and I’m actually going to do a video of this on my channel. They reached out to me and their question was, “How much money do you make? Can you provide us with your financials?” And I answered them back. Yeah. I answered them back politely and I said, “I would love to discuss with you the financial aspects of what I do in a video format, just like how we’re talking right now in a Zoom or a live stream.” And they said, “Oh, we’re going to move in a different way for our story. No problem.” And then they came out with a story and it was about how First Amendment auditors make money.

And they found two random individuals who have no idea who they are. They’re a couple. They curse a lot. They scream a lot. The video was just them cursing and screaming at members of the public and law enforcement and getting kicked out of this public building. And they went over and these two, I call them useful idiots, that’s what they were because they didn’t even shout out their channel or anything like that. So I have no idea who these people are. And most probably in our community don’t know who they are either. But they went and they showed them their YouTube studio. Yeah, I made $600 on this video. I made this and the CNN reporter’s there and they followed them around when they did these audits. And it’s crazy because the goal of the CNN story was to portray First Amendment auditors as only wanting clicks and views and being provocative and looking for negative interactions.

The ironic part of that is that’s exactly what CNN did in their story. They didn’t want me to come on their story and be a part of their story because I would talk about boring things about how I’ve been invited to train police departments, district attorney’s offices. I’ve done ride alongs with law enforcement. I’ve worked side by side with law enforcement. I investigated corrupt mayors. I’ve broken stories on mayors using federal funds for receiving federal funds that they voted on for their construction companies. So again, and I don’t curse or scream in my video, so it wouldn’t be as entertaining for people, but CNN selectively chose these two useful idiots so that way they can get what clicks and views on their video. So again – Right.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, go ahead. Maybe CNN doesn’t like the competition from you

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

From people. I don’t think so. I think they see it as a threat. I think that’s a good valid point because even Newsday is our local newspaper here on Long Island. News 12 Long Island is the broadcast arm of that. And none of them have covered, the New York Post covered this arrest because Lucavila wanted them to, the police union president. But none of the local outlets have covered this story. And I would argue that it is the quintessential public interest story. Whether you want to hit me out as a YouTuber, a gadfly, an agitator, whatever you want to call me. I’m still a public figure. And Lucavilla was the police union president and there was a confrontation where I was arrested. That seems like news that would be interesting for the residents in Suffolk County or Long Island that they report to, but they choose not to.

They pick and choose their stories. They pick and choose the themes of their stories. And I do the same thing. And my themes are focusing on police accountability, exposing what’s happening inside our police departments. I’m telling everybody watching now, and I say this on my channel, the police unions, especially here in the Northeast and specifically Suffolk County, they receive. Again, I don’t just go up there with a camera. I was just working before looking up. It’s a 501C. I’m looking up their financials. They have $15 million, the police union in Suffolk County, $15 million in assets. They bring in $5 million a year in annual revenue. They get paid through the contracts, through the contracts from the county. They get paid canine time, canine a pay. They don’t have a canine. I want to make this clear. There is not one canine that works for the PBA, the police union.

They get canine pay. They get hazard pay. They get a midnight pay. It’s a nine to five

Stephen Janis:

Job. One thing, Sean, that you’re touching on, which I think is really important, is how lucrative policing is in terms of their relationship with the government. Because I remember in Baltimore, we had take home cars. All officers had take home cars and they could drive back to Pennsylvania and the city paid for the gas. And it was like $100,000 benefit, but the mainstream media doesn’t want to take it on because they want police officers to feed them crime stories, which is more of their fodder. But what you’re doing is amazing because you’re actually challenging their lack of good reporting, which probably embarrasses them. I mean, to hell with the truck.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

And I completely agree with you when they want the murder scenes, they want the vehicle pile ups, they want to get that call. And if they’re adversarial, which you guys were talking about how a press should be adversarial. And I completely agree. I think that’s the foundation, an adversarial press towards the government. But they want those stories. And then it’s such a big story because they just got an 18% raise. Lucivillo, for example, gets paid $265,000 a year as the police union president. He keeps his full law enforcement officer capabilities, yet he doesn’t patrol, he doesn’t investigate crime. He sits in a desk defending officers who are accused of misconduct all day long and pushing his propaganda out to on. They own radio stations. They have podcasts. They’ve embraced social media in order to brainwash the people.

Stephen Janis:

Do you know where the $5 million revenue comes from? I mean, do they get it from donations or do they charge for services or something? Are they doing moonlighting or where’s it come from? Do you know?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. So I just started looking into it before I

Stephen Janis:

Came

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

On here. I was just looking at everything, all the documents –

Stephen Janis:

I’ll look into too. Yeah.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

501 documents, but their revenue comes from union dues. And again, they’re in violation of election law. In New York State, you can’t force somebody to donate to a candidate. So what they’re doing is they’re collecting union dues. And whether the police officer is a Republican or a Democrat, sometimes that money goes to somebody who the police officer doesn’t want it to go to. And that’s in violation of election law. And a Suffolk County legislator, Rob Trota, a former detective for the Suffolk County Police Department, he blew the whistle on this. So I give him all the credit and the district attorney said, “You know what? I don’t have jurisdiction.” It’s funny how the district attorney didn’t have jurisdiction for a New York state crime, but the district attorney can receive $500,000 in campaign contributions from the PBA. The Suffolk County executive gets a million dollars.

These legislators think about this. How can anybody be okay with the system where Suffolk County Police Union can funnel money into the pockets of politicians and those same politicians get them elected? They go door to door for them. They mail out, they have mailers, the whole apparatus. And then they get elected and then they in turn vote on these 18% raise increases, hazard pay for police union. 20

Stephen Janis:

Year pensions. 20 year pensions. 20 year

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Pensions.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Like that. They make these backroom deals where there was an officer that was accused of using the surveillance apparatus for his own personal gain. And he went on to have 14 years. They said, okay, admit to this misconduct. And in 14 years, 14 years, when you get your full funded pension, you have to leave. That’s not accountability.

Stephen Janis:

Oh, and we’ve had multiple officers who have been charged, committed, charged, convicted of crimes who are allowed to keep working. I mean, the basic thing is you pointed out, I think, in both your Brian Fahey case, which we’ll get to, is these pensions are golden parachutes. Absolutely. They are multimillion dollar bonuses for these people. So a lot of what happened in Baltimore is that even though you’ve been convicted of a crime, they keep you on the payroll so that you get your pension qualification, which is like that’s when you hit the jackpot of the library. So that’s great work you’re doing there. You want to get to the next one so we don’t –

Taya Graham:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So I have another comment here. I shouldn’t point that way. Give you some fair warning. Here is a proponent of police power urging you to obey a lawful order, which of course has some pretty broad implications. So this is Jim 0417 commenting on the Sean Paul Reyes arrest coverage. I agree there is free speech. However, don’t push your luck. Just leave. Then no problem. No arrests. I am a retired police detective. And if I’m told something by the police, I comply. It’s just that easy. Now, Steven, I think this refers back to some of your thoughts on police power. What do you think?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, I think the idea that there is this police control over space that somehow, if they deem a space to be theirs is sort of an extension of some of the worst aspects of this country’s lessening democracy. So I mean, I didn’t say this in the beginning, but I think one thing that Sean Paul exposes by going into police space and pointing a camera at them is their absolute thought of control over space, which I think is a way of showing how latent authoritarianism in America kind of makes its way through policing. Because it’s really weird when you think about it. You show up with a camera, they could have ignored him. They could have just answered his question. They could have done a lot of things, but they decided to confront him with power, with power and command over that space. So I think disobeying orders from police about space is pretty much the most fundamental American kind of descent you can do.

So I’m all for Sean going and pointing cameras because what amazes me of what you see. I mean, someone points a camera at you and you start ordering around and say you’re going to arrest him. What does that mean? What is that telling you about this country? What is it telling you about authoritarianism? Sean, are you surprised sometimes when people freak out because you show up just by showing up, not even doing anything?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. I’ve been doing this five years now and it still surprises me to this day because it’s so nonsensical. You’re 100% right. The police union president could have. He was upstairs in his penthouse suite. He didn’t have to come down with five other officers from the

Police union. He could have stayed up there, told the receptionist, “Tell him he needs to leave. He’s not welcome here.” And I would have left and there would have been no incident. There would have been no clicks and views. There would have been no story for that particular video. I just would have left. I was leaving. And these people, like this former officer that commented that, and I see it, especially in my county. I want to use my billboard truck to bring awareness to this and my voice and my platform, especially I’m going to focus on my county moving forward because it’s important to me. When I was protesting, one of the neighbors of the district attorney told me, “You’re a liberal communist.” And they were so violent in calling me a communist. And these people don’t even know the definition of communists, but they just repeat what they hear.

They have no idea what a communist is, what communism is. They have no idea what these terms mean, but they’ve heard other elected officials call people communists because of they don’t like them. And they say, “Oh, you’re a communist. You want to hold the police accountable? Then you’re a communist.” And it makes no sense. So I still get shocked to this day. Lou should have done that. Lucivilla, the police union president should have just told someone else to tell me, but he was looking for the confrontation. He came out with handcuffs in hand. He was looking for that to happen. Oh, so Sean, he

Stephen Janis:

Had his handcuffs. Had his handcuffs in hand?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

He had his hands. Remember, he’s not a real law enforcement officer. He doesn’t do law enforcement activity, yet he gets paid for law enforcement activity, but he doesn’t do law enforcement activity. He actually does the opposite. He shields officers in this county and they introduce legislation. They just introduced a bill into the New York State Senate where you have to be 15 feet away from a law enforcement officer. That came directly from him. He’s the one pulling the strings. And it doesn’t matter, Democrat or Republican, they all take PBA money. They all want to be seen as back the blue, especially in my county. And it’s just sad to me that people like that commenter, I don’t blame him. I think his ignorance comes from his lack of critical thinking skills, his lack of a variety of media consumption. And he just wants to blame somebody, just comply.

But the most ironic part is I was complying. I mean, how can you watch that video and not see that I was complying? Maybe I wasn’t complying in the way that you wanted me to. Maybe I wasn’t complying in the way Lucid Villa wanted me to, but legally I was complying.

Stephen Janis:

What was interesting is it was almost the opposite of when police use the stop resisting to do it. You were saying, “I’m leaving. I’m leaving. I’m leaving.” And basically making it clear that you were retreating and following and obeying the law and their requests. So it was just weird and ironic that they kept confronting you even when you said you were leaving, which I think has to do with this police preoccupation with space and dissent because you are showing them up for what they’re doing to the taxpayers of Suffolk County. And they don’t want that. And it’s interesting that it’s you that’s doing it and not the people, the mainstream media with all their money and power that are doing it. But it’s one guy with a truck and a YouTube channel that is actually doing this, which I think. Well, I mean, I think it’s really telling, right?

Because I’ve covered this kind of stuff in policing and you get so much pushback when you talk about their pensions or about the fact that they can work. The guys you’re talking about get some sort of dumb desk job where they sit and they file. They don’t do anything. I mean, we had the gun tray task force where they literally went on vacation in the Bahamas and got overtime. So what police are able to do with money and what they’re able to do with the resources of a community is confounding.

Yeah, they use that money.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Go ahead.

Taya Graham:

Oh no, I was just going to say, I think you explained that basically Suffolk County is the home of the million dollar pension, right? Yeah. So I actually did some calculating on how long it would take me to save that type of pension with a little bit of money I put aside each year. I would need to work 200 years to be able to have that be my pension. Yeah, it’s a Ponzi scheme. So that’s something to look forward to. It’s a

Stephen Janis:

Ponzi scheme.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

It is a Ponzi. They’re extorting the police officers in Suffolk County through the police union are extorting the taxpayers. And they put out buzzwords like, “Oh, because we protect you. We keep you safe. We do this. We put our lives on the line.” All propaganda, that means nothing. They’re law enforcement officers. Even for body cameras, we had to pay them. We had to pay them more money every single year. I believe they got an extra $2,000 a year each just for them to put on body cameras. In what other profession does your boss tell you, you need to put this on your uniform? And then they’re like, “Well, I’m not going to do it unless you pay me.” It is a racket. It is a racket and the people need to know about it. And a lot of people know and they don’t care. They back the blue regardless of what.

And that’s why we call them bootlickers.

Stephen Janis:

You know what?

Taya Graham:

I’d like to go onto the next comment. I think it’s very appropriate because it’s apparently, Sean Paul, you’re just not nice enough to rich people. That’s what this comment’s saying. I thought it was a little odd, but I thought it was worth talking about. So this commenter, Alma Adams, 3631, wrote on a recent episode, “I was on this guy’s side until he brought up Bezos and Musk.” How are they the bad guys again? I mean, did this guy go to Comedy College? I mean, I guess they all are these days. Comedy College. Okay. I’ve seen –

Stephen Janis:

Just a public service announcement. So we are very welcoming of a Marxist here and communists at the Real News Network. And

Taya Graham:

Libertarians and libertarians. And libertarians. And any

Stephen Janis:

Ideological strike

Taya Graham:

Really. Okay. We welcome all political viewpoints to have all types of thinkers with all types of ideologies who support democracy and want to have an interesting conversation about it. So communists, come on in and have

Stephen Janis:

Conversations. Why would you critique him that way when he’s talking about police pensions? I think that’s an interesting connection, right? Symbolic, Sean?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. I mean, again, there goes the commi thing. These people are, they’re just brainwashed. And it really disheartens me as an American and somebody who loves this country that there’s so many people out there who have been brainwashed by people like Elon Musk. I’ll call them out again, Jeff Bezos. They’re an oligarchy. They’re no different than And the oligarchs in Russia, the only difference is that you love them. The people love

Taya Graham:

Them. Exactly.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

You worship

Taya Graham:

Them. Well said.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

They’re no different. They’re celebrities here. That’s the only difference. The oligarchs in Russia are just hiding behind their fortresses and that’s going to happen too. Listen, in another life, I would have been a history teacher. I love history. One of my favorite quotes is, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” And you, we are on the track for the oligarch. Thank you. Look at the wealth separation in this country. It doesn’t make any sense. You could call me a communist or whatever you want. I’m telling you, these billionaires don’t have the everyday. You’re sitting here, that person, the sad part is that person is defending the oligarchy and yet they’re living paycheck to paycheck every week. And that’s the sad part to me.

Stephen Janis:

And I think that’s the point of police power to project the idea that you’re not worthy of an equal society with an equal sharing of wealth. I think part of the thing is that police make you feel that there’s some sort of chaos outside of this constructed oligarchy. And that if you challenge police, you’re challenging law and order. And then there will be this chaos of, like you said, like commies, like Long Island Olives knocking on your door. And I think that’s part of the point of why policing fuses with Bezos and Musk in that sense.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

They’re meant to protect the oligarchy. That’s the whole point in

Stephen Janis:

Case

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Things go south. They’re the defense against the oligarchy. That’s the part. They’re not here to protect you. They’re here to extort you through tickets and everything else. You get pulled over, you’re paying hundreds of dollars for tickets. I don’t understand. Can police officers be heroes individually? Sure they can. Sure, they can engage in heroic activity. And I will admit that, but to call law enforcement officers generally heroes is disgusting. To me, it’s like, it just doesn’t make sense.

Taya Graham:

You know what? I just have to jump in here because when I heard you talking about oligarchy, and I think in a past life, you were a history teacher. I have no doubt. But when I think about Jeff Bezos and his net worth, and when I think about Elon Musk, our newest trillionaire on the planet, that kind of money, that kind of money is more than some countries have. That kind of money, it absolutely influences our government. It influences public policy. So to say that we shouldn’t criticize these people, hold them accountable is absurd to me. These people don’t deserve some sort of unique protection because they manage to win out in the lottery of life. These people, if they have the power of a government because of their bank book, they deserve to have questions answered and we deserve transparency.

Stephen Janis:

Great.

Taya Graham:

So I’m sorry, that just gets me a little heated because we actually have a show called the Inequality Watch, which I think Steven would argue is the oligarchy accountability report. I mean, how would you answer that comment or really?

Stephen Janis:

And it’s interesting because the two fews, like Sean has pointed out, Sean Ray has pointed out policing and inequality and oligarchy all kind of come into one big problem for all of us working people in a sense. So you want to do the next one?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. The people are working against their. I’ll just end with this. People need to stop working against their own interests and

Stephen Janis:

Fighting

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Against their own interests. I mean, you’re defending a man that has more money than he could ever spend in a million years and you can’t afford to pay your electric bill. It’s bizarre to me. It’s bizarre.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. I completely agree. I really don’t understand it. I try to understand the psychology of it, but it does allude me. But let me go to another comment here for you because I want you to see all of them. So this is someone who looks at Sean Paul’s work in kind of a broader context. And I’m wondering what you both think of it in terms of what at stake and whether we’re overlooking some of the broader implications of what auditors and First Amendment activists do. So let me read it and I’ll have Dave put up clip five. Okay. So democracy itself is at stake. Being ruled, terrorized, controlled, manipulated, dominated and lied to is not freedom. Okay. So to me, that’s very heavy, very powerful. So what do you think? Do you believe you’re fighting for democracy, Sean Paul?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I think I’m fighting for accountability and democracy. Anything that gives power back to the people. That’s why I wear my we the people hat everywhere I go. I want the people to have the power and I want people to act in their own interests when it comes to power because the people that are elected in our offices do not have our best interests at heart. It’s because you see the ads. Money controls politics between campaign spending. It all revolves around money. Look how much money Elon Musk put into the election. No one man should have all that power, right? Right. In the words of Kanye. But it’s crazy to me that people, even with flock cameras, the advent implementation of flock cameras, they’re here for your safety. Another favorite quote of mine is by Benjamin Franklin, “Those who give up their essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” And it’s so sad how quickly we’ve forgotten and have handed over all of our rights.

We’re going to have a surveillance state, police state, and all of these people in power that have all of this resources and money. And no one does anything about it. Most people don’t even go out and vote. Most people don’t make their voices heard because they’re too busy working. They have their own family drama, everything else, and they don’t pay attention or they only watch CNN or they only watch Fox News. They don’t broaden their horizons to try and really critically think and analyze what’s going on in our country. And I think that needs to change. So my platform is to try and bring accountability to those in power. And I can’t. I can’t do it by myself. All I can do is put it out there for people to see. And what they choose to do with it after that, I got to expose it.

I’m going to expose the police union here.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, I think of all institutions, policing is the most anti-democratic. And like we said before, kind of the authoritarian impulses of society kind of course through it. And so your battle with them and the battle over space is pretty much to me the most so pro-democracy thing you can do as a reporter. I mean, in some ways the battle over democracy is incremental. When I worked for a TV station, when we go out to film, we had one space, which was a sidewalk because you couldn’t go on private property and you couldn’t go on the road because then they charge you with obstructing traffic. And yet even though the sidewalk was like the one place we could set up our camera and our tripod, police would still try to kick us off it. We constantly were battling. And it kind of was illuminating to me because here we have this one little space to do our jobs to expose X, Y, and Z, and we can’t even do this.

And so that’s why I think that sort of sense of taking all space over and sort of forcing people not to confront, not to ask questions, not to have a circulatory system to this democracy. I think that’s why it does make your work sort of pro-democracy because you’re fighting in some sense the most anti-democratic force. This doesn’t mean I’m anti-police or anything like that. I just think the institution itself, as you talked about before, is corrupted by the political economy that sustains it. So yeah, I think democracy is at stake in a sense, along with the broader issues that we covered on Capitol Hill, but this is an important component of it.

Taya Graham:

Steven, you were talking about how we’re covering Capitol Hill and it definitely seems like our democracy is under stress. I mean, what do you think about this idea in a broader context?

Stephen Janis:

Well, yeah, in the broader context, we just covered the federal government or the Republicans voting for a reconciliation bill that gets $70 billion. Let’s talk about real money. ICE has a hundred billion. Republicans get up and they give the ICE another 70 billion with absolutely no details or explanation of why. The point was just to fund ICE for an infinite length of time to fund ICE to do anything. So we’ve seen how ICE uses law enforcement tactics to disrupt democratic processes like in Minneapolis. And then of course killed two people that didn’t need to die. And so they give him $70 billion. And so I think here’s Sean fighting it on a local or a local level. In the national level, the same thing is going on. I mean, talk about giving unlimited money to law enforcement. I think there’s parallels there. Suffolk County has $5 million a year, 15 million here, extravagant pensions.

And then on Capitol Hill, $70 billion to an agency that doesn’t need it. They still had a hundred billion in the bank and they’re funded not year over year, but until 2029. So

Taya Graham:

The

Stephen Janis:

Unleashing of law enforcement through money, which we’ve seen in Suffolk County, we’ve written about this, is now playing out on a national level. And now you have a national federalized police force with unlimited funds.

Taya Graham:

You know what? Let me jump to our next comment because I want to make sure to get to as many of them as possible. Absolutely. And we’ve had some great comments that we’ve been putting on the screen from the live chat. I appreciate you. And don’t worry, I will ask about the tiger picture. Not now, but I will ask about the tiger pictures. There’s a person who’s obsessed with your painting, Sean. So before you go, you’re going to have to talk about it. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Stephen Janis:

I don’t know what you guys are talking about. Sorry.

Taya Graham:

It’s okay. I’ll

Stephen Janis:

Tell you. But I sure I’ll find out hopefully.

Taya Graham:

Back to police unions, one of our favorite topics. And full disclosure, I am a member of a union. I am a union steward. And I can let you know that the Communication Workers Association does not receive any taxpayer dollars. And I’m not receiving a million dollar pension. Like I said, I would need to work 200 years to earn that pension. Anyway, Sean, you explained on our show that you wanted the police union to answer questions about how they protect members who are accused of brutality and misconduct. One of the viewers weighed in on the power of police unions. Dave, if you don’t mind putting up comment six for me. Okay. Here we have Charles Harmon, 4159 says regarding the police union, “Police unions throughout the nation are the problem. Unlimited power and authority, the unions, qualified immunity, rampant racism and corruption. Nothing will be correct until we check this.” Wow.

I mean, Sean Paul, from your experience, how is bad policing a consequence of the power police unions?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

So because they shield officers who engage in misconduct and brutality against accountability. They’ll tell you that. That’s what they do. They say buzzwords and things like, “Oh, we’re just making sure they get due process, that they need to have the same rights as everybody else and everything else.” But there is no due process when there’s no accountability at the end of that process. That’s like if people would be happy if they said, “Oh, we’re going to give due process to immigrants and then we’re going to let them stay here.” People would be upset with that. When you bring up ICE, that’s a hot button topic on when I talk about ICE on my channel.

I completely agree with what you’re talking about. And again, that’s by design, the division. We can’t say that the ICE is receiving too much money without accountability, without body cameras, without having to take off their masks, not violate people’s rights. I went to the location and flew out there to Minneapolis where Alex Pretty was murdered and I was at a eulogy there. And it really hit me that a man was murdered and executed by ICE. And people say, “Well, he kicked a car two weeks ago and broke the taillight.” And it’s like, come on, you need to understand something. That is not. Yes, Alex Pretty engaged in violent behavior two weeks before he was executed. Even if he was executed that same day, kicking a taillight is not a death sentence. We need to understand this. Wanting accountability for ICE is not pro-immigration or pro-illegal immigration.

These people, they have this in their mind where if you criticize ICE in any way, it’s now you’re pro-illegal immigration, you’re pro this. When I talked about judicial warrants, the differences between judicial warrants and administrative warrants. And I put this on my channel and people, I got so much blow back from my community about, oh, but Sean, you’re just trying to protect illegal immigrants. And no, I’m trying to protect you. I’m trying to protect me. I’m trying to protect our country. Because there’s a big difference. You cannot go into someone’s house on an administrative warrant because an administrative warrant is basically like a decree from the king. Then we’d be going back to the decree from the king where he says, oh, that’s the warrant. And then we’re going to go. A judicial warrant is necessary to have a third party look at the facts of the case.

I’m trying to protect everybody’s rights, including illegal immigrants’ rights because whether you like it or not, they do have rights and it was by design. And you don’t have to like it, but you have to accept reality for what it is. And police unions generally in this country, but specifically in the Northeast, specifically in the Northeast, they are so powerful, so well funded through tax money. And they shield officers from accountability every single day. It happens all the time. And I think police unions should be abolished across the country.

Stephen Janis:

Sean, Ray, one time I went to police union headquarters and they actually have a bar in there and they offered me a beer, which is kind of funny. But when I asked Congresswoman Mike Lawler about ICE funding about $70 billion, you know what he said to me? He said, “Do you want to abolish ICE?” That was his answer to my question. Of course. So what you’re talking about, this sort of. Well, it’s part of the culture of policing, right? You are for or against. When someone says you can either be for or against something, you know you’re in really treacherous territory. Tay and I always make this joke, do you have to be for and against the sanitation department

Taya Graham:

To

Stephen Janis:

Ask us? Well, if you ask a question about why we’re spending so much money on sanitation,

Taya Graham:

You’re against

Stephen Janis:

Sanitation.

Taya Graham:

Right. If you criticize that we don’t get Tuesday and Thursday pickup anymore, we only get Thursday pickup, then you’re anti-sanitation. You hate sanitation workers.

Stephen Janis:

And you’re somehow un-American.

Taya Graham:

There’s no other organization and agency. That we can’t just criticize.

Stephen Janis:

And part of that is the union themselves because as Sean Wright points out, they have five people that are getting paid by the taxpayers sit there and espouse the perspective of the union. And let me tell you something, union officials have great relationships with the media. They didn’t have it with me when I was covering them, but I got a lot of crap because the media was so intertwined with the union officials on police uni officials. They are so much more powerful, even more powerful than union officials for other aspects of government. There’s no comparison to the power of the police union with the power of other public services.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I mean, just as I’m sitting there chained to a desk within hours of my arrest before I’m released, before anything else, the New York Post has an article out. Do you think that the New York Post was just looking at. No, they made a call to somebody at the New York Post and even they got a title change. The New York Post reporter that spoke to me when he went to my court, when it went to my arraignment, I said, “Why did you change the title of your second article? It was very critical of the police union because he was talking about how the video doesn’t seem to. It raises questions.” He said it in a very nice way too. He said, “It raises questions as to what the police union president stated in his original comments to the post. They changed the title of that article to Police Union President Receives Death Threats.” And I said, “Why did you do that?” He said, “Well, my first title, the police union president called my boss and he made a big stink and we had to change the title.” You want law enforcement officers to have that much power – That’s incredible.

Over the media, over your politicians, over your money, everything. That’s incredible. All because they’re heroes and you want to idolize them.

Stephen Janis:

Is he like the editor of the New York Post? I mean, just so people know, when Sean Ray, after the encounter, the New York Post ran very, I would say, inflammatory articles about your encounter with them. Not mentioning the pension or any of the questions you were asking, but simply talking about how once your video aired, people called, which happens with any publication. When I worked for a newspaper and we published a story, people didn’t like. We get tons of calls in hate mail. That’s normal. That’s not like you doing something. They made it seem like you had somehow corralled everyone to call. Yeah.That was something that you had done like, “Hey, everyone, call the police union. No.” And that’s extraordinary though that they have that kind of power.

Taya Graham:

It really is. You know what? Let me jump forward to comment eight because there are a few more comments I want to get to. I really want to check in on this one because – Give me some hard ones.Come on Tara. Because I’m going to try. People are going to town about qualified immunity in the comment section in our live chat right now. Favorite topic.

I think this is a really great time to discuss it. Yes. Okay. I mean, any discussion would be remiss without mentioning qualified immunity. And you know what? Let me just give a little explainer. I think everyone in our live chat, our PAR community knows qualified immunity, but just for anyone who might stumble across us, basically qualified immunity is a legal loophole that makes it extremely difficult to sue the police. So qualified immunity was created as sort of a threshold to give public officials immunity from violating people’s rights. And that was a consequence of a law passed during Reconstruction. I think it’s a 1983 part of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was actually passed during Reconstruction to give people the right to sue again for the violation of their rights. But the qualified immunity loophole basically says you can’t sue someone if the right hasn’t been established, which means it has to been put through some sort of adjudication before you can sue someone like a cop.

And it has to be a case that is incredibly specific to your situation, but if it hasn’t been adjudicated upon, it’s going to be really difficult to sue. And I think Liberty Freak in the comment section and Mr. Brandt know a little something about that. Okay. With all that said, here’s the comment about it. Now this is from American Patriot 3515 on qualified immunity. We the people are getting sick and tired of that document known as the Constitution being used as toilet paper by law enforcement all across this country. We need to ban qualified immunity. That would be a good start. Okay. Sean Paul, to you. How big of a problem is qualified immunity when it comes to holding police accountable?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I think it’s a huge problem. Again, but I don’t want to minimize. I think the number one problem is the police unions. That is the number one problem because as things qualified immunity is horrible, but a lot of people focus on qualified immunity. That’s probably the number one thing that people who want police to be held accountable are saying, abolish qualified immunity, get rid of qualified immunity. But even if you did, the police unions are going to run rampant. It’s not going to change anything. I mean, you might be able to sue them and get some additional funds and everything, but most of the rights have been clearly established. But what judges, some judges will do, not all, but some judges will find a wiggle room. And this is what makes qualified immunity dangerous is that they’ll take, “Oh, well, this fact doesn’t add up right.” Or any layperson would be like, “Well, you can film,” for example.

I’ll give you an example of probably what a judge could do, is that you were filming the right to record the police on a public sidewalk is clearly established. But if you recorded them from the public parking lot, that’s not clearly established. So therefore right next to the sidewalk, so therefore he’s going to get qualified immunity. So eventually they’re going to run out of little loopholes to try and get people because it is qualified immunity. It’s not what prosecutors have, which is absolute immunity. Judges have absolute immunity.

So eventually they’ll run out of the little work. And I think qualified with the workarounds, I think qualified immunity is very important, but I want to stress to everybody that the police unions and the way they operate within the political system is far more dangerous when it comes to the lack of accountability and police power.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Steven, I think there’s a case that talks a lot about qualified immunity. It’s the Eric Brandt and Liberty Freak case in the 10th Circuit. Maybe you want to explain

Stephen Janis:

About that? Well yeah, in 2021 or no, I think they actually, it was in 2019 that Eric Brandt and Liberty Freak were filming a police officer. They were filming just a traffic stop. And then a police officer drove up and got in front of them and then her drove his car at Eric. And this is in the 10th circuit. And I think the case was adjudicated in 2021, 2022. The initial district court said that the officer had qualified immunity because the right to film police had not been established. Now they won that case. The ACLU joined in, even the Cato Institute joined in, Electronic Frontier joined in. So they won it, but it can show you, as Sean, as you’re pointing out, that sometimes things slip through the cracks. And at that point in the 10th circuit, the district court judge had said, “Oh, there’s no established right to film police.” And this is in 2021, 2022.

Now, of course they won, but it just shows you sometimes these things can be a little more complicated. But I do agree with you that police unions are this source and locus of power when it comes to policing. It’s almost impossible to battle police unions.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. I mean, I’m taking it on now and I’m not going to stop. And I don’t see an end. I think this is going to be for the rest of my career because what I’ve seen is just horrible, especially in my own county. And I want to bring awareness to it. But the machine is just, it’s so big that it would take people really waking up and voting out these politicians who can end these contracts, who can make sure there’s accountability. But again, they have a propaganda arm. They have everything. They’re an S corp. They get paid a salary. They have expenses. They do this. It’s just such a machine.

Stephen Janis:

And a lot of times they fund. If a police officer gets into trouble, I don’t know what goes on in Suffolk County, but the police unions, like all the officers who were charged with the death of Freddie Gray, which for everyone who doesn’t know, Freddie Gray was a young man who died in police custody in 2015 and set off basically an uprising here in Baltimore. But all the police officers didn’t have to worry about hiring a lawyer because the police union pays for the lawyers for police officers who get in trouble in Maryland. I don’t know how it is in Suffolk County, but they have a lawyer on twenty four seven for them. If anything happens to them, they get free legal services from pretty well-paid law firms. Very well paid

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

First. Yeah. But that’s the secondary, that’s like the safety net. Most times in my experience, police officers get indemnified by the county or municipality. We’re going to get to

Stephen Janis:

That. And yes,

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

You are correct. They get taxpayer funded lawyers and they’re not getting the county attorneys, especially in Suffolk County or Nassau County, the neighboring county on Long Island. They hire $2,000 an hour attorneys, private attorneys. And I’m sure if I looked into that, I’m sure those attorneys probably donated those law firms. Oh

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely. We had the same thing going on in Baltimore. Absolutely.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

It’s a whole racket. It’s a whole

Stephen Janis:

Racket.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

It’s a whole big club and we’re not in it, just so people

Taya Graham:

Know. We are not in it.

Stephen Janis:

It’s a classic political economy. We had law firms were getting millions of dollars from Baltimore City to handle these lawsuits and basically –

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Instead

Stephen Janis:

Of settling,

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

They couldn’t use that money to settle the case.

Stephen Janis:

Well, exactly.

Taya Graham:

Right. But

Stephen Janis:

That’s the

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Thing. Fight it. It’s insane.

Stephen Janis:

They would spend millions. We have a municipal cap in Baltimore in Maryland. It’s 500,000 or 900,000. And they would spend more money defending than just, might as well just pay it out. They would spend five, six, seven million dollars just to defend a lawsuit. They’d eventually pay out. But instead of just paying it out, I think they wanted to run up the billable hours, which is to your point. You have the law firms getting involved, making millions and millions of dollars. The politicians getting donations. It’s a pretty nice business. Nice work if you get it. And the amazing thing about it that you point out, I think that people don’t understand, is if you mess up, the more mistakes you make, the more lucrative it is. In our city, after the Justice Department investigated our police department and found the Department of Justice found it practiced unconstitutional and racist policing for like a decade, the police department got $70 million to fix the issues.

Tons of consultants

Taya Graham:

Like you said tons of work. That was the first thing that happened. They were handed millions more dollars.

Stephen Janis:

70 million. And it just went to all sorts of extracurricular activities, which eventually ends up in the pockets of the union.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, absolutely. You know what? Let me grab comment nine because I think it’s an interesting one because it kind of is a dig at me and Steven. There’s someone who thinks we shouldn’t even be talking to you, Sean Paul. Dave, can you put up comment nine and I’ll read it. Sean Frey, excuse me, 7975 says, “You going to hitch your wagon to that mule. Lost all respect for you.” Wow. Yeah. Steven, I’m not sure exactly where that’s coming from, but I’m sure you have something to say about it. Well,

Stephen Janis:

First of all, I want to say I have tremendous respect for Sean Ray and all the work that he does. I don’t even care what they say about that. But also I think we should disabuse ourselves with this notion that interviewing someone means somehow you’re hitched to their wagon. Covering what Long Island does, Long Island Odds does, does not mean we endorse anything he does. It just means that we feel that he is newsworthy and that what he does is worth showing to our audience. That’s all it is. It’s not like we’re saying we’re endorsing everything Sean Ray does or we’re in. Sean Paul, sorry. Sean Paul Ray does. We’re not saying that at all. What we do as journalists, we interview all sorts of people. I mean, should we not interview Republican politicians who disagree with us or should we not interview people who we don’t think are perfectly suitable?

That’s not what we do. That’s not the kind of judgment we make. We judge things based on their newsworthiness. And Long Island Audits has made a lot of news for a good reason, for accountability reporting, and therefore we will cover him. And I don’t really care what people say about it, but I do have tremendous respect for your work. So

Taya Graham:

Either

Stephen Janis:

Way.

Taya Graham:

Steven, I agree with you. What we do is cover things that are newsworthy. For example, we have covered victims of crime and we have also interviewed people who have gone to prison for crimes. Does that mean I shouldn’t interview someone because they’ve gone to prison? Right. Does that mean I should only interview people that I like and never someone that I might have some fundamental differences in? Half the politicians

Stephen Janis:

In Maryland have gone to prison and we’ve interviewed all of them.

Taya Graham:

Oh my gosh. And they’re Democrats for the record.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. So we interview

Taya Graham:

People all the time. They actually did go to prison. Our previous mayor did actually, and I had a lovely interview with her. So I should not interview people because they’re problematic. If they’re newsworthy, if interviewing them is going to reveal something important, then I should interview them for the benefit of the public. It’s not about liking people. It’s not about hitching your wagon to a star. It’s about giving the public information that they can find useful. Period. Case closed. Case closed. Now, Sean, I’m not going to force you to react to this unless you want to. I will.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I will. So first of all, to me, this is indicative of the tribalism and the death of nuance. And these people, they want to be closed-minded. They don’t want to have conversations. And this person probably, he says, if you asked him, you do support the First Amendment, do you support the free press? Do you support? And you probably say, yes, yes, yes. I love the Constitution. But the minute that someone engages with somebody that they don’t like or starts talking to them, again, just because I’m on your channel doesn’t mean that I am not. We do not endorse each other for everything that we do. If tomorrow you did something I didn’t like, I have full rights to talk about that as well. I don’t have a blind loyalty to people. I love the work that you guys do and I appreciate it. And I think what you guys do on Capitol Hill is great.

I watch you guys all the time. And you really speak truth to power. It’s great. I wish I could be up there on Capitol Hill agitating people and provoking people. I wish you could too. I

Taya Graham:

Was going to say,

Stephen Janis:

You

Taya Graham:

Can join

Stephen Janis:

Us. Can you bring your truck up to Capitol Hill one time at least once? I

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Would love to bring the truck. Yeah, I

Stephen Janis:

Would love to. All right. We’ve got to do the truck one

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Time. I would love to join you guys over there a Capitol Hill.But again –

Stephen Janis:

We’re doing that. That’s the date.That’s the date. I love it. I want that truck on Capitol Hill, man. Right on the triangle. It would be

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Great. It’s crazy. And people are like, “Oh, journalists don’t have billboard trucks. That’s true. Most journalists don’t.” I wish we did. Right. I’m sure most journalists wish they did too. It’s a good way to spread your message around. And again, I’m not saying I’m not Caitlin Collins of CNN. I’m not – Neither

Taya Graham:

Am I.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Whoever from Fox News, I guess. I’m not those people. I’m Sean Paul Reyes. My platform is my platform. I objectively engage in journalistic activities. I objectively exercise my First Amendment right. And again, if you want to call it advocacy journalism, opinionated journalism, yeah, I have opinions. And I don’t hide that. I talk about things that interest me and interest my audience. And I think that me building platforms that have over two million subscribers and at this point, probably a billion views, 500 million, 600 million on YouTube alone. These are matters of public interest that people want to see. People are very passionate about it. I get death threats. I get people are passionate on the other side too. People threaten to kill me, threaten to kill my family. There’s a lot of things that go into this. And it’s sad to see that people can’t have conversations anymore.

Even if we were totally different, I would still come on your channel. I invited Lou, when the body camera footage comes out the Sunday on my channel, the Sunday morning at 10:00 AM, I invited him to come on the channel and he accepted. So Lou, if you’re watching this, you’re still welcome to. I think that he is a despicable thug with a badge, but I would bring him on my channel. Absolutely. Great point. So that way I can debate him. Absolutely. But he would never come. He says it on the body cam. “Yeah, I’ll come on your channel. Yeah, let’s do it. “While I’m sitting in handcuffs, while I’m standing there in handcuffs with a pinched nerve in my wrist because he put the handcuffs on so tight, he says,” I’ll come on. “I said,” Come on the channel. “Because I would have anybody on the channel if I thought it brought value to the greater conversation.

Absolutely. I think him speaking to me on my channel, I think it’s going to show you exactly what I’m talking about when it comes to the police union. They talk just generalities. Oh, they don’t get into any specifics about anything. It’s just you’re an agitator, how? You’re a provocateur, how? You hate the police, how? I’ve had police officers on my channel, I’ve gotten pushback from, if you want to talk about the other side of it, I’ve brought chief of polices, detectives, I’ve had law enforcement on my channel. I’ve done ride alongs, I’ve done trainings, I’ve done command staff meetings, district attorney’s offices, and some of the more anti-police who have just a bad taste in their mouth for police and don’t think that police should exist whatsoever, they’re like, “Why would you bring on a cop?” Because I want to have conversations with people who have different views than me.

I do so I can understand what it is I need to do and how I need to tackle a problem better. I would

Taya Graham:

Bring

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

On anyone. I would.

Taya Graham:

You know what? Steven, you know what this sounds like?

Stephen Janis:

What?

Taya Graham:

This sounds like a journalist.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Let me just make one public service announcement. I know, because I know he’s watching our editor, Maximolia Alvarez. We would like a truck. So just put that on our budget because I’m jealous of Sean. I want to show up at Capitol Hill with a truck.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

You can use my truck. We will definitely collaborate

Stephen Janis:

And I will. Oh, you were coming out with that truck. Absolutely. We would love that. We have to do a collab. I would love to do

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

It. After how it works and everything. It’s

Taya Graham:

Great. And I just want to shout out some of the people in the comments. First off, hi Car Thief News. Thank you. And also, I want to say hello to Wrights Crispy. Hello, another wonderful cop watcher out there. We still have Joe Cool out there, hippie auditor out there. I think I even saw John Felix. I don’t know if I hallucinated it, but I’m almost positive I saw the John Felix out there. And I just

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Want to –

Taya Graham:

I

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Like Joe Cool.

Taya Graham:

I know. I know. As a matter of fact, Steven, do you have a DVD next to you?

Stephen Janis:

Oh yeah.

Taya Graham:

You know what? Why don’t you show that DVD?

Stephen Janis:

Okay.

Taya Graham:

If people are interested in learning a little bit more about Copwatchers, there is something you can watch. It’s called I Am But the Mirror. The

Stephen Janis:

Story of American Copwatching.

Taya Graham:

Story of American Copwatching. Lacey Arnold D, if you wouldn’t mind dropping the link in the comments. It’s on Fossum. It’s an amazing documentary where we followed Copwatchers and in particular a very controversial one for several years. And we share their story. We share the story of how we learned about Copwatchers, their lives. Just about some of the

Stephen Janis:

Topics we talked about tonight too.

Taya Graham:

A lot of the things we. No, no, it’s okay. A lot of the things that we touched on tonight, it’s a very personal and intimate look at the lives of Copwatcher and some of the very personal costs that happen when you put everything on the line because you believe in accountability and transparency. So if you’re interested in Copwatching, definitely recommend it. Okay. I just had to throw that out there for people who might be interested in continuing this conversation in another way. Okay. I’m going to go to the comment 10, and I have to admit this as a little bit of a personal peeve for me. Okay. This is the infamous democracy versus republic debate. I know there’s some historians in the comments, so you’re welcome to weigh in on this. This is from Edward Cominar 1493. I stopped watching when you called us a democracy.

We are not a democracy. And since you believe that, I will not sub to your channel. Bye. Okay. Well, all right. I hate to say it, but this is not an airport. You did not have to announce your departure. It’s okay. I love that. But secondly, I want to put this up because very often when I use the word democracy in the show, someone brings up that it’s formerly a constitutional republic as a point as if I didn’t know this or wasn’t aware. So please let me break it down so maybe I don’t have to go through this again. One is a legal framework or structure of governance, i.e. A constitutional republic. And one is a process for conferring power within that structure. Neither are mutually exclusive. One does not preclude the existence of another. We can live within the structure of a constitutional republic while simultaneously participating in a democracy.

I mean, Steven, am I wrong here?

Stephen Janis:

No, no, no, no, no. The two exist, coexist. I mean, the process itself of voting is democratic. So I just wanted to put that up there because people say this constantly when we have this discussion. And just remember, they’re not mutually exclusive. They really work well together. So when we say one, we’re not precluding the other is the point.

Taya Graham:

Right. Just

Stephen Janis:

Wanted to make that point quick.

Taya Graham:

Yes. Think of the republic is the building in which the democracy is housed. How about that? That sounds good. Okay. So we don’t have to argue about this, you guys. I promise. I promise. Okay. I won’t ask you to. Let’s get to 11 because we’re – Running out of time. We do have some time. Yeah. We do have to watch out for time. Last

Stephen Janis:

Comment.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Last comment that we saved from earlier from Facebook and YouTube. Okay. Who is footing the bill? Okay. So I think this comment makes a really good point, so we need to highlight it. Dave, thank you so much for putting it up. This is Sean Strauss’s point. Remember, everyone, cops never pay a single cent for lawsuits. Even in a successful lawsuit where qualified immunity is denied, individual LEOs are still literally always indemnified by the municipality. It’s the taxpayers who pay for the lawyer’s fees, court costs settlements, and even judgements issued against them. We the people currently have no meaningful legal recourse to hold our LEOs accountable, neither civilly nor criminally. So either one of you can take this. Well, let’s have Sean do it. Yeah. Is it true that police are indemnified by the taxpayers?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

In most cases, yes. There was actually a case that I brought up. I’d covered this case where this man was walking down the street in New York City and officers hopped out like a gang. Literally a gang hopped out of a patrol vehicle and started going into his pants, checking him, searching him. He was just walking down the street, minding his own business, but apparently he must have looked a certain way or walked a certain way. Who knows what they were thinking? But they hopped out and they started searching him. They ended up grabbing his genitals and doing all types of craziness to him. And he got upset and I raid about it. He ended up filing a lawsuit. I covered this story probably three years ago. And then he had texted me, told me, “Hey, they ended up settling for $100,000.” And I bring this up because out of that $100,000, well, they had to hire their own attorneys, but as Steven indicated earlier, they hired their attorneys through the PBA, through their union.

They don’t call it a PBA, but their union, they hired them attorneys. And then they had to come out of pocket out of that $95,000 of that $100,000 settlement this gentleman got was taxpayer money. And the other 5,000 had to be split between the two officers who violated his rights. So at the end of the day, cops can be held accountable civilly, but nine times out of 10, 99% of the time they are indemnified by the municipality and the taxpayers end up funding the bill. I completely agree that there’s such a lack of accountability when it comes to government officials and our public servants, whether it’s locally, on the state level, federally. Federally is even worse. Federally, you can’t even. I didn’t know this until recently when I was unlawfully detained by border patrol and they went and cut open my suitcase, searched my vehicle, deleted the video from my phone.

Thankfully it was my recently deleted, put me in a jail cell.

You cannot sue the federal government under the 1983 civil rights lawsuit. You can’t. They’re not named as a. It’s for state actors, not federal actors. So you can file what’s called a tort claim, which that’s for actual damages. I could have filed a tort claim for the damage they did to my suitcase. It’s almost impossible to hold the federal government accountable. So it goes all the way. The lack of opportunities we have and the lack of avenues, I should say, that we have to hold state actors or federal actors accountable for their misconduct is basically nothing because they have unlimited money because it’s our money. It’s our money. They have unlimited money. They can just pay out lawsuits because it’s our money. Even if the federal government, they print the money. So they literally have unlimited money. And the state governments, they can’t print money, but they have a lot of it, especially places like New York, Maryland, where there’s high taxes.

They have a lot of money to be able to spare. They factor this in and they say, “Well, it is what it is.” It goes away. The person gets their money and they move on. And there’s never any accountability. If it came out of the law enforcement officer’s pockets.

Law enforcement is designed, is supposed to be, right? This is what they tell you to hold people accountable for their criminal actions, is to enforce the law. And the criminal justice system, again, I’m not co-signing their view, but they’re saying the criminal justice system is supposed to stop people from committing crimes. Not only the individual that’s being charged with a crime, but it’s supposed to serve as a deterrent to society as a whole to say, “Hey, you can’t do this because this will happen to you the same way it happened to this guy.” But in law enforcement, when there’s no accountability for the individual officer, that breeds a lack of accountability across the whole department and across the police as a whole. And because they know that, “Hey, I can do this.” Just recently, somebody was charged with a crime for using flock cameras to stalk their girlfriend.

And the investigator, the IA investigator who investigated him was arrested as well for doing the same thing after he did it. So it’s just the lack of accountability is astounding and it breeds more misconduct and more misconduct. And unfortunately, unless we change up, unless we get the right politicians in there, public servants to legislators, executives in the executive branch to hold them accountable, it’s not going to change.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, it’s really interesting. I want to make this point before we wrap things up because one of the first times we started talking to Sean was when his encounter with Sergeant Fahey in Connecticut. Connecticut state trooper that seemed like his overtime was a little excessive for someone who worked at a desk and then retired with a pension. And I’ve been doing some digging on it. And it turns out that the couple thousand retired state troopers cost Connecticut taxpayers $110 million a year to fund their pensions. And we started looking at some of the last couple years, because the last couple years is what defines your salary. So what happens is that they start collecting a lot more overtime and therefore their final average pay goes up and therefore their final average pension becomes larger and more lucrative. And I think the point is in what you’re saying is that you are really attacking the crux of the matter in the sense that this is real dollars.

I mean, $110 million a year to fund the pensions for a couple thousand people is really an extreme use of resources in a country that purports not to be able to pay for healthcare for average working citizens. This is real money that keeps getting tossed around. When we looked at the budget for Suffolk County, it was like $1,400 a year for each household to fund police. I mean, think about that. So we are talking about hundreds of millions of billions of dollars being funneled into one organization that represents a very small number of people and hundreds of billions of dollars not going to pay for people’s healthcare or for childcare or for whatever, for education, you name it. So this is not a minor, this is a kind of a crux issue. And I think Sean, as you point out, these people are really the warriors on behalf of the oligarchy.

So yeah, I just want to make that point because that money struck me, $110 million. What could we do with that?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

The Suffolk County Police Department has a billion dollar budget. It’s insane that the amount of money that goes into these six figure pensions for the rest of your life, for the rest of your life, but yet I might not even get my social security one day, but yet they get from. They’re going to get six figures for the rest of their life.

Stephen Janis:

For the rest of their lives. Yeah. I mean, it’s extraordinary. And Suffolk County’s like the hotbed of crime that I

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Know of. No, it’s not. You know what they do? You know what they do, Steven? Again, I like the rank and file people of Suffolk County. I do. People, I’ll probably get chewed up for that. I like the rank and file officers because I think they’re pretty cool guys, but it’s the system, the police union, the administration. But what they do is they hide behind firehouses and just sit there all night long and just hang out. That’s what they do.

Stephen Janis:

Right. Right. Meanwhile, collecting $100,000 a year. Yeah. 200,

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

300, 400, $500,000 a year, that much.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, Suffolk County’s like Stony Brook University and a couple malls. I mean, seriously, a billion dollars, what? What’s going on there?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Keep us safe.

Taya Graham:

I wanted to say there have been some really great comments. And unfortunately, I didn’t get to ask some of the questions that were on the screen. So I just want to shout out a few people. I see Garden State Accountability, San Joaquin Valley Transparency. Otto, the watchdog is out there. Hey, Otto. It’s good to see you. How are you? One of our favorites. Leroy Truth. There’s a vigilance committee. Joe Kool is out there holding it down in the comment section. I love it. Big Nick South. Saw Rice Krispy. So I just want to make sure. I’m sorry if I didn’t get to mention everybody, but the comments are kind of flying by. I just want to thank all of you for participating. And I just want to ask, and there’s a great question on the screen of whether or not people. They want to know, do we think that this kind of cop watching, this kind of auditing, this kind of First Amendment activism, do you think it’s making a difference?

That was a question. It’s a good question. I’m so sorry. The name flew by too fast for. But I want you to know out there whoever’s in live chat, that was a great question. So Sean, I just wanted to ask you, do you think it’s making a difference?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I think it’s making a difference. I don’t think it’s making enough of a difference, but I do believe it’s making a difference. Even in the last five years, there’s a bunch of, you just named a bunch of people. There’s so many people that came before me. I’ve been doing this for five years. These people have been doing this for the last decade, 15 years. And I give them all the respect in the world for starting this. And I think it’s made a huge difference, but not enough of a difference. And I think law enforcement officers, they won’t just grab you and arrest you at a traffic stop anymore. No as much. I’ve noticed that when I walk into a public building now, most people, they’re like, oh, they know what you’re doing and everything else. And they treat you with respect and just the basics that should have been happening from day one.

But they don’t want to be famous online or infamous, I should say, online. So I think all of us together have really accomplished a lot. And I think my platform is really branching out into actually investigating in particular mayors, particular just like Lee Roy Truth or others out there who are focused then on one person or one organization. Because I feel like over the last five years, I’ve been stretched out and I feel like I’ve failed my county. Again, I’m proud one raised resident, Suffolk County, Long Island. And I feel like I failed my county by not taking this police union head on from the start. I’ve been all over the place from California and Hawaii, Florida and everywhere in between. And I think I need to focus my resources in one area and be able to really affect change, maybe even run for a legislator just to make them, even if it’s just to make them

Stephen Janis:

Spend money against me. Wait, wait, wait. So you’re going to run for office?

Taya Graham:

I’m

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Thinking about running for legislator in Suffolk County.

Stephen Janis:

That’s news. Okay. Can we just break news? We just break news.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I mean, listen, my legislator, I looked it up. He won with 8,000 votes. Oh my

Stephen Janis:

God. I’ve got an audience of a million. You got

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

The senate. My district is like 75,000. So 8,000. Get out to vote people. Come on. Whoever supports the police unit support, vote the opposite. I don’t care if it’s a Democrat or a Republican. Whoever the police unit supports, vote for the opposite of that person. Whatever it is.

Taya Graham:

That’s solid platform. That’s a solid platform. We

Stephen Janis:

Are covering your campaign beginning to end. One thing I want to say –

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Great campaign. I got the billboard truck already. It’s going to be great.

Taya Graham:

You’re

Stephen Janis:

Already

Taya Graham:

Halfway there.

Stephen Janis:

Taya’s from Long Island. My family’s from Long Island. Several of our other coworkers, we have a very strong Long Island.

Taya Graham:

We’re Long Island strong here at The Real News. So

Stephen Janis:

Just so you know, we’re in solidarity with you on Long Island.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I spent summers in Stony Brook in Suffolk County. And I spent summers in Stoney. I know how quiet it is. Okay. Last question. Last question, you guys, so we can wrap up. I just wanted to ask what you envision for the future of your work and perhaps kind of YouTube auditing in general. Do you think it’s going to evolve? Do you think the police are going to push back harder or where do you think we go from here? Because I think there’s going to be an auditor summit coming up. There are people who still want to get involved, become auditors, become First Amendment activists, become cop watchers, but there are some challenges there. So what do you see as its future?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. I’m familiar with the 1A auditor summit that’s supposed to be held next year. And I think it’s important. I kind of got into it already. I think it’s evolved to where. One of the things that frustrated me about First Amendment auditing is that there was never any follow up. And I think that’s what I would see somebody whose rights get violated and then I would never know what happened after that. I would never see them file a complaint. I would never see the results of the complaint. We all know that they’re going to investigate themselves and find out what we’re doing, but take that step because it’s important to show that’s part of the story. It’s important to show that you are filing a complaint with Internal Affairs who’s supposed to be an independent part of the police department, which they’re not. And it is important to show that they’re going to unsubstantiate it.

When your own eyes tell you exactly what happened, they will lie to you straight to your face. And I think it’s important for follow up. And I think more and more, I’m starting to investigate more into an investigative journalism kind of phase where I’m looking at the numbers, I’m looking at the papers. I’m talking to informants sources that are. I just got off the phone with a former law enforcement officer right before I almost was late because I was talking to a former law enforcement officer giving me all this information. And it’s important to evolve what you’re doing and to be passionate about it. And I think that moving forward, I think people like Leroy Truth, there are so many others out there that have really changed when it comes to actually focusing on particular issues and really digging into those issues because recording in public spaces is very important.

Recording law enforcement on a traffic stop is very important because it shows you what happens when power is challenged in any little way. These people with their ego, when you challenge their ego, I was arrested by Lucavillo because I said, “You’re such a tough guy, then do it. Let’s be real. Not because I broke the law. It’s because I went there asking questions about how his agencies are costing us hundreds of millions of dollars and I challenged his ego.” And he couldn’t control his emotions. Now imagine when you see those people, when you see these videos of these law enforcement officers who can’t control their emotions, if they’re doing it to me, if that man, Lucivillo, the police union president, is willing to do that to me, somebody with over two million subscribers across social media, hundreds of millions of views, what do you think he’s doing to John Smith down the street with no family, no money?

Stephen Janis:

Exactly.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

They run them through the system. The process is the punishment. The difference is that what law enforcement hasn’t figured out yet is that the process isn’t the punishment when it comes to people like me because the process, you’re thinking of I’m being punished. I’m not because I have a bunch of supporters that help me out with legal bills. I have a bunch of supporters that will write letters. So the process isn’t the punishment for me, but they’re so ingrained in that kind of way of thinking that this might not hold up in court. It’s probably not going to hold up in court, but he gets to sit in jail for seven hours. He has to pay a lawyer. He’s going to end up taking a deal anyway. And at the end of the day, if it all goes to shit, it’s going to get paid by his money anyway, taxpayer money.

It’s not going to affect me in any way. I’m not going to be held accountable.

Taya Graham:

Steven, let me ask you, what do you see as the future? I mean, you worked on that documentary, I am But the Mirror. You should know a little bit about Copwatching by now.

Stephen Janis:

Well, first thing I want to say is my editor-in-chief Max is in my ear and he’s telling me that this truck is on order for our billboard truck. So yes, I’ve been informed. I wanted to break that news that we will have the Tay and Steven billboard truck in operation shortly. But I think Sean injects creativity into journalism. I mean, journalists, we have a little high priestess sort of priest sort of feeling about bureaucratic. We can be a little bureaucratic and a little full of ourselves. And people like Sean come in and say, “Well, I’ve got a whole new way of approaching this, billboard truck included.” And I think that creativity is what flows from copwatchers because they went out – Yeah, that’s a great way to describe it. And they’re evolving, right? Sean says, “Yeah, I used to first film cops. Now I’m investigating overtime and going through public records and making record requests and following up.” It’s like we’re watching a whole new sort of journalism emerge.

And I think what’s great about copwatchers is they challenge the orthodoxy of what we do, which has a lot of orthodoxy in it and a lot of assumptions we make about the aesthetics of it, how it should be done. And Sean says, “No, I’m going to do it this way.” And actually it’s really effective and kind of very similar to what we do, but it kind of gives us a new way of looking at it. I mean, I have learned a tremendous amount from the copwatching auditing community as a journalist myself who came from a very conventional background. I work for a newspaper. If anyone knows what that is, I’m not sure if people are familiar with them, but they used to be delivered in your mailbox. And so I myself have said, wow, that’s a really cool way of approaching this. Or wow, I never thought of that.

Or just exposing things like now that I’m looking into the Connecticut State Pension System, thanks primarily to Sean and his encounter and what happened with Sergeant Hayes. So I think it’s a great way, a catalyst for journalism to change and evolve and adopt to an audience where audiences are, which is on YouTube and Instagram and places where Sean is quite popular. So yeah, it’s a good thing for all of us. And I’m looking forward to driving that truck

Taya Graham:

To Capital. Steven, that’s such a great point. I mean, in a way, you’re kind of making me think that it’s not as much about the future of copwatchers, but are journalists going to become more like cop watchers? Are we going to become more independent, more creative, more untethered from institutions, which can be controlling? We’re very fortunate as independent journalists that work for a nonprofit org to let you know, if we get five views on this or five million views on this, we don’t get a single nickel more. We’re a nonprofit org. We don’t run any ads on our channel. So literally we can report on what we want. So we are so lucky to be independent in that way. And I think copwatchers and the power that they show that basically a regular person who cares, who cares about transparency, excuse me, transparency, accountabilities, got a camera, willing to follow the money and do the work can actually make a difference in their community and help protect people and make change.

So I think if anything, if journalists are smart, they’re going to become a little bit more like copwatchers.That’s

Stephen Janis:

What I’ll say. Maybe should all become copwatchers. I’m an auditor. Sean, do you think I qualify to be an auditor or a copwatcher?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I’ve seen the work that you’ve done in Baltimore, both of you, and you guys do great work and I think you’d be perfect copwatcher. Thank you. And listen, I got to say that part of it’s waking up the public. The public is asleep. And sometimes you need a billboard truck, a flashy billboard truck to wake them up. I totally agree what you said, Steven. The institutions of journalism and everything else allegedly. I hate it when journalists say, allegedly, when I just watched the guy get punched in the face and allegedly he was punched in the face. And it’s too cutesy, too wanting. Instead of trying not to take a side because you don’t want to be part of the story and you don’t want to be in journalism. I’m going to tell this objectively. Sometimes there is no two sides to the story. Sometimes the police unions are just corrupt and you got to call them corrupt.

Stephen Janis:

Anything we say in journalism is like, it’s either raining or it’s sunny, but it’s not like there’s two sides to that, right? So yeah, good point.

Taya Graham:

You know what? I just have to say some of the folks, for example, Liberty Freak says that the police are going to push back harder. And you have a good point. I mean, I was just thinking about how there’s somewhere between 80,000 to 120,000 flop cameras across the country. The surveillance state is increasing. At the same time where there’s laws being made to say, stay further back while you’re recording, stay further back while you’re recording for us regular folks. Sure. Yeah. So it’s going to be interesting. Police like to

Stephen Janis:

Turn the cameras on up. As Sean has pointed out, they don’t like to have the cameras turned

Taya Graham:

On up. Exactly. Exactly. So Sean, we want to thank you so much for your time. And before you go, people want to know about the tiger painting. I’m sorry. I think

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

We’re going to get to that. So I’ll show it. This is not my portrait. I am in a hotel in Louisiana right now, so I have no idea what this is. And I was interested when I first saw it in my hotel room too. Okay.

Taya Graham:

So it’s not a family heirloom. Okay.

Stephen Janis:

No. So people are asking about a painting in

Taya Graham:

This

Stephen Janis:

Hotel

Taya Graham:

Room. Well, because Steven can’t see it. So there’s a tiger and this pretty woman wearing a dress with kind of like a boostier and petting a giant tiger. I’ll show you a screenshot of it later. It’s quite a shot. That’s pretty cool. Sean Paul, we have to thank you so much for your time. We took up more of it than we should have. I apologize for that. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you so much, your work, your willingness to speak about it, and your very singular insights into government accountability. And we look forward to speaking to you again soon and going to Washington DC with you.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Love it. Can’t wait.

Taya Graham:

Thank you for

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Having me and keep up the group work. Thank you

Taya Graham:

So much. Oh, thank you. You as well. Take care. Thank you. Okay. Steven, how was that for a conversation? I am so amazed about the things we learned from folks about talking about police power. And of course, one of my favorite topics, cop watchers. I got to do it. I got to say it again. Anyone who’s interested in the subject, check out the documentary, I’m But the Mirror. Steven, hold it up. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah. The story of American Copwatching and either Lacey R. Noli D. That’s me right there. If one of you put a link in the chat, I would very much appreciate it. And I just want to thankry a goofball. Everyone who was in the comments. And I really do apologize if I didn’t get to everyone’s comments. I tried to, with Max’s help, to put as many comments on the screen as I could.

And I just want to thank every single one of you that took the time to show up at this live. I appreciate it so much. And I’m going to make a point later on tonight to go through the comments that you guys leave underneath, give out some hearts, give some of my own personal responses. And I’m also going to go back to doing a comment of the week. So your comment might end up being highlighted on our channel if you take the time to make one. So if you can take a moment to leave a comment, maybe give us a little thumbs up, we really do appreciate it so much. So Steven, I’ve got to give you a chance before we sign off. Well, okay. And before I say thank you to all of our patreons, before I sign off, do you have any thoughts about tonight’s

Stephen Janis:

Discussion? Yeah, no. I mean, it was really interesting. And I think we’ve created a vicious cycle of comedy on comments, the comment on comments.

Taya Graham:

It’s very meta.

Stephen Janis:

It’s totally meta, so I’m pretty happy. But this is really cool to have this kind of debate and have the opportunity to hear what people think, because that really informs everything we do. If you don’t give feedback, you don’t think we read comments because sometimes you get like eight or hundred or thousand. I read a big majority of them and this time we really went through them. And what emerged was a really interesting dynamic debate that should be had every day about democracy, about journalism, about what we do, about how we should do it. That’s a great point. About how government kind of hoards resources and then uses them to attack us. And then how people on Long Island Audits are being creative and approaching it in their own way. I wish they had these debates when we go to conferences on journalism. I’d be much more interested to hear what people had to

Taya Graham:

Say

Stephen Janis:

If they were this vital.

Taya Graham:

So all

Stephen Janis:

Credits to the people on YouTube and to Long Island Audits for the way they bring out people and to talk about this. You don’t hear people debating democracy other than on CNN with a bunch of highly paid hairstylists. This is great because this is the people talking.

Taya Graham:

Yes.

Stephen Janis:

And more I hear, the better I feel about democracy.

Taya Graham:

Oh, Steven, that’s actually really beautiful. Yeah. It’s really beautiful. And I’m so glad – And the truck. And the truck. And the truck.

Stephen Janis:

And

Taya Graham:

That’s why I’m really so glad that we had this discussion and this debate to let people know we really do pay attention to your comments. And these spaces on social media, I think in particular YouTube, are places where we can really show that our democracy is so vital, that our First Amendment is still incredibly important. And that there’s real lifeblood in us that wants to have a healthy, equitable society where there’s not government overreach that is harmful. I agree. I agree. Honestly, Steven, our civic life in a lot of ways is becoming more and more precarious. And I think the right to disagree and to dissent is the most important part of it. Agreed. I mean, it’s the mechanism that keeps our democracy healthy. I would say this, this will be my little rant.

Stephen Janis:

Okay.

Taya Graham:

The right to dissent is a critical ingredient of our democracy, or if you’d like to call it constitutional republic. If you think about it, the right to vote is a form of dissent. It’s a right to express your disagreement with the people in power by voting to remove them. It’s actually the most potent form of communal dissent, actually. Our ability to collectively express dissatisfaction with political leaders and effectuate change is fundamental to who we are. But as Steven pointed out, it’s a facet of our system that can be easily manipulated or eliminated altogether. And it’s fragile and often challenging to preserve. Otherwise, I think copwatchers like Sean Paul wouldn’t continue to be arrested if the right to dissent was not in some sense provisional. So keeping dissent healthy and vibrant requires work. And that work can often lead to uncomfortable truths. So one of those truisms is that dissent, which makes us uncomfortable, is just as important to protect as that which we agree.

So what do I mean? So let me give a little bit of an analogy to explain. So imagine our collective discourse is a spectrum, a broad range of frequencies and colors intertwined, but separate. And in many ways, a spectrum of light is nature’s representation of the great Variety of colors and frequencies, all separate but equal, just like all of us in our different voices and ideas. And we need all of it because all of it is us. But acknowledging the existence of the spectrum requires acknowledging its full intensity. Let me give you an example. When noted cop watcher Eric Brandt, let’s say some people would say he provoked cops and waves, and please excuse my language, he waved a flag that said F cops. Well, a lot of people were made uncomfortable. And when Sean Paul shows up at a police union spontaneously, some people think his tactics are aggressive or even rude, but dissent does not always conform to our expectations of politeness or comportment.

It doesn’t always work when it complies with our expectations. Not every disagreement can be settled by a stoic debate or a polite exchange or even nuanced, reasonable discourse, even though sometimes I wish it could. No, I think sometimes these extremes are necessary to help keep the entire concept healthy. Sometimes more vibrant or discordant colors are necessary. Sometimes a more extreme approach is critical to making our entire project of finding ways to hold power accountable through public pushback, relevance. Sometimes dissent is just going to be ugly whether we like it or not. But my point is here that ultimately dissent must be created to survive. It must evolve to exceed the limits, as Steven pointed out, of the authoritarian impulses that exist within every government. It must be something that can accommodate citizen journalists with cell phones just as much as it protects reporters for the New York Times or Washington Post.

It has to be flexible, adaptable, and sometimes even confrontational. But the key is it’s up to us to define it. That is we, the people. It’s up to us to judge and debate what works and what doesn’t. It’s up to us to decide what we support and what we don’t. And that’s why we had this debate tonight and that’s why we ask for your comments. That’s why we do what we do. It’s an essential part of who we are. Proponents of free speech and protectors of the right of others to criticize our government and even us. Key to preserving it is discussions like this. And cop watchers are part of that recipe and so are you. So please help us fight for it together and argue like true Americans with courage and conviction and freedom to speak the truth even loudly to each other. And in the end, that’s all we have.

And I hope it’s all we’ll need. Once again –

Stephen Janis:

Very well done.

Taya Graham:

That’s my rant.

Stephen Janis:

It was a great

Taya Graham:

Rant. I had to do it.

Stephen Janis:

I agree with it entirely.

Taya Graham:

Well, Steven, I want to thank you for all the work you did to make this livestream possible today. Thank you so much. It was a very robust conversation. It

Stephen Janis:

Was. And we can disagree too. We disagree a lot of times. So just so people know.

Taya Graham:

Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

It’s not all perfect

Taya Graham:

Here. No, we actually agree pretty often. Except when we just disagreed now.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, we just disagreed that we didn’t agree. Oh my God. Irony.

Taya Graham:

Okay. And I also want to thank Long Island Auditor’s time today and all the amazing folks that showed up in the live chat. Thank all of you. And I have to give a very special thanks to moderators Noli D and Lacey R for their support. Thank you both. Hi, Noeli D and hi to Ryan. Can I just

Stephen Janis:

Say quickly how good

Taya Graham:

Long

Stephen Janis:

Island Audits is? How good he is and how interesting? You’re

Taya Graham:

Going to blow your objective journalism cover here if you do that.

Stephen Janis:

Okay.

Taya Graham:

Right. I take that back. It’s not supposed to be about interviewing people we like or don’t like. It’s about to do the world. No, I’m just saying that

Stephen Janis:

His interview

Taya Graham:

Was

Stephen Janis:

Really good. He brings up a lot of points that surprise me. And yeah, so go ahead. I’m sorry. I just wanted to say that.

Taya Graham:

No, you absolutely have the right to say that. I just don’t want people to think that you were biased. Okay.

Stephen Janis:

Good point.

Taya Graham:

But you’re right. He was a terrific interview and that is fair to say. But we have to thank our very special helpers who might be unseen. Maxime Alvarez. Oh yes. Thank you, Max. Who’s getting the truck apparently. Jocelyn, Brian and Corey for moral support. And like I said, at the very end, I’m going to thank every individual Patreon. So I’m just letting you know because I love my patrons. I do. And I’ve got to say it, I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tipsprivately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Point on Facebook or Instagram or at Eyesonpolice on Twitter. And of course you can always message me directly at TeasBaltimore on Twitter or Facebook or Tea Graham on Facebook or Instagram.

And please like and comment. You know I read your comments and appreciate them. I think we proved that we read your comments. And we’re probably going to have a Patreon link pinned in the comments and maybe even the live chat below for accountability reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. You know we don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything could spare is greatly appreciated. And as you see, I do shout out my patreons. My name is Tea Graham. I’m your host of Police Accountability Report. And for all of you, please be safe out there.

And now we’re my patrons. Real quick, I got to run through. I got to thank these good people. Are you ready, Steven? Hang on. Yes. I’m going to try to do this. Okay. Matter of rights, Tamara Anderson, XXX, Chris Robinson, David Keeley, Ronald Hensley, Gary T, David Bach, BD Gates, Calvin Mack, True Too Blive, Martin G. Nope. Talia B. Louie, Artemis LA, Lacey R. Steven J, John P. Alan J, Kyle R. Keith Bernard, M. Marcia E. Don T. Kipke, Cameron J. Joe Six, Donald, sorry, Daniel W, Frank FK, Mary M. John K. Kurt A, Steven B, John M. Conrad B, Siggy Young, Joel A, Patty Blibbets, Sescal Samian, Jimmy Touchdown, who is my very first patron. Thank you. Bill D, Rhym P. John K. Dean C. Umish H. Graham Graham, B. Joseph P. Durdevil, William T. G. Kemmy, Steven D. Just my two cents, Peter J, Sean Best, Julius Geezer, Linda Orr.

Hi, Linda Orr. Cindy K. Social Naturalist. Douglas P. Tim R. Laurie. L. D.B.M. Hugo Flores Noli D. Chris M. Shussant. Kimmy Kat P. Janet K. Omar O. Potshot and Ron Fried. Thank you. You guys are great. We appreciate you, and I hope you all have a great night. Take care. Take care. We appreciate you. Say goodbye, Steven.

Stephen Janis:

Bye.

Taya Graham:

Be safe out there, folks. Be safe.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose holding the politically powerful institutional policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible. And today we will achieve that goal by talking to one of the most popular cop watchers and independent journalists on YouTube about his recent arrest, which we are showing you right now. It occurred at the police headquarters of a powerful law enforcement union. It’s an encounter that left him injured, but also drew the attention of the mainstream media. It’s a controversy that has thrust his tactics and unique approach into police accountability into the national spotlight and raised questions on how he approaches pushing back against law enforcement and power in general.

But before I get started, I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police AccountabilityReport on Facebook or Instagram or at Eyesonpolice on Twitter. And of course, you can always message me directly at TAS Baltimore on Twitter or Facebook. And please like and comment. You know I read your comments and appreciate them. I give out all those little hearts down there and liking and sharing and hyping can also help our guests and get their stories seen. So please take a moment if you can. All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way. Now, as we have reported consistently on this show, police power is far reaching and in some cases insidious, but often its implications aren’t fully understood.

Meaning the way police power infiltrates our system of government can often be hidden and not fully obvious. Well, the man we are going to speak to today is trying to expose the excesses of law enforcement by confronting its power head on. And it’s that work and the consequences for him that we will be unpacking for you today. His name is Long Island Audits and his videos of police encounters have literally been seen by tens of millions of people. But most importantly, he’s not just a random cameraman filming a car stop. He has continually confronted police over a topic that rarely gets the attention it deserves, law enforcement spending. And that’s where our story begins today because recently Sean Paul ventured into a pinnacle of police power, namely the headquarters of a police union. Now this bastion of law enforcement was located in Suffolk County, a jurisdiction that spends hundreds of millions of dollars per year on cops.

And Sean had some questions about that as you’ll see that the police simply didn’t want to answer. Now to help me unpack and share his perspective on what happened, I’m joined by the man himself, Sean Paul Reyes, also known as Long Island Audit. Sean, we are so glad to have you. So let’s get right into it. Now first, to set the scene, you arrive in the parking lot with your billboard truck. What prompted you to take your truck and show up at basically the summit of Police Power in Suffolk County? Let’s watch a little bit of the video and then we can discuss. All

Sean Paul Reyes:

Right. So the reason why I went there is because there’ve been multiple reports in my local newspaper Newsday about police misconduct lawsuits, settlements and there was recently a story that was just published regarding law enforcement officers in Suffolk County who agreed to general misconduct who have been found and plead to misconduct, who get to stay on the job for an X amount of time in order for them to collect their full funded taxpayer pension. And I thought this was very concerning these backroom deals happening between the police union and the Suffolk County government. In one instance, there was an officer who had used the surveillance tools improperly and he was given 14 years. In 2031, he will separate from the Suffolk County Police Department with his full taxpayer funded pension. And I believe that if you engage in misconduct, you should be immediately separated, not given some sort of deal where you can collect a full funded taxpayer pension.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So you go to the front door and there’s something interesting you discover. Let’s watch. And as we do, can you talk about what you’re seeing?

Sean Paul Reyes:

This is an interesting sign here. It’s a thin blue line gang flag of course with the text, “No body-worn cameras in building. Please leave your body-worn camera in the lockers at the security desk.” Yeah, so it probably is the body camera signage that’s posted on the front door. I thought it was very interesting that they have to remind officers to turn off their body cameras inside the police union headquarters. I would assume so that way their dealings inside remain private. The police union is a private entity that receives taxpayer dollars. So the lack of transparency there is already, they’re already not subject to any open records requests or anything like that. So I assume that they’re just trying to keep their dealings private. That’s why they have to remind their officers to turn off their body cameras, which again, I’m for transparency, not secrecy.

Taya Graham:

So you mentioned in the video you wanted to speak to Louis Cevello, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, the union. So you go to the lobby and ask to speak to him just like any journalist would. Let’s watch what happened and talk about it after.

Sean Paul Reyes:

So we’re trying to get ahold of somebody here. It doesn’t seem like anybody’s coming to the door. We just wanted to speak again to the president of the PBA, Lou Cevello. Two people working in the front desk at the PBA here or the PMA. Again, there’s nothing benevolent about the police union.

Taya Graham:

Just to just let me in. I have a

Speaker 3:

Lot to do with it. I know. Seems weird. Hello. Lou Savello, how are you? Sure, no problem. How are you? Have you seen me leaving? I immediately began to leave. Lou Savello, would you like to come –

Taya Graham:

Okay, so he appears and is immediately hostile and threatening arrest. He doesn’t really give you a chance to ask a question. So why is he so hostile about something reporters do all the time?

Speaker 3:

Have you seen me leaving? I immediately began to leave. Lucivillo, would you like to come on? I am leaving. Would you like to come on the channel? I’m leaving. I am leaving. You seem to leave me?

Sean Paul Reyes:

Yeah. So I really can’t speak to why he was immediately hostile with me, but I can speculate. And as far as you’re right, that’s what reporters do. They ask for comment, they show up to places. And I even had my reporter Mike with me to try and look a little bit more mainstream and legitimate, I guess. But I went there. His hostility probably stems from the… I’ve never had any previous interaction with the police union president, Lucivillo, but I have covered misconduct and lawsuit settlements by the Suffolk County Police Department and the Suffolk County government. I’ve covered Internal Affairs coverups. So I’ve been very critical of the Suffolk County Police Department.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So you exit the building and yet the threat of arrest continues. Let’s watch and I’ll ask you a question on the other side. I’ve

Speaker 3:

Seen your podcast. What do you think I’m doing? What do you think I’m doing? I’m leaving. So would you like to talk about the hundreds of millions of dollars withNo, I’m not? Would you like to talk about the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Suffolk County law enforcement agencies have?

Taya Graham:

Okay. So first you said you’re leaving. So why does he keep confronting you? It’s not like you weren’t obeying his order, but you were also asking questions that he ignored. What were those and why did you think they deserved answers? Well,

Sean Paul Reyes:

I think the Suffolk County residents here deserve the right to know how their tax dollars are being spent, and especially to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars at this point in misconduct settlements. They have the right to know about these backroom deals regarding the pension. And that’s what I was asking him. Did he have any comment on the hundreds of millions of dollars in misconduct that is flown out of our tax dollars to victims of police misconducts and constitutional violations? I also in that time asked him to come on my show to talk about it, invited him there. But you’re right, immediately after he said this is private property, because I knew full and well that it was private property. Again, they received tax dollars. It’s a gray area, but it is private property and I knew that going in. I did my research, but it’s publicly accessible private property that I have every right to knock on a door and ask questions.

And when I was told to leave, he said, “This is private property, you need to leave.” My exact words were, “Sure, no problem.” And then I began to back away towards the door.

Speaker 3:

Have you seen me leaving? I immediately began to leave. Lucivillo, would you like to come on? I am leaving. Would you like to come on the channel? I’m leaving. I am leaving. You seem to leave me? I am leaving. I’m leaving. I’m leaving. Lucivillo, you go on talk, you go, “I’m leaving.”

Sean Paul Reyes:

And I continuously backed away continuously saying that I’m leaving. He continuously said, “You need to leave or you’re going to be arrested as I’m leaving.” So why it escalated that quickly and without any cause because I was leaving, I don’t know. I think it could only be his ego because at the end, I guess we’ll get to it, but at the end, before he puts the handcuffs on me, I told him, “You think you’re such a tough guy,” because he was bullying me. I think anybody who watches the video can see he was bullying me. He was trying to exert his authority. Pulled out his badge, identified himself as a Suffolk County police officer, which by the way, he’s not fighting crime or anything. He is a full-time police union president. He’s just a law enforcement officer per their contract. I believe there’s five different law enforcement officers that work.

Their detail is specifically the Suffolk County PBA headquarters. So it’s not like he’s investigating crime or doing or protecting the citizens. He’s just collecting a six-figure taxpayer paycheck to cover up misconduct. In my opinion, that’s what they seem to always do. So I mean, that’s why he became very aggressive. He wasn’t used to it and he wasn’t used to somebody asking him questions.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Now at this point, it seems clear he’s not going to answer your questions, but then he escalates and starts talking about arrests. Let’s watch and discuss.

Speaker 3:

I’m leaving. Get off the property. I’m leaving. I’m getting off the property. You are trespassing. I am leaving. You will be placed. I am leaving. I am leaving. I’m going to place you under arrest. Do what you need to do. I’m identifying myself as a police officer. So do what you need to do. I am leaving. You need to leave. I am leaving. You such a tough guy. Do it then. Do it. Do it. I’ leaving. Okay. I’m leaving. I’m leaving. No resisting. I’m not resisting. I’m not resisting.

Taya Graham:

Okay. It seems to me like you were retreating and yet he handcuffs you. What does the law say and what are your thoughts about the arrest itself? I mean, it seems to a certain extent he takes the bait. Let’s watch and discuss.

Speaker 3:

To do, I am leaving. You need to leave. I am leaving. You such a tough guy. You’re not going to do it then. Do it. Well,

Sean Paul Reyes:

It’s a completely retaliatory arrest. It lacks probable cause, a violation of my Fourth Amendment right. It’s pretty clear. The actual charge I’m being prosecuted on is criminal trespass in the third degree. And on the desk appearance ticket that I received seven hours later, it specifically says enclosed or fenced in and designed in a manner to exclude intruders. That’s the way the criminal trespass in the third degree statute is written here in New York State. That property is neither enclosed designed in a manner to exclude intruders or enclosed and fenced in any way. So the statute itself is just baseless and it won’t apply.

I guess shouldn’t have charged me with anything, but if there was any charge, it would be the charge of a simple trespass, which again, it doesn’t meet the statutory requirements because I have to remain and leaving while albeit slowly, and I will admit that I was leaving slowly, but I was continuously leaving slowly and backing up for a purpose. The purpose is that I knew I was dealing with bullies and thugs with badges and that wanted to do me harm. So the best way to keep myself safe is to make sure that they could see my hands at all times. If I turn around and leave, they can’t see what I’m doing with my hands in front of my waistband. Obviously I would never hurt a law enforcement officer or anyone, but they want to hurt me it seems.

Taya Graham:

You make a really good point about moving slowly and not turning around. If it was Baltimore City, if you turned around, a classic thing police would say is it’s a furtive movement, which has led to violence against suspects or arrestees.

Sean Paul Reyes:

Catch 22, right? Because either you’re moving too slowly, which appears to be the case I wasn’t moving at the speed that he liked or I moved too quickly and he had to take my life because he didn’t know what I was doing. So you can’t win either way, but I’m hopeful that I’ll win this in court.

Taya Graham:

As we’re watching this, I have to ask a bit more of a personal question. But what is the effect of being arrested? I mean, I’m not trying to trivialize it, but are you used to it? I mean, does it impact you beyond what we see on YouTube? Has it, I guess, taken a personal toll on you?

Sean Paul Reyes:

My family does not like to hear that I’ve been unlawfully arrested. I definitely don’t like it. I was chained to a desk for nearly seven hours. My back was killing me. And when he put on the handcuffs, he put them on… I’ve been unfortunately arrested a lot of times since I’ve started auditing. I think this is my 13th time. Zero criminal convictions in that time. But he put the handcuffs on so tight that I’ve never felt it that way before. And it was that way until uniformed officers came in about 10 to 15 minutes later and actually loosened them. I was in excruciating pain. I felt tingling in my right hand and I went to go get checked out two days later and it turns out that one of my nerves has been damaged. I have a pinched nerve and the back of my thumb, I can’t feel it.

I have pain when it changes temperature, just a bunch of pain associated with change in temperature, taking a shower, going in the pool, things of that nature. It’s just been very annoying and it reminds me every time I feel it of what a tyrant Lucivillo is and what he did to me. But yeah, it definitely affects me. No one wants to lose their freedom. I tell people who want to follow my footsteps and audit and film the law enforcement, I tell them their number one job is to not be arrested. And I thought I was doing that job. I thought I was complying. I know I was. I saw the video and I was there. So I was complying with his directives. I did everything I was supposed to do from a legal standpoint, but yet you still get arrested. And it’s because the process is the punishment.

They towed my 14-foot LED billboard truck. I had to pay a thousand dollars to get that out of tow out of impound. And I have to hire a lawyer to go back and forth. He hurt my wrist, pinched a nerve there. So the process, seven hours being hunched over, tied to a table, chained to a table where I can’t move. And it was definitely a horrible experience. It is unfortunately part of the job that I do. I’m not naive. I know that when I go out and record law enforcement and ask questions about their corruption and misconduct and these settlements, especially at a police union, there’s always a chance for retaliation. First amendment retaliation is a count you can sue for, for a reason. It happens not just to me. It happens to people all the time who record the police and are critical of the police.

I am blessed enough to have a big platform to share it with the world. But again, I’m not used to it. I don’t think I’ll ever be used to it. It definitely affects me. It affects my family the most. And it’s unfortunate, but it is part of the job and I have to accept that it is unfortunately part of the job. Hopefully one day it won’t be.

Taya Graham:

So was it just retaliatory? I mean, what does the law require you to do and do you think you were complying with the law? Yeah,

Sean Paul Reyes:

So the law requires you to immediately leave the property, but you have to have time to leave the property. You can’t teleport off of the property as much as he probably wanted me to teleport in that.

Taya Graham:

That’s very true. I didn’t think teleportation was an option.

Sean Paul Reyes:

This was escalatory by Lucivillo and the rest of the PBA from the moment they came down. They did not need to come down. There was a receptionist there who could have told me over the intercom, “You’re not welcome here. You need to leave.” And I would’ve left without backing up because I wouldn’t have to worry about armed me on my back. So I would’ve just left probably a lot quicker. But Lucavillo had the President of Police Union wanted to come down personally because of his ego. I do trainings with law enforcement all the time, and one of the big things I talk about is ego. His ego, he knew who I was. He wanted to come down and he wanted to tell me personally and he wanted to do harm to me. That’s clear from the video. So the legal standard is you have to leave from a place that you weren’t licensed or privileged to be at.

So everybody has a license or privilege to walk on any property that’s not restricted and ask questions. And just like solar panels, girl scouts, you have a right to just go up and ask questions or just knock on the door, a knock and talk. Law enforcement does it to us all the time.

Taya Graham:

Now, since this encounter, the right-wing Rupert Murdoch owned New York Post wrote a story claiming that your video has led to death threats against the union president. However, it didn’t really explore your allegations. First, what is your impression of the fairness of the story? And did they actually ask you for comment? So

Sean Paul Reyes:

Neither story that was printed by the New York Post didn’t reach out for comment to me for either one after, and hopefully on this next article that they say that they’re writing, that they will include my comment on there. But apparently it looks like to me that Lucivillo, the police union president, has contacts with the New York Post. Within hours of my arrest, it was on the New York Post saying that I did a billboard truck stunt and that I threatened the law enforcement officers, that I wouldn’t leave the property when told to leave. And I will say to the New York Post credit, to this particular writer’s credit, that once the video came out, he did call into question. He said the video calls into question some of the statements made by the police union president Lucivillo. But again, he wasn’t able to reach me for comment.

He said that he reached out via Instagram. I wouldn’t check Instagram. I’m better off emailing me. But either way, I’ve been in contact with him since and I’ve sent him the medical report for my pinched nerve. I gave him my version of events, which my version of events, lawyers always tell you not to talk to the press or to anyone and make any public statements, but anything I’m going to say is already in 4K, 60 frames per second online for the world to see. So I’m not really worried about… I’ll talk to the prosecutor right now. I don’t have no problem. It’s not a big deal. It is what it is. They’re the ones that try and distort reality and to fit their narrative and their crime and the statutes or whatever else. But I think the New York Post obviously could do a better job with the reporting to make the highlight of it that he’s receiving death threats without any proof of any death threats.

I didn’t see that included in the article. There wasn’t any proof. Just again, the word of a liar who is a proven a liar at this point since the video came out doesn’t hold any weight, but yet I have to provide medical documentation for my pinched nerve. But I have no problem doing it. I supplied the district attorney, the Internal Affairs and the New York Post with the unedited video. There is nothing I have to hide. The video speaks for itself. And I just hope in their third article, they keep asking me when I’m going to file a lawsuit. I think they want to see that. They want the headline, Long Island audit files lawsuit against the… Maybe I’ll put a number on this one so they can have a headline, but I think that’s what they’re waiting for. But we’ll see how their reporting involves.

And I think that for the Year Post, the second article was a lot better. Again, the title just trying to drag in clicks and views. So with the death threats against the police union president, again, none made by me. I can’t control what other people do. If somebody sees his actions and wants to commit a crime and send him death threats, I advocate for peaceful petitions of grievances to governments, not violence whatsoever. I’ve never even cursed in a video, but I would say I feel bad for him, but I don’t. When you take away my freedom and you put me in a predicament where my family’s worried about me and I’m suffering and all because you don’t like what I have to say and you want to disrespect the oath that you took to uphold our constitution, which I hold sacredly, obviously Lucy Miller doesn’t.

So we’ll see what the New York Post continues with, but at the end of the day, I’m not going to hold my breath for anything really groundbreaking there.

Taya Graham:

So just to directly adress the basic thrust of the story, it seems they’re imitating other critics who say your work is just about clicks and views. How do you respond to those critics who dismiss what you do? Well,

Sean Paul Reyes:

As I stated earlier, they put the headline police union president is receiving death threats for clicks and views. Let’s be real, that’s not the story here. The story is that the police union president unlawfully clearly from the video evidence arrested a journalist for his First Amendment protected rights. That’s what happened here because the ego couldn’t control his ego. So the framing of everything and the way sometimes people frame what I do for clicks and views, clicks and views are important to get your story out there to be seen by as many people as possible, especially for somebody like me who’s independent. I don’t have million dollar backers or anything like that. So I require or I hope for my audience to hit the like button and sharing it so that way it could be seen by as many people as possible because I think tyranny and I think misconduct and corruption needs to be seen by the American people, especially here in Suffolk County when it directly affects you and your tax dollars.

But most of the critics, it’s actually quite ironic that my biggest critics are I support them. I support their rights to be my critics. The police union and the police department do not support our rights to criticize them, but yet I support the rights of the police union and anyone else. They called me a thug in their posts. They called me an agitator, a thug, every name in the book trying to discredit me and paint me in a bad light when I’ve been nothing but polite to everybody I’ve ever come encounter with. I do police trainings. I’m not anti-law enforcement. I work with law enforcement. I’ve done ride-alongs. I’ve covered stories where law enforcement officers did the right thing during my audits. I don’t hide those videos. So it’s very unfortunate that some people want to see bad in what I do. I think what I do is a service for the community and I hope that people will see that you can respect the police and respect law and order as I do and at the same time hold the police to account.

And even with security of lock cameras and everything else. And it’s important. One of my favorite Benjamin Franklin quotes is those who give up their essential liberty to purchase temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security or safety, whatever the quote is, but it’s one of my favorite quotes. I might not always get it right, but the theme is don’t give up your liberties for this security of law enforcement officers. It’s very important. And I hope that people who are critics of me can see the other side and see that this is not about hating law enforcement. There are people who just hate law enforcement and there are people who just hate law enforcement that watch my channel, sure. I

Taya Graham:

Love that quote too. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. It’s simply brilliant. Finally, after all of these encounters and the pushback you’ve received for what you have called accountability reporting, what scares you about police power in America? I mean, how formidable is it and can it truly be held accountable given what you have witnessed while covering law

Sean Paul Reyes:

Enforcement? Yeah. Well, I think the only way it could truly be held accountable is with public servants. County executives, mayors, administrative rules holds them accountable. They need to make policies and procedures that hold them accountable. They need to make the union less powerful because they’re very powerful. I don’t think that unions should exist in law enforcement whatsoever. I think unions are great when you’re trying to take on Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk’s of the world and all the rich, powerful elite. I think they’re great for that. I think when you are a public servant like a law enforcement, especially a law enforcement officer, you shouldn’t have a union because it leads to corruption like we see today. PBA endorsed candidates donating to support specific candidates that are going to make law enforcement less transparent, less accountable. So another way is to evoke people in that are going to hold law enforcement accountable.

And honestly on both sides, it really doesn’t matter who you choose. They seem to all want to be buddy-buddy with the police officers because at the end of the day, law enforcement is what separates the politicians from the people. I’ve seen it all over this country. They’re locking down every single county building, every single city hall, you’re making key card access and everything else. And I say to my viewers all the time, the reason why they want to keep you out is because they know that they’re not serving your best interests and they don’t want you anywhere near them. Why would they want you access to them? They’re scared of you. If they’re scared of you, there’s a problem. Why would they be scared of the people that they’re supposed to represent?

Taya Graham:

Long Island Audits, thank you so much for joining us. We are absolutely dedicated to covering your work on police accountability, and we look forward to speaking with you again in the future. And now I want to turn to my reporting partner, Steven Janis, who has his own perspective on the intersection of money and police power and how it alters our system of governance. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis:

Tay, thanks Army. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:

Now first, Steven, what are your thoughts on what you just watched? Why do you think the police union responded to his questions the way they did?

Stephen Janis:

Well, usually I say in journalism, people will answer questions if they have nothing to hide. However, I think this is a perfect example of overreach by police who are just accustomed to not being questioned too intensely by the media. Generally speaking, media relies upon police for sourcing, for crime stories, for whatever. And police also have a lot of rhetorical power in the sense that you’re either for or against us. And I think in this case, they just didn’t like being put under the microscope.

Taya Graham:

Now, Steven, as a member of the media and a person who’s covered policing for over two decades, what do you think about how the New York Post covered Sean’s encounter with the union?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I think there’s a couple issues going on here. Number one, there’s this intense pressure to cover social media, YouTube as a phenomena that doesn’t really make it easy to apply the same standards we do to regular journalism. But I think they should have gotten Sean’s side of the story and looked at the video too before. It was a very short story. It didn’t have a lot of details and didn’t really give Sean’s perspective. So I have to criticize him for that. But to that end, we did contact the Police Benevolence Association in Suffolk County through their Facebook account, through their email and through a submittal form on their website. So we have reached out to them for comment to ask them what they have to say about what Sean has said. In other words, he was retreating, he was trying to leave. He couldn’t teleport and why they arrested him.

So we have reached out and tried to do our due diligence. Hopefully the Post will do more to correct some of the things in the story.

Taya Graham:

Okay, last question. You’ve worked on plenty of stories involving police pensions and spending. What are some of the critical takeaways from Sean reporting on Suffolk County and police spending in general?

Stephen Janis:

Well, Suffolk County has some of the most generous police spending in terms of salaries and benefits I think I’ve ever seen as a reporter. I mean, it’s always very treacherous when you approach police on the thing that matters to the most in many cases, which is money. I mean, we published all the overtime earnings for police about 20 years ago and we almost got sent to jail. Well, my editor did get arrested. So they get very touchy about it because they really have better benefits than almost all of us. I mean, as we’ll see later on when you’re talking about in the show, they get very generous pensions. They can retire very early and that’s like a lightning rod for them because I don’t think they want people knowing how much better they’re doing than we are. So I think this is a typical standard case of follow the money.

And I think Sean did the right thing in asking these questions and expecting answers.

Taya Graham:

Thank you, Steven. I really think you bring a unique perspective to the topic of police spending. It’s a focus that your past reporting reveals is something we as journalists cannot take our eyes off of, especially if we truly want to hold police accountable. Now, one of the oldest adages in journalism is a fairly simple demand that often requires more than just a cursory glance at the numbers on a website. A requirement that we dig deeper to not just report on how much the government spends, but why. And that adage is a simple one. Follow the money. It’s a process every reporter knows is essential, but often doesn’t have the time to pursue with enough vigor. It’s a key factor at the heart of almost every political scandal in our country and also the ingredients that inform every bad public policy we witness in governance today.

Now the reason I’m talking about following the money is I want to do a little though experiment with you. I want to compare what the taxpayer of Suffolk County commit to funding the police department and by extension their union and the willingness of police officials to answer questions about how they use that money because that’s really what’s at the heart of the conflict we just witnessed. Not are you for or against the police or not that you back the blue until something happens to you or even whether or not you agree with the media coverage this incident has elicited? No, this is entirely unlike the typical American ideological rift that seems impossible to repair. This is simply a story of how much of our precious tax dollars we give police and how they treat us when we ask for accountability in return. So here’s a little rundown on what the hardworking taxpayers of Suffolk County fund to keep the police department running and their subsequent retirees happy.

Now all this information is courtesy of the Suffolk County budget documents or other media outlets. And just as a note, I have to say as a reporter who’s read a lot of budget overviews, we What they provide is not exactly easy to navigate, but let’s share a few facts we’ve gleaned from their own reporting. According to a section of the budget documents posted online, the burden of funding police is steep, roughly $1,400 per household. That’s $1,400 per household just to keep police on the street. It should be noted that the biggest line item in the documents other than the general operating fund, which costs taxpayers a meager $80 per homeowner. It also should be noted that police spending accounts for the largest net increase in the budget for that year according to those same documents. Now, next on the list is something that, again, often slips below the radar, but is worth noting employee pensions.

Now first, Suffolk County has some very generous police pensions. A study by the Empire Center for Public Policy found that officers who recently retired from Suffolk and nearby Nassau County qualify for a pension in excess of $100,000 per year. And that’s especially lucrative and costly for taxpayers because Suffolk County officers can retire after just 20 years in service. I mean, even my hometown of Baltimore with one of the largest police forces per capita in the country and a very powerful police union requires 25 years of service to retire. But I’m not done because I haven’t even mentioned one of the biggest contributors to police salaries, namely overtime. That’s right. The great amplifier police paychecks that can cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in extra spending. Now it was hard to obtain exact figures, but in 2025, overtime spending cost taxpayers an additional $74 million according to Newsday.

Almost 130 employees earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay, most of them police officers. So that’s quite a hefty amount of money taxpayers are being asked to fork over to keep Suffolk County Police working. And that doesn’t include all the multimillion dollar settlements Sean was talking about in the video we just watched. So how do these exceptionally well-paid people with extremely lucrative pension benefits treat a taxpayer when he arrives to ask questions about spending? How do they respond to very basic accountability questions when someone who pays their salary shows up? Well, let’s watch again and you can judge how they behave.

Speaker 3:

So would you like to talk about the hundreds of millions of dollars? No, I’m not. Would like to talk about the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Suffolk County law enforcement agencies have on pasta? Leave. Do it. I’m leaving. Okay. I’m leaving. I am leaving. No resisting. I’m not resisting. I’m not resisting. I’m not resisting.You were won multiple times. I’m leaving.

Taya Graham:

That’s right. The people who benefit from the generosity of Suffolk County taxpayers actually arrest a Suffolk County taxpayer for, wait for it, asking questions. And then a newspaper writes a sympathetic article to the police union officials who arrested him for asking questions. Now call me crazy, but why on earth is it a threat to ask a question of a public official whose salary you pay? Why is it so controversial for a resident of a county to query the people who work for the county they fund? Why is it so wrong for Sean to want to know where his tax dollars are going and expect the people who are spending them to explain how they spend? Let’s remember a simple principle. Government officials are spending other people’s money. Although the law requires people to pay taxes, it’s still not their money. It’s ours. And in this case, Sean’s, which gives him, in my humble opinion, the right to ask as many questions as he wants.

Just think about it. The union chief is paid by taxpayers, not to patrol the streets or assault crimes, but just to represent the union. That’s right. Taxpayer dollars to pay a salary, to run an entity that won’t answer questions. It’s really hard to fathom how that is even remotely fair, but I think this is also a cautionary tale about funding people with guns and badges wherever they are. Law enforcement has unique power granted them by us, the citizenry. They can take our freedom and even our lives. Now couple that with the ability to spend taxpayer dollars without accountability and you have a dangerous mix that I don’t think any healthy democracy can abide. The ability to rest and the ability to tax should never be one and the same, which is why the work of Sean and other copwatchers is so important. Why his showing up at police union headquarters, which has been depicted as a stunt or worse yet harassment should be viewed through a different lens.

I mean, what if the officials just calmly answered his questions? What if they just took the time to explain their side of the story instead of brandishing handcuffs? The point is that what Sean is doing is an essential task to preserving our freedom, asking the questions nobody in power wants to answer. That’s why both Sean and I and Steven will continue to ask them because I believe democracy itself is at stake. I want to thank our guests, Sean Paul Reyes, also known as Long Island Audits for his time, his insights, and his patience with my technical issues. Thank you so much, Sean. And I have to thank Intrepid reporter Steven Janis for his writing, research and editing for this report. Thank you so much, Steven.

Stephen Janis:

Tay, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Taya Graham:

And I want to thank friends of the show, Noli D and Lacey R. For their support. Thank you both. Thanks Noli D. And a very special thanks to our accountability report, Patreons. We appreciate you and I look forward to thanking each and every one of you personally in our next live stream. And I especially want to thank you for your patience with us. And I have to thank Patreon Associate Producers Johnny R, David Kay, Louis P, Lucia Garcia, and our super friends, Shane B, Kenneth K, Pineapple Girl, Matter of Rights, and of course Chris R. And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct.

You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram or at yesonpolice on Twitter, or of course you can message me directly at TeasBaltimore or Twitter or Facebook. And please like and comment. I do read the comments and appreciate them. And we do have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below for accountability reports. So if you do feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars so anything you can spare is truly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. And as always, please be safe out there.