On September 4, an incident took place in the 700 block of Warren Street that has gotten a lot of attention on social media. After being harassed by First Amendment auditors, who were reportedly shouting and videotaping through a shop window, one of the subjects snapped and came out of the shop to confront them. That reaction is what was shared on social media. According to reports, the woman who snapped was arrested. The people who provoked her, whose work can be found here, were not penalized in any way.
At the Common Council Safety Committee meeting on Monday, Gossips asked Chief Mishanda Franklin and Captain David Miller if they would comment on the incident. Calling it "an unfortunate circumstance," Franklin said:
It's good for the public to know that those were First Amendment auditors, and part of what they do is they around . . . and engage in their First Amendment rights, and that means videotaping in a public space, and that may include videotaping from the outside into a private space, however anything that is visible in a private space is legal for them to record. So unfortunately, the circumstances that they may have been there to agitate or "harass" folks inside to possibly get a reaction, they were well within their legal rights to record.
Franklin said the HPD has dealt with First Amendment auditors "a few times" in the past, citing incidents at Rolling Grocer, City Hall, the county clerk's office, and the police department. She advised "anyone [who] finds themselves in that situation to call us." She went on to say, "We can't prevent them from recording inside. We can ask them to move along, but they have a legal right to be there."
Commenting on the incident on Warren Street, Miller offered this advice, "She could have shut it down for an hour, take a breath, walk away. They will continue that kind of activity hoping to get that reaction." Franklin added, "They tend to go into spaces where they think they can get that kind of reaction from someone."
Targets of First Amendment auditors were originally government buildings, with the goal of testing if public officials and law enforcement respected their constitutional right to record. It seems now, however, that people just going about their business in a public space or in a space visible from a public street can also be targets, with the sole goal being an incendiary reel to share on Facebook and Instagram.
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Glad you posted about this - everyone should know their MAIN goal, under the guise of 1st Amendment rights to videotape in public places, is to garner just the type of reaction they did from this lady in the video. They intentionally intimidate (the person who came here did not speak, was wearing all dark clothing with dark glasses and his hood up, holding his phone in staff's faces) and antagonize because that is how they make money on their social media feeds - people watch the videos and they the "auditors" get paid. So the best reaction is to kill them with kindness, being nice and welcoming is their kryptonite because very few will click to watch a friendly interaction. Welcome to the age of monetized social media - it is like bear-baiting from the middle ages.
ReplyDeleteI remember when that issue popped up in a local group on FB and of course some people mistook the video that was shared as the whole truth.
ReplyDeleteThese people are not auditors of anything, much less so the first amendment. I thought Henry summed it up quite apt when he used the correct technical term for them: assholes.
The discussion during that committee meeting struck me as incomplete. The police chief explained in great detail why the "auditors" were within their rights, but instead I would have liked to hear an explanation from her why the shopkeeper was arrested.
This encounter was the ideal opportunity for HPD to look the other way and not give a local business owner even more grief.
It's pretty rare we get the full story or the truth from HPD. There is a really thick blue line at 701 Union. More like a blue curtain, actually..
DeleteThe police shouldn't be asking anyone to "move along" if they have a legal right to be in a public (or private) space and are not doing anything illegal. Franklin is confused and wrong. It's frightening to hear this from our police chief. Did responding HPD officers ask the so-called auditors to move along"?
ReplyDeleteI hate to engage with you, Bill, primarily because you're so often wrong. As you are again here. But in this instance, it's a teachable moment: if any officer comes across a situation where one person's First Amendment rights are causing a reasonable disturbance, then those expressions of those rights are what are commonly known as "fighting words" and, pursuant to FA jurisprudence, fighting words are not protected speech. Therefore, whatever these asshat "auditors" (scientific name: "asshole") are doing to make a presumptively reasonable shopkeeper break away from commerce and engage in fisticuffs amounts, per se, to a disturbance of the peace and they should be hastened on their way. Let 'em sue. Sue 'em back (tortious interference with commercial relations sounds nice).
DeleteThat definition of ‘fighting words’ does not seem to comport with how the courts see it. Nothing that was said in that video rises to this standard:
Delete“‘fighting words,’ those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction.”
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-7-5-5/ALDE_00013806/
These ‘auditor’ people are absolute jackasses, but they’re not worth getting arrested over.
Fighting words are any utterances that might cause a reasonable person to put up their fists. The issue isn’t the content per se, it’s the behavior the words spawn. The goal of the exception isn’t to prohibit mean or angry words but to forestall violence.
DeleteRight, and in that video, the person recording doesn’t *say* anything that would cause a reasonable person to put up their fists. The altercation happened because of the legally protected act of filming, not because the jackass doing the recording said something inflammatory.
DeleteThese people are actual trolls but they do have rights.
The so-called auditors do indeed have rights; rights that no police officer in America can legally try to quash. Franklin said as much, but then she said something about "moving them along." Our own police chief contradicted herself, showing how confused she is about the matter and possibly in general. She and David Miller tried to talk authoritatively about the incident, but they both failed and never explained why someone was arrested, let alone that someone was arrested. What needs to be mentioned, for further context, is that the introduction to HPD's fakebook page features an image of the very controversial blue line police flag in the background of the alternative comical city logo, which ALSO has a blue line across it. This is the same blue line flag that most police departments do their best to avoid being associated with or displaying for fear of coming across as out of touch and clueless and/or racist authoritarian divisive thugs. Heck, even the Los Angeles Police Department understood this. They went as far as banning images of the flag and the flag itself. But don't be surprised if someday soon you see one fluttering in the breeze above 701 Union Street or on the HPD page of the city's website where, for some odd reason, it does not exist twice or even once.
DeleteThe video that was posted shows the reaction. We have no idea what may have been said to provoke the reaction.
DeleteViz. Max's comment: I don't think perpetuating the malapropism "first amendment auditor" is appropriate. I think such people should be called what they are technically pursuant to the law which is, as Henry pointed out (and Max reiterated) "asshole." That's what they taught us in law school to call those who use their rights as brickbats.
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ReplyDeleteIt should be noted that Chief Franklin did not mention the "auditor" incident during her brief HPD report. The message was clear: everyone knew about the incident, but she wasn't interested in discussing it. She and David Miller only spoke (poorly) about it because they were asked to.
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