Holding Police Accountable Is A Dangerous Business

educating all of us hello everybody and welcome to the conversation i'm david shuster across the united states there are a growing number of people who armed with their knowledge and a camera are going into public spaces whether it's a city hall or a post office or a library and trying to make sure that police and other public servants are held accountable accountable to all of our rights under the constitution well one of the most popular and successful these educators is known as long island audit his name is sean paul reyes we have featured his battle against corruption in danbury connecticut on our tyt channel rebel hq and we're so pleased to have sean with us now sean welcome to the conversation hey thank you david thank you for having me i really appreciate it of course so right off the bat i guess my first question is what prompted you to get into this what's known as constitutional auditing first amendment auditing and how did you get involved okay so about you know i've been watching the auditing community for about you know five years now and um like everybody else i have you know seen witness police corruption on corporate media you know mainstream media um as well as you know just all the corruption you know the police shootings all those things that are happening in the world today but what i've noticed by watching the auditing community is that you know there's a lot of corruption and police brutality and corruption by city officials and public servants that doesn't get highlighted in the media and also you know there's the auditing community they're very you know there can be seen as agitators and seen as you know disrespectful so i wanted to get out there and change that narrative and change the way people thought of us and be respectful and see what kind of response i got and my first day out with the camera david you know i decided to go try this out in march and you know i got a really bad response and they treated me very disrespectfully and you know they it it was a horrible experience for me and i it motivated me to keep going and keep exposing corruption well one of the things one of the things that clearly sets you apart i think is that you are extremely calm and almost soft-spoken even when we show in one of the videos you go to the danbury public library all of a sudden five police officers arrive they're making all sorts of threats one of them actually was caught on a body camera saying that he would have killed you 20 years ago but in the face of all of this you're able to just stay calm and stay matter of fact how do you do that you know david i i see myself as you know i see the bigger picture i can let my emotions get involved and and and you know i get angry just like everybody else who are watching these videos especially in the moment you know 20 years ago i would have been dead that's that's so scary but you know i try and stay calm take a deep breath you know realize there's a bigger picture to this and the corruption runs so deep into the court system as you know david that you know we need to i need to make myself as calm as possible because any little thing that i do in reaction to the police officers or the public servants they're going to use against me in court and call me an agitator so i make it very clear that i'm not and one of the things that i think you're especially good at is you're also very witty and you in a very sort of soft way that you're not a pushover and in one of the videos you refer to the police officers say hey tibbetts and he says it's officer tidbits and you're like hey tibbetts and then you ask me a question and it seemed to me as sort of a sort of a funny reminder that i think a lot of us have forgotten that these people they work for us and it almost feels like in our society we have forgotten that yeah david you know it's it's i like witty banter you know with police officers if they're a little bit sarcastic with me and you know i have no problem with that and you know i tend to you know give him leeway but they do need to understand david that they do work for us every time every city hall i go to i look at their budgets you know i see how much they're in debt you know i i try and do like more than just i don't go in there to with just the camera and just to film i try and you know get services deployer requests and on top of all the organizational charts for the city it's the residents of that city and they seem to forget that and that's very important and you know we have to underscore that you know they're public servants they're here to protect and serve us provide us with services you know we pay a lot in taxes um so we just have to make sure that we're holding him accountable and we're we're promoting transparency in our government one of the things that has jumped out to a lot of people who may not be so familiar with what our constitutional rights are is that if a police officer just asks you hey give me your id um you're under no obligation legal obligation to give that unless they have a what a reasonable suspicion that you've committed correct david you know they if you get stopped you know just on the street the only way that you would have to provide your id to a law enforcement can get stopped for a traffic violation because they because at that point they do have reasonable articulable suspicion that you have committed a crime you're about to commit a crime so you know without that ras the reason why typical suspicion there is no law that bounds you to provide your identification to the police officers you don't want to be in any of those reports that they're writing up you know it's it's not a good look for you and you just don't want to the police officer's jobs are to enforce the law and they get promotions based on how many arrests and tickets they write so their best interests are not in us they're in giving you a ticket arresting you filling up the jail systems for unnecessary crimes and you know we have to exercise our rights in a peaceful manner to stop that i've been surprised frankly by the number of times that you go out even some other auditors as well where police sure there may be one or two who just sort of calm sort of understands but the number of police officers who have seem to have a chip on their shoulder and take this so sort of personally and want to dominate you or anybody else i'm and i'm sort of surprised given where our society is that there's still so much of this that's out there yeah you know me too i you know when i first started doing auditing and i first started uh promoting government transparency and accountability you know i i went in this with you know hey you know the majority of cops are you know intelligent you know they respect for our rights they want to do the right thing but as i do this more and more and as i'm out there in in on on the streets and out there in city halls and and police departments i'm realizing that police officers they they're they don't the the majority of them they do not i would say even the majority do not care they they don't know the laws i run into police officers that don't know what reason of articulate suspicion is they think that they can identify you just because they're law enforcement it's really scary the amount of you know uh how they don't understand the law that they saw an oath to protect very scary yeah and it almost seems to me i mean you know the the key here is that they should be de-escalating right i mean the best way to get information out of somebody is to be nice and it seems like there's something about our police culture where police are sort of trained maybe or it's part of their culture to dominate somebody you have to dominate them you have to take control and even if that means trampling on their constitutional rights there is an argument that has been made against auditors in general that you know you're catching people off guard uh that you're surprising public servants um is there a fair criticism to that i would say no because as when you take a job for the public you should be expected to deal with the public on a daily basis and treat the public with respect and courtesy and assist us you know this is why they get paid from our tax dollars david and they need to understand that they work for us you know i it doesn't mean that it has to be a tumultuous relationship between us it just means that you have to respect our rights de-escalate the situation what you said is very key it's not only just de-escalation it's taught in police departments all throughout the united states for a reason because it's it's for the officer's safety as well because if you go in their guns blazing and and you start being disrespectful you don't know who you're in and then who you're running into in this encounter so it can be very dangerous for them and de-escalation is key and treating people with respect is key i i'll tell you what if i was on camera and i knew somebody was reporting me at my job at a public facility i would be on my best behavior to show that this city to represent my city to represent myself you know my community for sure some of the communities though are sort of doubling down it seems like on their own corruption you have a couple legal skirmishes that are out there what um for people who want to help you what can people do who may not live in connecticut or new jersey or new york what do people do say hey i like this sean paul reyes and what he's trying to do to educate all of us about the constitution how can i help well the most important way that you can help is you know i'm a big uh supporter of the first amendment as as you know and in the first amendment we have the right to redress our grievances to our government so you know sending letters sending emails making phone calls to your um to the to the government and just because you don't live in the area doesn't mean that it's not your government we're all part of the same government every uh municipality and village they receive federal tax dollars that we all pay or when i go visit these places you know i engage and pay taxes on hotels you know gas i go out to dinners you know i'm i'm trying to do what's best for the community i also have a gofundme page that you can look up long island audit and that will help my legal defenses because they don't as you know david they're not backing down and i'm gonna have to fight him with everything i got yeah i mean it seems like that shaming public servant seems to be one of the only ways it really sort of works but let's suppose in one of these communities where you've had these battles and i won't name one in particular though i have one in mind but let's suppose that the the police and the state uh uh state attorney the state prosecutor said you know what we are humiliated we are ashamed of what we've done clearly we need to retrain people in terms of how to respect first amendment auditors to respect people's constitutional rights will you help us the police department the community in terms of training our frontline people and how to interact with the public so that everybody is respected is that the sort of thing you would agree to do i would love to do that david you know i love to engage in dialogue with with law enforcement and public officials you know there's plenty of videos where i it shows me engaging a dialogue and answering their questions and you know i would love to do that go to police station the police station and say hey listen and i would highlight them for doing that and you know it's it's a lot people like to highlight the bad cops and and bad law enforcement bad public officials i also like to highlight the good ones i've spoken to police chiefs mayors from from all around the northeast area and i'm planning to branch out um to other states as well but you know it's very key to highlight the good ones because at times the good police officers and the people who honor our rights you know respect our rights and honor their oaths of the constitution they're scared to go against the grain the police unions the um you know their bosses so it's very important to highlight them and give them you know kudos when it's due for sure apparently sean real quickly i know a lot of number of people have praised your camera work is amazing in this videos what kind of camera are you using well technically i use a i just use a um galaxy z fold too and i just keep my hands really steady and i i love a good shot i love the way i frame it and i want to make sure it's good for everybody to see for sure well i would be shaking like a leaf if i was in some situations that you were in but you can find him long island audit on youtube sean paul reyes good luck sean and thanks for being on the conversation thank you so much for having me david i really appreciate it

Channel: TYT's The Conversation

Views: 69,678

Keywords: 211015__TC01Sean, News, Politics, POLICE, POLICE BRUTALITY, ACCOUNTABILITY, NEW YORK, CONGRESS, PROGRESSIVE

Id: SCZKwzQiQhU

Length: 11min 8sec (668 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 14 2021