Even though what I am going to discuss here happened there will be minor alterations to the events. The alterations I am making do not interfere with the facts of the incidents. While I also tend to add multiple links and photos I won’t be doing that with this post. To do such exposes me to potential harm and I’ve worked too hard to mitigate that harm.

A while back my employer was visited by a person who likes to call themselves a 1st Amendment auditor. For those who are unfamiliar, they tend to be white men who enter public offices with the alleged intent of auditing the work of pubic employees. I will be generous and say I am sure that some of them actually have that intention, or once did. This particular auditor alleges that he was told about our office. I cannot confirm or deny that he was but after studying this content creator I will say that I doubt it.

Yes I called him a content creator because that appears to be the real focus of his videos.
Over and over it is the same behavior: walk in, be evasive, then be sarcastic, then allege that the public employees are unprofessional then narrate to his audience how in the right he is and how wrong the employee is. The reality is that he is not doing his videos for change like he alleges he does it for views. While I cannot begrudge him how he earns his money, I can call bullshit and turn the page. If he did not incite the behaviors he would not be earning money off his videos. His particular audience is not interested in someone walking in, explaining why a 1st Amendment auditor is necessary, collaborating with the agency to make positive changes. His main audience want to watch public employees humiliated and put into their place. They want to call names and use racial slurs. They want his egregious behavior to validate their inner anger and they want it over and over again. I mean kudos [I guess] to knowing and playing to his audience.

At times the employee response to his presence is extreme I can admit that. What I can also say is that despite his claims the videos aren’t edited – they are. Despite his narrations that he isn’t ‘doing anything’ – he is. Despite his claims that he gets all of the information he asks for – he doesn’t.

The average viewer isn’t aware of how much of his presence is performance. I am sure many of them think that he actually changes the organizations. They scream and yell AND TYPE IN ALL CAPS for the employees to be fired, few if any actually are. He has alleged that 2 have been, yet there are dozens and dozens if not hundreds of videos on his channel…you do the math.

When he encounters women he steps his bully game up, and you know how I fucking hate a bully. When he encounters men he alleges he will whip ass and drop folx or put them in an arm bar but a recent video shows that was as the kids say cap. He got put through a wall. He’s a professional troll.

I was there for many of his visits to our office. I was actually the first to engage him. He claims to know the law like the back of his hand. I’ve seen his hand many times on that camera of his. It’s softer than newborn baby shit from the view.

In hindsight instead of engaging him myself I should have called for a supervisor. Part of it was me thinking that I was going to have a conversation with a rational human being the other was hubris. Hey, I am still a work in progress.

What I want to do here though is point out the lies he tells his viewers. Why? Because I can and this is the place I get shit off my chest.

• He can enter any public building at any time for any reason
  • Not exactly. While he does have a position which is legally protected that he can come into a public building just like with most things in life there are qualifiers and restrictions. I will just use our office as an example even though the spirit of what I am going to say would apply to most. The street, the parking lot, the outside seating areas of our building are public. No one in that space has a reasonable expectation of privacy. If he remained out there in those spaces and was not doing anything illegal or encroaching on how our participants access the building there is nothing we can say about that. Once you enter into our lobby the rules change. Our lobby is a limited public forum, where yes the general public can enter. Once inside though we are allowed to make rules and conditions to remain in that lobby. In theory we could even create rules about filming in the lobby. If he were here he would rant about the first amendment blah blah but HUD regulations and case law backs us up.
• He has the right to make public records requests
  • He does. What he asks for and how he asks for it though….. not so much. The CPRA gives him the right to request records from the agency. [The law is specific in that language] He can request in writing or verbally. What the law allows, yet few agencies that he has shown enforce, is that the agency can create a policy that all the requests be submitted via a specific person or office. Now his work around to that tends to be him yelling ADA and other unrelated nonsense but that doesn’t make it the truth. Also, yes the law allows to give the request verbally but his performance is to make whoever is taking his request write his verbal request down. The law doesn’t demand that. He does it to prove his dominance and we all know my position on that behavior. SDE. To a one they all write it down and that irks me, but I can’t run around and follow him daily from Vacaville to see which agency he plans to harass and tell them no you don’t have to do that.
• He will say that the police cannot stop him.
  • Eh. In our case at least he should have been removed each time he was there. I chalk it up to those higher up not being as familiar with the laws and the police not wanting to have to remove him on camera. That doesn’t mean he was right it just means the system failed us each time he showed up. His presence was disruptive. NOT because he was filming but because we had to alter operations to protect the privacy of our participants. That disruption is the key.

There are many things that visit exposed and none of them were a lack of professionalism. It will cause some physical changes in the office which being transparent were always a good idea. It will cause some policy changes and because I am who I am I plan to be a part of those policy changes.

At the end of the day I think he is an asshole and I remain committed to removing myself from his content. It is a slow process but I don’t give up in moments like this. I cannot tell others what to do I just know that my specific history in California gives me leverage that others might not have and that makes me the person to do it. Cool