Taya Graham: Hello. My name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I never get tired of saying, this show has a single purpose: holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. 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. Today we’re going to do so by reporting on a disturbing video out of a small town in California, where a deputy sheriff kicked a man prone on the ground and knocked him unconscious. Well, what happened after this assault occurred makes the story even more indicative of the theme of this show, because it’s how the system is handling this case that we will unpack and report on in detail.

But before I get started, I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com, and we might be able to investigate for you. And, of course, you can always message me directly @TayasBaltimore on Facebook or Twitter, and please like, share, and comment on our videos. It really does help us, and you know I read your comments and appreciate them. We have a Patreon for donations pinned in the comments below. Okay, now we’ve gotten that out of the way.

Now, one of the most troubling patterns in American policing is how often cops are above the laws they enforce, especially when it comes to discipline for bad behavior. A lack of holding officers accountable can often lead to more trouble down the road. What do I mean? Well, consider a case we reported on extensively before. It involved the death of a 19-year-old named Anton Black. Anton was walking with his cousin in September of 2018 in a small town called Greensboro on Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore. A Karen called the police and falsely accused him of kidnapping a 12-year-old boy who accompanied him on his walk. It turns out that child was a relative, but that didn’t prevent the Greensboro police officer, Thomas Webster, from accosting Anton, as you can see here in this body camera footage.

I have to warn you the video that follows of Anton being confronted, chased, tasered and choked by police is disturbing, so please fast forward through that footage if you don’t wish to see it.

Webster chased Anton back to his mother’s home, where the young track star and aspiring model hid in a family car. Officer Webster, for reasons that still remain unknown, decided to escalate the situation by smashing the window, even though Anton did not present a threat, a move that led to this. Minutes later, a 200-pound police officer lying his body across Anton’s, an act which his lawyers say led to his death. But the reason I bring up this case today is due to what was learned after this tragic incident. That’s because as police stonewalled the probe into his death we learned that officer Webster had been involved in another high-profile case of police brutality. As you can see in this dash cam footage, Webster had kicked a man in the jaw, breaking it, during an arrest. The case led to charges of assault of which Webster was found not guilty.

But even though Webster was implicated in at least a dozen other cases of brutality in Delaware, he was able to cross state lines and get a job as a cop in Maryland. The reason I bring this case up today is because of the video I’m showing you now. It involves another example of a cop using unnecessary force, and it’s also raising many of the same questions that officer Webster’s track record made clear. Can the system really hold police accountable? That is the question the lawyer for the man seen in this video is asking, after he was knocked unconscious by a San Bernardino county sheriff in May of 2020 during this arrest.

As you can see here in the video, Willie Jones was complying with an officer’s order to lay on the ground after a chase that ended in Victorville, California. But for reasons that have yet to be explained, the cop kicked Mr. Jones in the face and head as he lay prone in a parking lot. So, to find out more, we contacted Willy Jones’ lawyer, Zulu Ali, to get his take on what happened, and the strange deal that was offered to Mr. Jones after the incident occurred, and why it’s raising questions about the ability of police to police themselves. Mr. Ali, thank you so much for joining us today.

Zulu Ali: Thank you very much for having me.

Taya Graham: First, tell us about the circumstances that led to the car stop and chase. When did this happen, and where?

Zulu Ali: The allegations were, I believe, it was June the 16th, 2021, sometime in the morning or after midnight or close to midnight. There is an allegation that my client, Mr. Willie Jones, had committed some sort of traffic violation. In response to the alleged traffic violation, they were allegedly engaged or trying to engage in a traffic stop, and stated that Mr. Jones had avoided or fled their attempts to stop him. But, at any rate, Mr. Jones ended up at a car lot in Victorville, California, which was depicted actually in a videotape or video surveillance that was actually caught, I believe it was a security company that had a video surveillance of this car dealership.

While he’s at this car dealership the officers made contact with Mr. [Jones], and after making contact with Mr. [Jones] they gave him some commands. He was following the commands. He had laid down on his stomach and spread his arms out and was no threat to the officers, was in compliance. The officer then just walked over to Mr. Jones and kicked him twice in the head and then placed him in handcuffs. Mr. Jones advised that at some point in time he was unconscious, and at some point, I think between the time of kicking him the second time and taking him to the patrol vehicle, I believe he remembers some of that, but that’s the long and short of it. We’ve been asked–as of today Mr. Jones was arrested for felony evasion. However, there’s never been any information with regards to why the traffic stop was actually being made or what traffic violation he allegedly was in violation of.

Taya Graham: What injuries did he suffer? I have seen injuries from kicks like this damaging the orbital ridge, loss of teeth, fracturing of the jaw. There really can be severe injuries from incidents like this.

Zulu Ali: He does have injuries. To the extent that I can give details about the exact medical diagnosis of those injuries at this point, I’m not really at liberty to say, but he did sustain injuries.

Taya Graham: Now, according to what we’ve heard from the community, Will was offered a deal not to file a complaint. Can you talk about that?

Zulu Ali: Yes. Once he was actually taken to be treated medically, or taken to the emergency room, then he was taken back to a jail facility or a custodial facility. While he was at the custodial facility, within a very short period of time, he was approached by deputies who gave him some documents to actually sign. My understanding is that this is pretty routine for this particular department, being the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. They often do that with–I’ve even heard the situations where they try to get people to sign waivers while they’re still in hospital beds. But, at any rate, they approached him and gave him some documents to sign, trying to see if they would release his claims for $4,000. I do know that there are other cases–obviously those aren’t honored in most cases or in any cases that I know of–but they try to get people to sign. They send the [inaudible] and then whenever they cash the money, I guess they try to say that they entered into some sort of agreement, but yeah, that was what they attempted to do.

Taya Graham: As a lawyer, do you think this is ethical?

Zulu Ali: Absolutely not. I think that there’s a lot of problems with that. Clearly you’re dealing with someone, first of all, who is in custody. Second of all, someone who has actually been just treated medically, and within minutes of doing it they’re approached by deputy sheriffs. Oftentimes, I think that many of these cases are probably not even without the county’s knowledge. I don’t even know if the county council, or county, or at least many of the superiors, from my understanding, at least would admit that they know that they’re engaged in that type of conduct. But yeah, that’s extremely unethical.

Taya Graham: What are the legal steps you’ve taken? For example, have you filed a lawsuit?

Zulu Ali: Absolutely. Of course, because of the nature of the lawsuit, it begins with what they call a tort claim, which is an administrative process, which we are in the initial administrative process. Then, once we complete that process–which usually takes anywhere between 45 to 60 days from the date that the claim is filed–then they either accept the claim and it’s resolved. Or, if it’s not resolved, then we will be filing a lawsuit in court.

Taya Graham: What has happened to the officer, and do you think he should be disciplined for his actions?

Zulu Ali: Yeah. He actually has been identified. I do believe that–right now, my understanding is he’s still on administrative leave. My understanding is it’s paid administrative leave, and they’re investigating. My understanding is also the district attorney’s office is in the process of determining whether criminal charges are going to be filed against the deputy. At least at this point I don’t believe that the Sheriff’s Department has completed their investigation, or at least publicly advised the results of the investigation being completed, or the disposition of that. We haven’t heard anything yet back from the district attorney’s office. But he definitely should be, I think he should be criminally charged.

I think that what we observed was someone who was actually committing a crime, and he should be treated as such. I believe that at least what we saw on the video was clearly a criminal offense, and I think that the district attorney’s office should pursue criminal charges against this officer. That was just unbelievable. I know that we see so much of it, and we’ve seen so much of it lately–and when I say lately, I mean, that’s I guess an understatement. It’s been going on for quite some time. We’re just catching it now on video. This conduct and these types of actions by law enforcement officers has to stop.

Taya Graham: My reporting partner Stephen Janis has also been reaching out to the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office for comment. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham: Stephen, you’ve reached out to San Bernardino County sheriffs for comment. What did they say?

Stephen Janis: Well, number one, they didn’t say anything yet, but what I asked was very specific. I wanted to know, number one, what was the employment status of the deputy? Was he terminated, was he still on paid administrative leave? I also wanted to know if it’s standard practice to offer $4,000 to people who are subject to police abuse. How often does this happen? Is this what they always do? I also wanted to know when the internal investigation would be done, and if they’d be sharing results with the public. Those questions are outstanding, I will follow them, continuing.

Taya Graham: Stephen, this is not the first time we’ve reported on the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department in a possible case of police abuse. Can you talk a little bit about what we’ve uncovered before?

Stephen Janis: Well, Taya, let’s remember just a couple of weeks ago we reported on Daniel Alvarez getting harassed by this San Bernardino county sheriff. We have the video right here. He was pulled over for no reason, and then asked if he was on probation or parole, and then the guy pulled out his handcuffs. So, no, this seems to be a problem with them getting in trouble, and questionable arrests and questionable stops.

Taya Graham: So, finally, we discussed the death of Anton Black and the fact that officer Thomas Webster, who initiated the stop, was able to get a job despite having an extensive record of citizen complaints. Can you tell us what happened and what we eventually learned?

Stephen Janis: Well, Taya, what we learned was it’s very easy for a police officer to shift jurisdictions, or go to a different city or town, and suppress their bad record in another place. Basically, the chief of Greensboro just left out all the bad complaints about officer Webster that he accrued in Delaware, and didn’t submit them as part of the application, even though that’s required by law. Webster was certified without any of that information. It turned out that he had to prosecute the chief for doing that, and he ended up pleading guilty to misconduct in office. But the lesson learned is that it’s very easy to subvert the process where officers can be held accountable for past actions.

Taya Graham: It seems clear to me that holding this officer accountable for his actions is not just going to be difficult, but perhaps impossible. They actually tried to make an unethical deal with Mr. Jones shortly after the incident occurred, which means the likelihood the agency is going to do a fair and objective investigation certainly remains in doubt. But as the story unfolds, and the department makes excuses for the behavior of the cop in question, I’m reminded of a strategy law enforcement has used against us that might be worth considering as a tactic to ensure that cops don’t avoid consequences for their bad behavior, just like they say we shouldn’t either. Let’s call this idea putting the shoe on the other foot, and seeing if it fits. What do I mean? Well, let’s start by recalling a police policy officers and the law enforcement establishment loves, but turned out not to be so popular with the people. I’m talking zero tolerance, a strategy that basically presumes everyone is guilty, and that even the most minor offenses, regardless of circumstance, should bear the full brunt of the law.

The idea was rooted in an essay that was published in 1986 by two social sciences, they called it the broken windows theory. It posited that to root out crime in violent neighborhoods, it was important to enforce even the most petty offenses as harshly as possible. The reasoning was the authors argued, that minor crimes were like a building in disrepair, a sign to the community that their neighborhood was not just unlawful but dysfunctional. The theory was that by strenuously enforcing minor crimes you could send a signal to the more violent criminal that their behavior would not be tolerated. This led to the so-called zero tolerance strategy, a policing tactic that meant when you spit on the sidewalk, or drank a beer on your front porch, or urinated in an alley, you’re going to jail.

In Baltimore, the strategy had devastating consequences. In a city of 600,000 people, nearly 100,000 people were arrested year in and year out for nearly a decade. Tens of thousands of people were charged illegally for drinking a beer on a stoop, or walking through a neighborhood where they didn’t live. The number of arrests were so absurd, a new term was coined, known as a walkthrough, which meant that people arrested would simply be walked through a central booking facility without actually being locked up, all because they’d simply arrested too many people to fit them in the facility. Much to the surprise of the politicians and police unions that touted the idea, this policy was not effective. The number of homicides stayed roughly the same, and today are worse now than ever. But the reason I bring this policy up is because maybe it’s time to give the institution that came up with this destructive policy a taste of their own medicine.

So what exactly am I saying here? Well, how about we have zero tolerance for bad behavior by cops? Instead of paid vacations and promotions when they get into trouble, how about we charge them with the same minor crimes they forced upon us? How about getting suspended immediately without pay when a video like this surfaces? Or better yet, like the rest of us, fired? How about they get a ticket every time they forget to wear a seatbelt, or they get a criminal citation for not mowing their yard? Or how about they get suspended without pay–let me repeat, without pay–as any of us would in the first step of an internal investigation, not the last? Why not apply the same stringent laws to yourselves that you apply to us?

Of course, I can hear the arguments from the police union now. Cops are only human, everyone makes mistakes. It’s the intent of the law, not the letter of the law, that matters. You can’t arrest your way out of a problem. Gee, where have I heard that before? An argument that was met with indifference and skepticism by police unions and partisans who urge law and order at all costs when zero tolerance was destroying people’s lives. Where was the call for humanity when the citizens of this country were subject to the strictest of enforcements of criminal law in the history of any nation? Who was asking for leniency when we became the larger incarcerator of human beings in the history of civilization? That’s why I think it might be worthwhile to apply the same standard to them as they do to us.

Perhaps the officer pictured in the video should be fired first, and rehired if he’s proved innocent later. Let’s call it zero tolerance for bad police behavior. Why shouldn’t they be treated like us? Perhaps it will teach them a lesson that most of us already know. Enforcing the letter of the law has devastating consequences. Maybe it’s time for law enforcement to understand just how devastating that can be.

I’d like to thank my guest, Mr. Zulu Ali, for joining us and explaining the details of this case. Thank you. Of course, I have to thank intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research, and editing for the piece. Thank you, Stephen.

Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham: Of course, I want to thank friend of the show Noli Dee for her support. Thanks, Noli Dee. I want you watching to know that if you have 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 @PoliceAccountabilityReport on Facebook or Instagram, or @EyesOnPolice on Twitter, and, of course, you can always message me directly @TayasBaltimore on Twitter or Facebook, and please like, share, and comment. You know I read your comments, appreciate them, and I try to answer your questions wherever I can. Of course, we do have a Patreon account called Police Accountability Reports, so if this type of reporting matters to you, maybe take a moment and see what we have to offer. We have a few goodies for our patrons. My name is Taya Graham, and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.

Taya Graham: Hello. My name is Taya Graham ,and welcome to Police Accountability Report. 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 individuals. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible. And today we’re going to achieve this goal by focusing on how the investigative work of cop watchers has been ignored and even blocked by the purveyors of copaganda, and what this disturbing pattern says about the efforts of citizen journalists to hold police accountable. And I’m very pleased to say we speak with Laura Shark, Tom Zebra, and Dale Lackluster to illustrate this point.

But before I get started, I want those watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at PAR@therealnews.com, and we might be able to investigate for you. And, of course, you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Facebook or Twitter. And please like, share, and comment on our videos. It really does help us. And we now have a Patreon account called Police Accountability Reports. So if you have a few dollars to spare, it would really help us keep doing these investigations for you–investigations the mainstream media simply won’t do. So please check for the link pinned in the comments below. Okay, now we’ve got all that out of the way.

Now, we continue to highlight on this show the work of cop watchers and auditors, citizen journalists who go out day after day to attempt to hold police and the government accountable. It’s a phenomenon that has been growing consistently over the past decade, and continues to uncover police misconduct and government malfeasance, all based upon the use of cell phone cameras and YouTube channels and, of course, of participation of viewers like you.

That’s why when we received the call from a popular cop watcher named Laura Shark, we immediately jumped on the story. Turns out that some very important work she had done was at the risk of being appropriated by the mainstream media without acknowledging her role in obtaining it. And it’s how this happened and the implications of this misuse we will unpack today. And she’s not the only cop watcher who suffered at the hands of mainstream media. We will also be talking to Dale Lackluster, a cop watcher and respected auditor whose report on this public body camera footage was subject to a copyright strike on YouTube. That’s right, a video created by our tax dollars was claimed by corporate media as their property in an effort to suppress free and fair citizen reporting. But first, let me start with this story of what happened to Laura Shark.

Shark, along with her reporting partner Tom Zebra, has been a tireless cop watcher for years. Her work in the Los Angeles area documenting police malfeasance has been unflinching. In fact, her reporting has been so effective that she was brought into questioning by internal affairs investigators over this brutal beating that she caught on camera. The victim was driving home from work when he was stopped by the police. Soon, he was dragged out of his car and then this, a brutal beatdown that Laura captured on camera. Let’s watch the footage. And just a warning to viewers, what you’re about to see is very disturbing.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Interviewer: Okay, and is there anything else?

Laura Shark: Well, what else would you like to know?

Interviewer: I guess I just wanted a little more detail about whether he had a weapon or anything, or what were the circumstances that led to that brutality?

Laura Shark: I just know that at this time it said it was a traffic detention for a vehicle [inaudible]. The situation escalated into one where he became combative with deputies and deputies had to subdue him.

[END VIDEO CLIP]

Taya Graham: Now, for months, despite her efforts to find out the fate of the victim and even his name, Laura was stonewalled by the police. Meanwhile, as we said before, the department eventually dragged her in for questioning as part of their internal affairs investigation into allegations of police brutality. But what happened next shows not just the importance of cop watchers like Laura, but what an uphill battle they face combating the power of the corporate media–a struggle best exemplified by how the media elites used her work as fodder for their product without acknowledging her role in exposing questionable actions by the police.

That’s because when the lawyer for the man is seen in this video asks Laura to turn over her footage as evidence, she was happy to oblige, but that favor turned out to have unforeseen consequences. That’s because one day Laura was scrolling through YouTube when she saw this: her video being used without attribution by MSNBC, a major network news channel and a billion-dollar corporation.

Now, it’s important to note why this lack of acknowledgement by corporate behemoths who make billions on news operations is indicative of a larger problem. It’s not just a matter of hurting her feelings or simply making an honest mistake. And for more on what’s really going on here, and before I speak to Laura, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis: Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Taya Graham: Stephen, you’ve worked for some pretty large corporate media outlets, but you also had your own website. What did you learn that’s applicable to Laura’s experience?

Stephen Janis: Well, in the media ecosystem, capitalism is applicable. If I use someone’s story, I would get sued or they would threaten me, but they were free to use any content that I made and I had no recourse. And an interesting thought about this is that, if there’s a documentary filmmaker, which we are, if we want to use a clip from 20 years ago from a TV station, they’ll charge us $2,500, $3,000 for 30 seconds. If they wanted to take stories off my website or use stuff that I did, no problem, you have no recourse. So it’s a really unfair system, but very similar to how capitalism works.

Taya Graham: What do you think would have happened, say had the shoe been on the other foot, and Laura had taken their footage and not giving them credit?

Stephen Janis: I think quite clearly that if, in the case of Laura, if she used video from a television station or a network, they would have not just copyright strike it, but probably would have sued her or had a corporate lawyer call her, which is what they do. So I think basically the reciprocal–sort of, I can use yours, you can use mine–does not exist. And I think the respect that auditors deserve as journalists is not there, and that’s something that has to change.

Taya Graham: Now, I’m going to go back to Stephen a little bit later in the show, but first I want to talk to Laura herself and have her tell us how she feels about what happened to her reporting and how she was treated, and what it means for citizen journalists like herself. Laura, thank you so much for joining me.

Laura Shark: Hi, it’s great to be back.

Taya Graham: So, Laura, first, just talk about the brutal beatdown that you captured on camera, what happened, and what you documented.

Laura Shark: What happened–it’s funny, I know I’m hesitating because for a year he was a nameless man. Basically he was, oh, I remember the guy that was beat by… He was nameless, and it was surreal, it was bittersweet when finally that was found by the lawyer, that she found the video, finally. But what had happened is Chris Bailey was on his way home from work–he works for a contractor, the post office, okay, so for mailing–he was on his way home. And apparently he, according to the sheriff, straddling the lane, which I don’t… Straddling the lane is either BS or it’s like you’re making a… Getting in the next lane without it–and whatever, anyway, it’s not anything that ever would deserve what happened to him basically.

So they approached his window, they asked for his license. Like any other man he has it in his wallet, I would assume in his pocket. When he went to get it, they’re like, “Whoa, we don’t know if you have a weapon here, get out of the car.” And so he stepped out of the car, he completely was… Everything they were asking of him, he was doing. He was tired, he wanted to go home. He gets out of the car. And, this is basically my assumption, is that when they went to put handcuffs on him, it startled him and their report it says… What did it say? His elbow… What did it say?

Tom Zebra: His elbow moved backwards.

Laura Shark: His elbow moved backwards, is in the official report. So I can only assume that he gets out and they immediately handcuff him and it startled him. That’s just me assuming. But anyway, at that point, instantly the deputies attacked him, the two–which was Walker and Groves, Deputy Walker and Deputy Groves. They called for backup. That’s probably around the point that we heard it over the scanner, never mind me seeing–we were actually covering LAPD, but then I see a Sheriff’s vehicle just hightail it down… And so we basically followed and we were listening to the scanner.

So at that point, I believe, four more deputies arrived for backup, and several others. But the lawsuit that has now been filed is on six deputies that… In the documents it says that one of them held him in a chokehold while the other ones beat him. He had so much facial… Was it called his orbital…? He has orbital fractures, his eye had literally popped out of the socket momentarily from the pressure of the beatings. They knocked out his teeth, they apparently pulled down his pants and lifted his shirt, tased him in his abdomen and groin area. These are all very extreme. And how do you even explain that these are necessary actions to subdue?

Oh, he’s had already three facial reconstruction surgeries, he is basically almost legally blind in his left eye, he will forever be… He is affected for the rest of his life from this incident. There’s just no… Not that you could forget it, but he would never be able to, because he has a physical… He’s only got, like, 60% sight in the eye, he wears a patch to this day. This is a year later. He’s got another surgery already scheduled. This man has been maimed, basically. It’s horrific.

Tom Zebra: Every night of the week we see and record these guys. The only thing unique about this case is that hopefully there’s going to be consequences. But we’re not kidding when we say every night of the week we record these guys conducting illegal searches, making unlawful stops. And like Laura just mentioned, they’re being promoted, they’re being rewarded, they’re not being disciplined.

Taya Graham: Now, recently you were saying your video was used by some pretty big mainstream media outlets. Can you talk about who used it and how this happened?

Laura Shark: I was… When we met, when the lawyer had contacted us and we went and met with her and I turned over all completely all the raw files that had to do with this incident, and I signed over the waiver. So she had every right to do anything she wanted with it. So she is the one, when she did the press release, she had given over a video, I would assume, or something, for the news agencies. Somebody contacted me on Instagram or something, saying, “Your video’s all over the news.”

And I was like… And I already knew, mind you, the lawyer did call a month ago to give me a heads up that they’re moving forward with the thing. So I had it in my mind that something was going to happen soon, and at least… Or whatever. I don’t know if I necessarily knew that my video would be shown, but then I look and it was, it was exciting to see things to come to fruition. It’s a bittersweet… It honestly never should have happened, obviously. This never, ever, I would never wish this upon my worst enemy. But I feel like, thank God that she had found me. The agents… Most of the articles and the news called me a bystander with cell phone video, right. So I don’t know if that’s necessarily the lawyer’s fault. She said she called me an angel or something. I think they just put that into their own words. In my mind, I felt like it was a little belittling to claim that it was a cell phone video because it’s like, oh, cell phone videos, somebody just…

We were discussing this, Daniel and I, I don’t know why they wouldn’t have… If it was just a common citizen or just somebody walking down the street, they would have never been able to record that the way that Daniel and I have the ability to get into these scenes or these incidents. To be perfectly honest, I just don’t think that anybody could have done what we did, just to be a common bystander. And I just feel when I was, no, no, no, no, no, it was on my camera, we were there very specifically because they were there, and that they do what they did.

And then all these news, they never identify deputies, they never name them. And for whatever it’s worth, it’s like–in any incident that you ever see, you never see… Only recently, Vanessa Brian was able to release five deputy names in her lawsuit, but that seemed like a struggle for her. And to be able to have that ability… And she’s known the names. We were told by the lawyer, well, they gave us these pictures of the deputies, we were given a list of the deputy names, but they didn’t connect any names to any faces. So they just did the minimal amount of turnover for them. So I was like, that’s Kano, that’s [inaudible name]. There’s only two deputies it came down to, which is the first two that actually pulled him over, Walker and Groves, that I’m not sure which one is which, because we weren’t familiar with those deputies.

Taya Graham: Have you contacted any of these organizations for credit? And why do you think they don’t want to acknowledge your work?

Tom Zebra: The story is… This information is finally available. It’s years and years later. These things have been ongoing, finally the story is coming out, and they’re not going to even say the names of the deputies. So the people involved are still on the street for us to record doing this every night, but they’re not even… The story should be related to the people involved. If it was me or Laura committing the crime, the story would have our names, and we would be publicly humiliated or shamed for our actions.

It’s not enough to just mention the sheriff department that has 10,000 deputies. The six guys involved need to be named, because that would hopefully discourage them from continuing to do this night after night after night. But the mainstream media is still not going to publish their names. It’s up to us to publish their names. And we don’t have the audience to get that information out there. So what happens is we end up facing retaliation on the street for trying to expose them. Mainstream media protects the police and the police protects the mainstream media. And yeah, that’s what I think.

Taya Graham: But Laura is not alone in her battle against mainstream media. In fact, another popular cop watcher found himself on the wrong end of corporate journalism when he had to take down a video because a local television station claimed that they owned the copyright to dashcam footage. That’s right, this footage you see here was claimed by a local television station who filed a copyright strike against this popular channel run by Dale Lackluster. The strike was perplexing, given that the video in question was created with taxpayer dollars by supposedly public servants. The video was obtained by Lackluster through a public records request. And for more on what happened, I’m joined by Dale Lackluster himself. Dale, thank you so much for joining me.

Dale Lackluster: Thank you for having me.

Taya Graham: So, first, just give us a sense of why you started this channel. What prompted you to decide to hold police accountable?

Dale Lackluster: Well, for a number of years, I was watching a lot of the First Amendment auditing community. And I have a background in public service. I was a combat medic for the infantry, and after that I became a dual function firefighter-paramedic for Los Angeles City Fire Department. So I had a lot of experience working with the LAPD. And I was kind of aligned with them. I guess most people would commonly refer to that as a bootlicker. And so, for a long time, I was of that mindset. And then I got just kind of interested in these various experiences I was seeing in the First Amendment auditing community. And for a number of years I was paying attention to it and getting more and more sucked into it.

And one day I had my own experience. And I had actually called the cops to help my neighbor, as he had told a bunch of our friends in a friend group that he was going to commit suicide. And so that interaction went real negative, for me. And luckily I wasn’t arrested or anything, but it just showed me, you see it happen on the screen so much, but when it finally happens to you is the moment that you realize this can happen to anybody. No matter who you are, what your background is, how much time of your… How many years of your life you’ve devoted to public service, they can still just as easily turn on you. So I figured I had to do something.

Taya Graham: So what did the police do to you that changed your mind?

Dale Lackluster: Well, basically, I was recording from my front doorstep. And I had one foot in my home and one foot out. And I’d been recording them for about a half an hour, because I was very worried about my neighbor. He was actually a good friend of mine, I’d helped him get a job. And so… It was about 30 minutes that I was standing out there recording them. And they finally geared up, and they had their vests, helmets, riot shields, and all that, and they were going to kick the door in. And it was at that moment where one of the officers turned to me and he said, “Go inside.” And I said, no, I’m over a hundred feet away, the houses were at an angle, so I couldn’t even see the front door. And he’s telling me, “You’re going to get arrested if you don’t go inside.”

And so I immediately saw that as a violation of my civil rights, my right to record, not to mention I was on my own personal property. So I mean, that was it, it was real simple. Luckily I wasn’t arrested, I wasn’t summoned. A supervisor was called to the scene. There was an internal investigation. They never said what happened to the guy, or anything. But that little tiny experience for me was enough to say, you know, go do something.

Taya Graham: What have you learned about policing through your investigations?

Dale Lackluster: I guess quite a bit. The channel started off with me actually actively looking for things to report on. And then it slowly turned into something where I’m getting between 50 and 100 emails a day from people who are saying, “This happened to me. Can you check it out?” “Will this fit on your channel?” And realistically, I could probably put up a dozen videos a day, if I had the time to do that. And it takes me six to eight hours per video that I put out to research and produce and edit and publish. I think what that’s taught me is how big of a problem it is.

And that’s just me. I know that for a YouTube channel I have a decent amount of subscribers, but the United States doesn’t know about me. Like one tenth of a percent of the population has heard about me. And I’ve got that many people looking to share their experience with me and trying to get it out to the public. And most of them are egregious violations. And a lot of them are cover-ups or have some sort of sense of cover-ups. And not only that, most of the time the experiences or the interactions and encounters are things that we see over and over and over again. Like, the departments aren’t learning, the cops aren’t learning, and they just keep happening and growing. And maybe that’s just a result of my space as a creator in this field, but to me it looks like it’s an ever-expanding and growing problem.

Taya Graham: So do you think the auditing community gets the respect it deserves? Do you think people take it seriously?

Dale Lackluster: That’s a really good question. I think it gets the respect that it deserves from the people who know they need it. It’s one of those divisive communities; you’re either all in or you’re all against. And I guess there’s even some division within the community with the way people audit. I hear a lot of people make the argument that the cool, calm demeanor is the right way to go–you catch more flies with honey type of thing. And then you have some of the really volatile auditors that start off with vulgarities immediately.

And even in that sense, my view on that is I think that law enforcement needs to be exposed to both. They’re going to scenes where people aren’t going to be sugar and honey or milk and honey, and they need to know how to approach those scenes appropriately. So if it’s always clean and sterile, they’re never going to know how to act appropriately on those calls. So I personally see a benefit from both styles of auditing. But as far as just in general, no, I think the back the blue crowd hates the auditing community, and the auditors love it.

Taya Graham: Now, you had a mainstream media outlet exercise a copyright strike against you for posting dashcam footage. Can you talk about what happened?

Dale Lackluster: Yeah. I don’t know fully what happened as far as why the copyright strike happened. All of the footage that I used in the video was public domain. It was from the Arkansas State Police. I attempted a FOIA request. They denied me, because I’m not an Arkansas resident. I reached out to my viewers. My viewers responded. And one of them actually obtained the bodycam, or the dashcam footage, for me, sent it to me. And I consulted with my lawyers, made sure that’s all legal, and yes, we got the green light. And so once I got that dashcam footage, I made that video. It went crazy viral. And they had made a story about it, too, because it happened in their little local jurisdiction for their local news channel.

And I called the news desk and said, Hey, you guys just copyright striked my channel and took down my video, but it’s public domain and that video was actually featured on The Young Turks, DL Hughley re-posted it, and a bunch of other people. But for some reason, the news channel either thought it was theirs or they had a computer system that just automatically identifies videos that could be theirs and just strikes it automatically without any human review, or they did it maliciously to try to stop my video from getting so many views so that their video could get more views. I don’t know, but I’ve consulted with counsel and we are taking it to court.

Taya Graham: So just understand, how can body or dashcam footage, which is created basically by public tax dollars, belong to anyone? How is that not public property?

Dale Lackluster: It is public property, there’s no doubt about that, it’s never owned by anyone. So either they have a guy in their copyright room that doesn’t understand Section 207 of the Copyright Act and what public domain is, or they did it maliciously, or it was just really an accident. But either way, the video is back up, the strike’s been taken down.

Taya Graham: Can you talk about a video that is of particular importance to you? A video that you feel encapsulates what you do.

Dale Lackluster: I guess there’s quite a few. I very rarely have a video that gets some sort of . And it’s something that I get a lot of complaints about, actually, on my channels, that they never see the resolutions from these interactions. And that’s because, simply, litigation takes years. Eric Brandt took seven years to litigate one of his cases. And internal affairs and all that stuff take so much time. And settlements sometimes get slapped with gag orders. So my personal favorite ones are… I guess I don’t have a specific one. But there have been quite a few within the past five or six months where we have an immediate reaction from the local police department, where they either shut down their Facebook page, they terminate the officer, some type of suspension. We’ve had a couple that have resulted in settlements within just a couple months after the incident, so those ones would be my favorite, I guess.

Taya Graham: Now, I just want to toss back to Stephen, because I know he’s reached out to the television station in question, and I want to hear if he’s heard back. Stephen, thanks for joining me again, and tell me, what have you heard from the station about their copyright strike?

Stephen Janis: Well, I sent them an email with a very specific question: How did you claim a copyright on publicly created documents, information, et cetera? And I have yet to hear back, but I’m going to keep pressing them, because I think this is a fundamental question, and is very important to the auditing community and people like us, who are independent, nonprofit-funded journalism. They’re going to answer the question. They haven’t answered yet, but they will.

Taya Graham: Now, I know that the battle between the cop watching community and the mainstream media can seem like inside baseball, I’m even aware of the fact that the plight of a cop watcher with a YouTube channel can seem like a diversion from the true focus of the show, which is watching cops and holding them accountable. But please allow me to push back on that idea a little bit, not just to be ornery, but to make a case for what the alternative media really represents and why it is critical to the health of our fledgling democracy.

To do so, I’m going to reference a book called Seeing. It’s a fictional novel by an esteemed Spanish writer, José Saramago. And the book tells the tale of a city where very odd and inexplicable thing happens. During an election, most of the residents of the capital city go to the polls, and almost all of them cast blank votes. This is despite actually dropping a ballot in the ballot box. Most of them did not check off a specific candidate.

The appearance of the so-called blankers creates confrontation, confusion, and even threats of violence from the political elites. In fact, the ruling class is so confused the entire government abandons the city completely, expecting the community to erupt into chaos. But instead, the opposite occurs, promoting the country’s leadership to resort to even more extreme measures.

Now, I don’t want to give away the whole story, but the reason why I bring up this book is because I think it makes a point about what the mainstream media ignores, or, in some cases, even tries to thwart, with cop watchers. Because I think the people who seek alternative media sources like Laura Shark and Lackluster are the contemporary equivalent to blankers: people who refuse to buy into the status quo and seek truth where it can exist without fear or favor.

And that’s also why mainstream media hits back: because of fear. Fear that people who choose to assemble and obtain knowledge outside of the purview of the status quo represent a threat to it. That those who don’t turn to the greed infused media for the truth are skeptical of the irrational narratives it espouses.

As we discussed last week, the nation’s war on drugs was an utter disaster that did nothing–and I mean nothing–to reduce addiction or the suffering associated with drug use. Just consider the fact that this year the DEA, our huge drug enforcement administration, is spending billions and making thousands of drug possession arrests, but overdose deaths rose to their highest level ever: 90,000 people dead. Now, compare that to the breathless coverage from the mainstream media about the heroic efforts of drug warriors, about the scourge of drug dealing in our dangerous cities, about all the wonderful successes that have led to the largest experiment in mass incarceration in the history of human civilization.

And so, like the people in the book Seeing, if we collectively decide that this narrative is simply not worth paying attention to, the corporate media fights back with their rational acts, like using a video without attribution, or copyright striking body camera footage. This is how they fight back when we ignore their offerings and do our own reporting or watch auditors like Laura Shark or Tom Zebra and Lackluster, and this is what happens when we choose to ignore their irrational narratives, seeking to justify that the possession of mind-altering substances should lead to arrest, loss of freedom, and even sometimes loss of our lives.

We simply become blankers, and they just can’t stand it, so they try to stop it. Maybe, just maybe, the people we spoke to today are a threat to the insanity that our corporate media counterparts have embraced for years. Maybe journalism for and by the people is the only thing that will save us from the idea that it’s okay for people to get sick and go bankrupt, or for cops to take property without charging people, or making an arrest.

Maybe that’s why large corporations either appropriate or block the work of these auditors. But that’s also why we will keep reporting on what they do, and holding the people that want to stop them accountable. I want to thank Laura Shark, Tom Zebra, and Dale Lackluster for their important work and for taking the time to sit down with us and discuss it. Thank you all so much. And, of course, I have to thank intrepid journalist Stephen Janis for his writing, research, and editing on this piece. And, of course, I would be remiss if I did not thank friend of the show Noli Dee for her support. Thanks, Noli Dee.

And I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us, and we might be able to investigate. 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 @eyesonpolice on Twitter. Of course, you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter or Facebook, and please like and comment. I do read your comments and appreciate them, and I try to answer your questions whenever I can. And if you want to help us continue, please consider donating to our Patreon, Police Accountability Reports.

My name is Taya Graham, and I’m your host to the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.

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 institution of policing accountable. 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. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at a phenomenon we’ve examined on the show before: auditing and cop watching. But this cop watcher has a unique perspective, because he’s a former cop.

But before I get started, I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com, and we might be able to investigate for you. You can also message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Facebook or Twitter, and please share and comment on our videos. It really helps us.

And we now have a Patreon account called “Accountability Reports,” so if you have a few dollars to spare, it would really help us keep doing these investigations for you the investigations mainstream media simply won’t do. Please take a look for the link pinned down in the comments below. Okay, now we’ve got all that out of the way.

Now, as you know, if you’ve watched the show before, we have continued to follow a growing phenomenon called “cop watching” or “auditing.” It’s an organic movement of citizen journalists who pick up cell phone cameras and observe police or survey buildings to ensure our elected leaders are protecting the rights of the people. That’s why we were in Denver when Eric Brandt was sentenced to 12 years in prison for threatening speech, and why we continue to check in with auditors like Blind Justice, Otto the Watchdog, Pajama Audits, John Filax, James Freeman, and LackLuster. But the auditor we’re going to speak to today not just caught our attention because of the work he’s doing behind the camera, but because of his backstory.

His name is James Madison, or James Madison Audits, and he has used his camera and YouTube channel to fight back against police overreach for years. But what makes his story even more interesting is the path James followed to become a cop watcher. James is not just a popular auditor. He’s a former cop, a man who seen the other side of policing up close, and is willing to discuss what happens behind the blue line candidly and critically. It’s a sense of openness that is not only rare in law enforcement, but we also say is necessary. What I mean is that having someone who wore the badge criticize it is the kind of insight we need to help hold police truly accountable. And what’s particularly interesting about James’ conversion from cop to cop watcher is how he decided to pick up a camera and fight back. It all started with this video, an encounter with a cop from his own front yard, that changed his attitude and prompted him to embrace activism full stop. Let’s watch, and as we do, I’ll let James explain what happened.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

James Madison: Due to those disputes. Officer Fischetti came onto our property to address a civil complaint from the neighbor, which means no crime. The recording began where my wife is holding the camera, and Officer Fischetti was so set on that it was unlawful to record police, even though he was recording with a hidden audio device. Officer Fischetti will effect an arrest, which means he arrests me without handcuffs, by saying, “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

Officer: Okay, well now we got to put that away.

James Madison: No, sir. We don’t.

Officer: Yes.

James Madison: No, we don’t. What property are you standing on, officer?

Officer: Right here.

James Madison: Where is this?

Officer: Right here where I’m standing.

James Madison: What address is it?

Officer: Okay, well, I don’t want you recording this, and it’s against law to record this.

James Madison: It’s against the law for you to record me, and your recording’s on right now.

Officer: Okay. You ready to go to jail then?

James Madison: If you want me to go to jail, when are we going to go to jail? I will shut it off.

Speaker: Tell us-

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham: As you can see, James Madison was confronted with the very same threat that many of our other cop watchers encounter: jail time. But since that encounter, James has fought back like so many others, brandishing his camera and recording police to hold them accountable. By monitoring cops for bad behavior while bringing his own unique inside view of policing to bear, James has become a popular cop watcher who’s made some very important videos. Before I speak to him more in depth about what he does, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, to discuss how cops who become whistleblowers can help journalists, and vice versa, to reveal truisms about policing that might not otherwise be known. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham: Stephen, I think one of the best known examples of a famous police whistleblower was Frank Serpico. Can you talk about what he did and what happened to him?

Stephen Janis: Yep. Frank Serpico was a New York City cop who refused to take bribes. Basically, at that point, the entire New York City Police Department was on the take, and Frank Serpico refused to take the money. It cost him personally. He was shot and almost died, but what happened was they started a commission called the Knapp Commission, which investigated police corruption, and determined that the entire police department was basically a bribery racket. It was harrowing for him, but also very necessary for the public.

Taya Graham: But Stephen, you have a lot of experience with cops, sharing their stories and you writing about it, right?

Stephen Janis: Yeah. One of the first books I ever wrote, called Why Do We Kill? The Pathology of Murder in Baltimore, was with a former Baltimore City homicide detective in 2011. Among other things, he reveals that police were stealing from crime scenes, that homicide detectives were extending cases instead of making arrests, but, of course, the department ignored it. Then we had the 2015 Freddie Gray dying in police custody, and then the Gun Trace Task Force scandal, so even though we revealed these things, it didn’t really have an impact, although I think at this time we were trying to do some of the same work that Serpico did.

Taya Graham: And what about your book You Can’t Stop Murder? What did that cover?

Stephen Janis: Well, Taya, this book was written with a detective who was much older for cases back in the 1970s, and much of it had to do with police corruption. One of the cases we wrote about was a massive gambling sting that caught police officers gambling, taking receipts from gambling, basically very similar to New York in the 1970s. The whole case vanished when the evidence vanished in the evidence locker. There was another case where officers were accused of stealing 1,000 grams of heroin, and that case, too, vanished. So you can see in the ’70s, just like with Serpico, police corruption was really starting to come to the fore, but nobody was doing anything about it here in Baltimore. And look what happened.

And now I’m joined by the former cop turned auditor, James Madison. James, thank you for joining me.

James Madison: Thank you. I’ve watched your videos, I see the work that you put in, so it’s pretty awesome. A few of my viewers have told me a bunch. “You need to get an interview with her,” “Get an interview with them,” and let’s do that. I was like, “All right,” so now we’re here. We’re finally here.

Taya Graham: First, tell me a little bit about your career as a police officer and why you left. And what do you think is wrong with American policing?

James Madison: It started right out of high school, when I was 19 years old. Jumped into law enforcement there, went to the basic law enforcement academy, picked a department near my hometown here, and decided to go into it. My grandfather worked for DOT, and he’s like, “Get a good job with the government. Good benefits, good retirement, and things like that,” so I was like, “Yeah, let me try it.” Then about, I would say three years into it, I started to realize that it wasn’t for me. I did stick it out so that I could vest and collect my retirement. It’s just a negative environment.

Taya Graham: How do you define being a cop watcher or auditor, and why did you become one?

James Madison: If I define it… When I had an audit from the Florida Department of Revenue, which was miserable if you ever have any audit from IRS, they come in and check everything. They make sure that you did everything right. A lot of people will coin that term as an auditor. We’re just going out there checking, whether it be a First Amendment, Second Amendment, Fourth Amendment rights violation, and even Fifth Amendment. You can do a Fifth Amendment check, too. If you want to remain silent and have a cop berate you, then he’s failing that Fifth Amendment right there. Even if he says to you, “Well, if you’re innocent, you would tell me,” that’s violating your Fifth Amendment right, right there.

Defining all that is just going out there and checking and seeing what they’re doing, if they’re doing it right, because a lot of law enforcement will tell you it’s a big statute book. There’s a lot of stuff that you can do, and we can get you on nearly anything. Well, it’s also a big policy book, so we can check and make sure you’re doing it right. They have policy, law, and Constitution, which is kind of moot for most of them, because they don’t really care. Some do, but most don’t.

What actually got me started in auditing is, there’s an officer in my hometown. His name is Officer Fischetti, and he is a police officer here. I think he’s still there. I don’t know. But we were having a neighbor dispute, and he came to my house, and I document everything. We have security cameras outside just like everybody does. It’s nothing special. But at this time, my wife was holding the camera.

He came onto my property well beyond the right of ways and all that, and I was telling him what my neighbor did. Well, when I was telling him what my neighbor did, I say also we’re recording this here, because we’re going to eventually sue my neighbor for what he’s doing here, just constantly aggravating us for a remodel that we were doing. Once I did that, he told me, “Well, if you record me, I’m going to take you to jail.” There is a video about that. I recorded it. And I said, “Wow, all right. Well, I’m going to record you.” He then said… What’d he say? He said, “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.” That’s effecting an arrest, no matter what state you’re in. When someone does that, a law enforcement officer made an arrest, whether he puts handcuffs on you or not, by citing that to you and saying, “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.” That is effecting arrest.

But the weird thing is, my wife was the one holding the phone, not me. That’s what got me started right there. That man in my front yard telling me that I’m going to go to jail for filming him, well after Smith v. Cumming was established in the courts, well after the First Amendment was established, and well after many, many times that it was legal and lawful to film the police.

Taya Graham: Why do so many auditors refuse to give their IDs? Is that an important way to test a police department? How do you respond to people who say what’s the big deal about giving your ID or answering questions?

James Madison: It’s the basic test, because police have, what, three types of encounters. They have a consensual encounter, then they have a custodial detention and then they have an arrest. They have those three types of encounters. If it’s consensual, then you need to know about that, and you don’t need to submit to a Fourth Amendment search. Even though it’s not a pat down, it’s still seizing your papers and property. It’s taking your information. They’re going to put you in some type of a database, like they have me. It says that I’d rather film police, and it’s just a silly database. Then they can share that with other law enforcement like that. Which, again, it’s not that big of a deal, but the fundamentals of it are we have rights not to submit things to law enforcement because they’re not there to say hi to us and be friends to us, like when they put them in the elementary schools and do that.

When they’re there, they’re conducting an investigation, and the less that they have, the better off it is, no matter who you are, if you’re a suspect in the crime. Now, if you’re a victim, that’s a little bit different. But if you’re a suspect in a crime, you don’t want to give them anything, because if you look at the way the statutes in almost all of the states work, you have to be committing a crime, about to be committing a crime, or already have committed a crime in order to be ID’d. Now, there’s some states that only require you to submit once you’ve been arrested, but those are all essentially after you’ve committed a crime, about to commit a crime, or going to. That’s it. And law enforcement don’t need to know anything about you other than that. Period.

Taya Graham: Why do you think police behave in a way that seems like their power is unlimited? What makes them so entitled? Why do they act as if their power is unchecked?

James Madison: There’s no why about it. Their power is unlimited and unchecked, that’s it. Period. All right. It’s just that. They don’t have anybody that they have to answer to. The law enforcement don’t have any accountability. They do when a citizen complains and makes a really big stink about something, but as I mentioned, I will go out, and I will go out with a tint meter and check officers’ tint on their cars. In Florida, the police cars are not exempt, and I go up and just say, “Hey, listen. Due to my training experience, your vehicle looks a little bit dark.” Some of them will let me check it, some of them don’t, but the ones that I do check mostly are in violation. When I tell them that, they’re like, “Well, I didn’t put the tint on here. The department did.”

Well, we don’t have that ability to say something like that. Even if we buy it from the dealership like that, then the dealership says, “All right, this is your car now.” It’s that. The police say, “Well, this is your car. You’re driving it, you’re in constructive possession or actual possession of this vehicle, and here’s your citation for it.” And that goes all the way through nearly to everything. They have unlimited power and unlimited access to do whatever they want. Police departments are one of the most highest-funded departments, besides the Department of Education, in any government. They get the most money. You think about that. They have the most money. He who has the most money, has the most power. Period.

Taya Graham: I’ve seen excessive arrests for minor crimes in my city of Baltimore. For example, there were over 100,000 arrests a year, and it was a policy called “zero tolerance,” and now there’ve been an extreme increase of arrests in rural America, especially in lower income areas. What role do you think police play in inequality, and how do they enforce the social boundaries of poverty?

James Madison: There’s so many idioms that you can think of. Low hanging fruit, the weakest in the pack. That’s exactly what I think is happening. If they stop me and they want to do something, they’ll know that I’m going to fight it. They know that I’m going to have an attorney that fights it. Yeah, they might put something cheesy on me, but a lot of the times what happens for the people that have lower income, or lower education, or something along those lines, unless they’re really, really hurt bad or they’re injured traumatically, they can’t afford an attorney to go out there and fight their case for them. So what do you think’s going to happen?

They’re going to say, “All right, we’ll pay the fine,” “We’ll do it,” “I just need time to pay this fine, your honor. I don’t have a job right now.” “Okay. Well, we’ll give you 90 days to come up with the money.” And they’re going to go ask a family member to do it, because they don’t want to go to jail and see them go to jail, so someone else is going to hop in.

When you talk about inequalities like that and how it’s exploiting… I just did a little video, it’s not really an in-depth video, about PayTel. PayTel is a company that you got to put $10 in to talk to someone in jail. You can talk to them for five minutes, and then you don’t get any of your money back. That company is making major profits. They’ve got big companies like that, so they’re getting that, “I have to contact him because I want to be able to get him out of jail.”

It was Soleaker. He’s a guy that does Second Amendment. When I went to pick him up for jail, he had $40 on him. When he left, he had $20 on him, and they took that money without any ability for him to protest it or anything like that, and says, “Well, this is your daily state money, like your lunch money and something like that,” and took the money and it was gone. That was out of Brevard County. That’s just their policy. They took $20 per day or whatever it is from him for amenities or something along those lines. I’m paraphrasing. I don’t know exactly what it was, but what he told me is he was missing $20 and they justified it with food or lunch, and why he was there.

Taya Graham: What would you like to see change policy-wise in law enforcement? What do you think would really help the public and even help police do their job more effectively?

James Madison: They need to hire people that are not out there lifting weights and being a quasi-military badass. Simple as that. They need to hire people that know how to talk to people. They need to hire people that know how to deescalate, and they need to hire people that can communicate well with someone and understand what someone’s going through, rather than on the calls where someone’s distressed and they might have a weapon, or something along those lines, they don’t need to go in there and order someone, “Drop it, now! Do it now!” because that person is hanging by a thread, and they don’t care about anything. They need to bring that back down. They need to talk about something.

Honestly, I always talk to my viewers about defunding the police. That is something that needs to be done, and it doesn’t need to be… take away what they have currently. It is stop giving them things. I think it’s $200,000 in drones that our local sheriff got, and I don’t know why they need $200,000 of drones. They have X amount of officers on there and four supervisors per shift. If I can do the math properly, I don’t think you need that many drones. You can have each one of those officers have one, and I could probably pay for it myself. Defunding, when I talk about that, they need to bring down what they have the ability to obtain. The technology that they have, $5,000 worth of license plate readers on nearly every intersection, that’s where you got to start defunding the police, saying, “Yes, we could be out there maybe just checking each one of the tags. We want the technology to be able to do it.” But at the same time, defunding is not taking away what they currently have. It’s just stopping what they keep spending and spending and spending and spending on.

Taya Graham: If you could educate the public about one thing in relation to their rights, what would you want them to know? What do you want your YouTube channel to teach people?

James Madison: Well, the fundamentals, [Amendments] One through Five. One, you can do and say pretty much what you want, as long as there’s no threats attached to it. Two, you can protect yourself and carry your own firearms, because police take anywhere from 12 to 15 minutes to get to you. When they say that we need the police to protect us, it’s very rarely that they actually protect you in a life or death situation. Three, we really don’t have that much, but when officers come into your home and they want to set up there and just kind of crash. It’s happened a couple of times where offers come into homes and just kind of take over the home. That’s one, but primarily the Fourth Amendment is it.

You don’t have to consent to a search. Take the citation. Officers may let you off if you let them search, but that is the game that they’ll play like that. Going into the Fifth Amendment, we really don’t need to talk to the police, and you need to search your rights when you’re doing that. Now, one of the things with the First Amendment, when I go back through that, is make sure that you film law enforcement, no matter what they’re doing.

If you see them on the side of the road and you have a couple minutes, throw the camera on them. Just make sure, because they have cameras on us everywhere. I’m talking about every intersection. If you look up at these streetlights, film it. Film that, film your traffic stops. If you have to go into the police department, film it. Make sure it’s legal and lawful in your town, just in case they have some weird ordinance or something along those lines. But from what I know, you can film anywhere in public in the United States, and I don’t know where there isn’t, a place that’s like that.

Taya Graham: Certainly, we’ve seen numbers across the country touting the rise in shootings and murder, and we have seen the mainstream media posit the increased violence as justification for more, not less, police. But perhaps we’re asking the wrong questions. Maybe as Stephen discusses in his books, policing has little to do with solving crimes or public safety. Instead, as his book suggests, police sometimes serve as an extension of bad policies of state power that seek to enforce both the economic and racial inequity that results from it.

Well, what do I mean? Consider this video shot in our home state of Maryland. It shows officers on the boardwalk of Ocean City, a popular tourist destination, using brutal force after two Black teenagers were accused of vaping. That’s right. The brutal takedown and tasing of these teenagers seen here was over nothing more than taking a drag of vaporized nicotine. As you can see, the teens were not accused of violent crimes, injuring others, or any of the things that we would think would result in this sort of police reaction. Kneeing someone in the stomach over a vape is not just ridiculous. It’s revealing the true imperative of American policing, as we’ve said before, which is fabricating disorder.

But the reason I bring this incident up is not just because it’s a shocking example of police overreach, or because it shows how drastically laws are enforced against people of color. No, the reason I’m raising this incident is because it displays, for all of us to see, the extreme disregard police have for the people they serve. It’s a prime example of how the power of law enforcement has become beholden only to itself. State-sponsored violence is one of the most troubling and potentially devastating forms of government power. When the government gives somebody full license to inflict bodily harm or death, the levers for accountability for those actions simply vanish.

How else can we explain what we see in this video? And how else can we even try to understand the dozens of videos we’ve shared on this channel, if not for the fact that the police feel fully empowered to hurt us? [They] have little fear of reprisal if they do.

The point is, the reason we produce the show is not just to show these videos, but explain the implications. The reasons we speak to people like James Madison, it’s not just to highlight their work, but to understand why it’s important that they do what they do. That’s why I always state the purpose of the show from the onset, why we make clear our job is not just holding bad cops accountable, but examining the system which bolsters them.

That’s what we did today, because in the experience of James Madison and the cops on the beach, on the boardwalk, we see the system at work, a system that puts profit over people and turns the law into a tool to do so. A system that prioritizes punishment over productivity and conspires to profit off the suffering it inflicts.

Which is why I make this promise to you. We won’t stop watching, we won’t stop reporting, so long as this injustice afflicts the many for the enrichment and satisfaction of the few. I’d like to thank our guest, cop watcher James Madison, for joining us today. Thank you. And of course, I have to thank Stephen Janis for his writing, research, his editing, and his intrepid reporting on this piece. Thank you, Stephen.

Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham: And of course I want to thank friend of the show Noli Dee for her support. Thanks ,Noli Dee. And I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us, and we might be able to investigate. Please reach out to us.

You can email us tips privately par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us @policeaccountabilityreport on Facebook or Instagram, or @eyesonpolice on Twitter. And, Of course, you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter or Facebook, and please like and comment. Of course, I do read your comments and appreciate them, and I try to answer your questions whenever I can. If you stuck around to the very end, maybe you want to donate to our Patreon link pinned below. I hope you do. My name is Taya Graham, and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.