Fans of Jose “Chille” DeCastro saw a new shift in the philosophy of their hero Thursday night as he abandoned his long-standing call for aggressive displays against the police in favor of passive resistance and compliance.
DeCastro said on the live stream that his new union of journalists would be founded on the idea of working with the police to some extent while providing little to no resistance to lawful orders while on scene with officers, saving any action for the court system.
The YouTuber explained that the key to his recent arrests came in the act that he had been confrontational in the arrests and noted that judges will always side with police, especially when presented with an auditor or “independent journalist” acting as an aggressor in order to provoke the police.
DeCastro went out of his way to chastise protégé Garrett “Press with Rancor” Van Nett for his actions in the arrest leading to his Thursday conviction on felony obstruction and resisting charges. Stating that Van Nett standing his ground and ignoring the officer’s verbal commands to move back multiple times was what got Van Nett convicted.
Critics were quick to point out that Van Nett followed DeCastro’s teachings at the time and despite not flashing his “indestructible” trifold (the 5A Cop cards did not exist at the time of the arrest), his actions reflected DeCastro’s teachings and actions in his own audits of the police at the time.
DeCastro’s apparent new philosophy is to treat police with some respect, to stop overly confronting and insulting them to their faces and to act in accordance with spoken commands. He claimed that he has always stood 15 feet away from police when interacting with them (increased from a previous claim of 5 to 10 feet), and that members of his “independent journalist union” will have to abide by his new teachings.
Fans were appalled by DeCastro’s apparent abandonment of both Van Nett by blaming Van Nett for following DeCastro’s teachings, and by the apparent idea that DeCastro is missing the point of first amendment auditing.
First Amendment auding has always been seen as a test of Americans’ rights. Auditors set out to openly harass and abuse officers as a test of their first amendment rights. The very idea of an “audit” was based on seeing how far an auditor could provoke an officer before the officer violated their first amendment rights.
DeCastro himself has used first amendment auditing, based on apparently real hatred towards police, as a form of expression of his emotions, letting his anger out towards officers while testing the limits of the first amendment as justification for his behavior.
His new laid back approach flies in the face of both of his products, which are openly designed to challenge police with their instructions on how to continue a confrontation and protect the user’s rights while avoiding an arrest for over-the-top behavior.
Typical of DeCastro’s recent promises, his promise to put up the new guidelines for members of his “independent journalist union” Thursday night was not acted upon. It remains to be seen if DeCastro will continue his policies of restraint towards police or if he’ll abandon his newfound beliefs to appease his fans.
