SeanPaul “Long Island Audit” Reyes became the latest first amendment auditor/cop watcher located outside of the state of Texas to come out against Texas’ plans to change the punishment from interference with police from a misdemeanor to a felony offense.
Reyes, speaking to several thousand of his assembled fans, took issue with the law as he said it would punish cop watchers and First Amendment Auditors for “recording the police.” Inexplicably, he then played video from the debate in the Texas House that showed officials stating that the law would not impact the right to film police, other than to move the auditors further away from the scene.
As previously reported, Texas House Bill 3565 seeks to change the penalty for interference with official duties from a class B misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of 180 days in jail and a $2,000.00 fine to a state jail felony with a maximum penalty of two years in jail and a $10,000.00 fine.
While still stuck in committee, after passing the State Senate, the bill has not moved forward since the start of the month despite the bleak outlook presented by out of state auditors such as Kevin “The Angry Vet” Soper and Reyes.
The bill is in response to the increasing activities of Fort Worth area auditors such as Manuel Mata, Harvey Freebird, BZ Watchdog and Carolina in Fort Worth, who are increasingly defying the current law as the punishment for violating the law is outweighed by the profit made from their videos featuring the arrests.
While Reyes attacked the idea that First Amendment auditors and cop watchers were profiting from breaking the law, the actions of the auditors seem to show otherwise.
Carolina in Fort Worth, for example, made headlines when she blundered into an active crime scene last summer and was injured while being arrested for refusing to leave the scene.
Footage from the arrest made Carolina a substantial amount of money from YouTube, while the auditor has been arrested multiple times while on probation from her conviction stemming from the incident. With eac arrest bringing in more revenue from the widely circulated videos posted to YouTube.
Reyes even mentioned his own multiple federal lawsuits seeking damages from the police as evidence of his purity in wanting to expose the truth by filming police. Critics point out that at least two of Reyes’ arrests over the past two years seemed to be pre-planned, with livestreams indicating that he had been arrested before the arrests actually happened along with GoFundMe campaigns set up to fund his legal defense.
The YouTuber has taken in over $100,000.00 over the past two years in various crowd sourcing campaigns and owns what has become the second largest first amendment auditing channels by subscriber count on YouTube.
Reyes has also faced criticism as he’s sought to show depositions of police officers from the various lawsuits to highlight what he claims to be corruption within police forces across America.
After a case he brought against police in Illinois was dismissed earlier this year, Reyes weaponized the depositions he recorded in the case to attack the police officers involved in the lawsuit. He was ordered to remove the videos by the judge in that case and is currently appealing both the takedown order and the case dismissal.
In his lawsuit against the city of New York, Judge Jessica G. L. Clarke agreed to hold a hearing over a dispute over Reyes’ plans to show the depositions of police involved in the lawsuit on his YouTube channel.
Both cases cited Reyes’ monetization of the videos from the lawsuits as factors in opposing the airing of the depositions.
Reyes ended his livestream by directing fans to call flood the Texas Governor’s office and the Texas House of Representatives to let officials know their outrage over the possible changes to the law.
Thursday’s broadcast brought in $5.00 in new donations to his Support the Fight Against Tyranny and Corruption campaign for the day. He did not, however, win the daily crowd sourcing title.
Clash with Bao returned to the top slot with $114.00 in new donations, followed by Lane Myers GiveSendGo crowd sourcing campaign receiving $25.00 in new donations. Clash with Bao has now taken in $6,600.00 in donations for the year, continuing his record run.
This is a developing news story.
