An armed security guard shot a YouTube personality outside a Los Angeles synagogue last week as the confrontation was live-streamed to thousands of followers. Zhoie Perez, “Furry Potato” on YouTube, was filming the guard in a “First Amendment audit,” reports the Washington Post. A video shows the guard standing behind a gate with his weapon drawn for several minutes, before he tells Perez to “get away” and fires his gun. “First Amendment auditing” and “copwatching” dates from at least the mid-2000s. The practice has morphed into a YouTube subculture, with self-styled “auditors” seeing how police react to a camera lens. Photographers say they are testing their constitutional rights. “This is not only an example of the paranoia …among cops and security guards when it comes to citizens with cameras but an example of the dangers of placing armed security guards and cops in schools,” said Carlos Miller, whose website Photography Is Not a Crime writes about auditors.
An auditor may stand in a public space and refuse to put the camera down, explain or identify herself or himself when an officer approaches. “It’s not only about shining a light on the crooked bad cops but shining an even brighter light on the good cops,” Perez said. “You put yourself in places where you know chances are the cops are going to be called. Are they going to … uphold the law … or break the law?” On Thursday, Perez filmed outside the Etz Jacob Congregation and Ohel Chana High School in Los Angeles’ Fairfax neighborhood. “It turned into an impromptu First Amendment audit because the security guard almost immediately was getting really aggressive with the filming and putting the hand on the gun,” Perez said. She said she did not realize the building housed a school.
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by Crime and Justice News, The Crime Report
February 18, 2019
