“First Amendment Audit” of ELPD Draws Widespread Attention Online
Is Joseph Hill a patriot or a rabble rouser?
On Aug.30, 2024, the East Lansing Police Department was alerted by the manager of Jolly Pumpkin at 218 Albert Street that a man was recording its patrons on the sidewalk dining space outside the restaurant. When asked to stop by the manager, he informed her he was doing an investigation, but offered no further information.
The man, who identified himself as Joseph Hill to ELi, is wearing a white shirt depicting a stick figure holding a brain and exclaiming, “Hey, you dropped this.” He dons sunglasses and a baseball cap, wearing a long beard.
Hill is a member of the national “First Amendment Auditor” movement that advocates the filming of police officers and other government employees to audit their reaction to minor disturbances, ensuring in the process, they say, that constitutional rights are protected.
YouTube videos about the incident have gathered broad attention.
In the case of Hill at Jolly Pumpkin, he was recording patrons while standing on a public sidewalk.
The coming exchange between Hill and ELPD was posted by Hill on his YouTube channel Livingston Audits. The video has gathered more than 15,000 views. Another video analyzing the incident posted by YouTube channel “Audit the Audit” has been viewed nearly 2 million times.
Despite recording the conversation himself, Hill’s video is almost entirely taken from bodycam footage Hill received from the ELPD through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Officer Jordyn Willis approaches Hill while Officer Brennan Surman goes inside the restaurant to speak with the Jolly Pumpkin manager. Willis asks Hill for his ID to which Hill asks, “Am I committing a crime?”
Surman’s recorded conversation with the manager is short: “You want him trespassed?” he asks, seemingly asking whether the manager wants Hill to be charged with trespassing. When she responds in the affirmative, Surman returns to Hill and again asks if he has broken a law.
“They want you trespassed,” Surman said, “so therefore, we have a right to ID you.”
“I have the right to leave then, right?” Hill asked.
“No,” Surman said, “you’re now being detained because you’re going to be trespassed [and] we need to identify you before you’re trespassed in order to write you your trespass notice.”
At one point, Surman speaks to someone on his radio, saying, “I think he’s just one of those first amendment guys…He could sue them if they tell us that they want him trespassed but then he never actually…it’s a grey line.”
Sergeant Chad Stemen arrived at the scene and spoke to the manager. Upon learning Hill did not enter the establishment, he returned outside to speak with an emboldened Hill.
“Your cops used a trespass warning threat to get my ID from me,” Hill said after accusing the officers of denying his fourth amendment rights. “Now they got it and everything’s fine, right?”
Hill went on to say the police should arrest him because it was the only way they would get him to leave.
“I’m not going to coddle their feelings,” he said in the video. “I was never on their property. First amendment…heard of that one?”
Officers eventually returned Hill’s ID and let him go about his day.
Hill explains First Amendment Audits, why he audited ELPD.
ELi reached out to Hill who consented to an interview over Zoom. Hill left his camera off for the duration.
“We go out and make sure that when go out our rights are respected,” he said. “It’s a lot about accountability for me. First reactions and accountability.”
Hill said he’s been involved in other movements in the past, including that for marijuana and against the War in Iraq.
He said those movements died out for him, but his spirit for activism was revived when a friend near Howell had to fight the city for attempting to construct an access road through his property. That incident prompted him to start attending local government meetings.
His involvement with the audit movement began in his home of Livingston County. He said those police officers would never ask for his identification.
“I wanted to try somebody somewhere bigger,” he said. “I got to talking to some homeless guys on the road or, you know, in the back alley and they were telling me how things go around [East Lansing] sometimes. They weren’t lying.”
Hill said he chose to record outside Jolly Pumpkin because of the outdoor seating. He said two homeless men were initially with him; one he identified as Alex can be seen on the video with him. While speaking to the police officers, explaining he was standing on public property, Hill said Alex was encouraging him, saying he had the same experiences with ELPD.
Hill believes Willis didn’t understand he was on public property. He felt that Surman forced him to hand over his identification.
“I feel that he heard me refuse her ID multiple times and at that point, he was just like, well, I’m going to force it then,” Hill said.
Hill filed complaints against Willis, Surman, and Stemen.
“It’s probably only going to come back that none of them did anything wrong,” he said. “I hope it’s not another situation of ‘we investigated ourselves and we found nothing wrong.’ There is something wrong there. Never was it said that I had done something wrong. You can’t just go on a gut feeling…it’s not good policing and it’s not the way we have the law here in Michigan.”
ELi asked Hill about common viewpoints some hold about auditors like him: they are merely seeking attention or money.
“I’ve heard it slanted even further that I’m out there trying to trick police officers into violating my rights,” he said. “There’s no trickery being done. Yeah, I’m not out there lying to them. I’m just a guy on a sidewalk with a camera. First Amendment rights. I shouldn’t be trespassed. I shouldn’t. It’s not about the money. I mean, I think that there’s no accountability…it’s not like a police officer is paying it.”
Hill also said that he believes homeless individuals are treated like second class citizens.
“I’m not anti-police by any means. I’m anti-bad policies and bad policing,” he said. “And I think we can do better and that to make some things change, we have the ability and this is just one of the ways.
“I’m out there risking my freedoms at times, trying to make it happen. There’s some nobility to it, I think…standing up for what’s right, standing up for the people that can’t. Nobody would have [taken] Alex [seriously]. They never did. They’ve arrested him before.”
First Amendment expert shares her thoughts on Hill’s incident, role of First Amendment Auditors.
ELi shared Hill’s video with Nancy Costello, the director of the First Amendment Law Clinic at Michigan State University, and spoke with her about her first impressions.
“I do think there are police officers who try to throw their weight around or police officers who are just ignorant and this kind of a thing points out that deficiency and suggests they have to do something about it,” she said. “I might not agree with what all these different activists believe in because I happen to be on the opposite side of the political aisle, but I certainly would defend their right to do it.”
Costello said that the public might perceive people like Hill as an inconvenience or annoying, but that these individuals outside of the mainstream often lead movements.
“They asked for his ID after they said to him, ‘you are being detained,’” she said. “And in order to detain someone, you have to have a reasonable suspicion. It has to be more than a hunch, it has to be more than a gut feeling that he has done something illegal. And here they didn’t have that. He was right; they didn’t do their investigation.”
With that investigation, she said, police didn’t have reasonable suspicion. Costello said that the conversation with the Jolly Pumpkin manager should have looked differently.
“They should have furthered that question and said, did he come in here at all? Did he come in here with the camera? And did he try to film in here?” She said. “Did he come in here and harass anyone? He could not have done that, gone into a private establishment and run a camera without their consent. The public is invited to come in and eat; they’re not invited to come in and take videotape of everybody.”
Costello said that law enforcement needs to be better informed on privacy rights and how to conduct a more thorough investigation.
“The manager of the restaurant doesn’t have to know that,” she said. “If she’s complaining to the police, then the police should come and tell her that what he’s doing is annoying but not illegal.”
ELI asked ELPD Interim Chief Jen Brown if she was familiar with the incident at Jolly Pumpkin and the auditor movement. She said she was aware of it and looking into the matter, saying the department would take the appropriate action after their investigation is completed.
She offers succinct advice when asked how the public should interact with auditors.
“Ignore them,” she said. “They are trying to elicit a response, whether that’s from a police department, business or private citizen. The best thing they can do is ignore them.”