5-years in prison pushes controversial cop watcher to breakdown. Eric Brandt speaks out after release.

After five years behind bars and in Colorado’s correctional system, controversial cop watcher Eric Brandt is free.

In his first interview following his release, Brandt joins the Police Accountability Report to talk candidly about prison, the sentence that changed his life, his regrets, the supporters who stood by him and whether he still believes in the movement that made him one of America’s most notorious police accountability activists.

Brandt also reflects on his role in helping establish the right to film police in the 10th Circuit and answers a question his critics have been asking for years: did Eric Brandt go too far?

Love him or hate him, this is a side of Eric Brandt few people have seen…
Please watch this exclusive interview with Police Accountability Report hosts Taya Graham and Stephen Janis.

Credits:

• Pre-production: Taya Graham/Stephen Janis
• Written by: Stephen Janis
• Production: Cameron Granadino
• Post-production: Stephen Janis

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Taya Graham:

Hello, this is Taya Graham and welcome to this breaking news edition of the Police Accountability Report. Now, 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 individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible. But today, we will achieve that goal with a little bit of a twist and a surprise, an exclusive interview with a controversial cop watcher who was just released from a halfway house in Colorado after spending five years behind bars. His name is Eric Brandt. He’s a Denver activist and advocate for the homeless, also a prolific YouTuber who built a large following with his antics on the streets and his successes in the court. Now, Eric’s thought copwatching isn’t for everyone. His tactics were flamboyant, to say the least.

Some said they were simply over the top. Law enforcement often deemed them illegal. In 2021, Eric was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of telephonic harassment of Denver judges. The charges with results of serious threats that were made over the phone. However, the sentence was also considered extremely harsh at the time, and Eric apologized to those affected. And now, due to good behavior and perseverance, we have the breaking news. Eric was released today, and we’re going to be talking to him for his first interview since his exit from the aforementioned halfway house. But first, I want to check in with my reporting partner and co-host Stephen Janis. Now, Stephen, Eric is not just someone we covered, but he was also the subject of our most recent documentary, I Am But the Mirror of the Story of American Copwatching. Can you tell us a little bit about the documentary and Eric’s role in it?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, it basically was about Eric because when Eric received such a harsh sentence, we though we had to tell his story in depth. So I spent years becoming an Eric Brandt expert. I would say unequivocally, I am the foremost Eric Brandt expert in America at this point. So if anyone

Taya Graham:

Wants to talk – At least on the

Stephen Janis:

East Coast. Yes. But I mean, Eric’s story was a story of great achievement and great tragedy. And he was extremely creative, but also controversial. And I think as you said, he received this very harsh sentence. So it really gave us a prison to look at copwatching in general because copwatching is a very creative sort of organic movement. Eric was a part of it. And looking through the lens of Eric’s experiences, I think made the film really interesting. So I was appreciative of having that access to his life. And now, like I said, I’m ready for my interview on NBC, ABC, anyone wants to talk about Eric Brant, come to me. I’ll talk.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Now, before I get to Eric, I just want to say Eric was one of the most colorful cop watchers we have ever seen. He is a Navy veteran who served his country and he’s also a prolific filer of very successful lawsuits. But more important today, he was released from a halfway house. It marks the end of a five year ordeal for him. Eric, welcome back and thank you for joining us.

Eric Brandt:

Thank you, Taya.

Taya Graham:

Now first, Eric, I have to ask, how are you feeling and what was going through your mind when you finally walked out that door for the final time?

Eric Brandt:

Sorry.

Taya Graham:

I can understand it. I’m sorry, Eric. I know it can be tough to talk about. Just take a moment if you need it.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, take a moment, Eric.

Eric Brandt:

Sorry guys.

Stephen Janis:

No, no.

Taya Graham:

It’s okay. Take a moment.

Stephen Janis:

Of course. Of course.

Taya Graham:

We understand. Absolutely. At five years and finally having this moment, there are a lot of emotions that must be coming to the

Stephen Janis:

Forefront. Do you want us ask another question or?

Eric Brandt:

Well, I guess you saw it now that I just had the release. Yeah. Wow, that kind of hit me. Yeah, you asked me what I was feeling and I was like, oh, I guess I am having a feeling. Yeah. It’s

Taya Graham:

Understandable.

Eric Brandt:

It’s been the last two weeks have been surreal, right? Honestly, I’ve been like blah. I know that the date is there. I don’t have anything else to do. I just work. I know that I’m going to have a computer, so I don’t want to do any of my litigation work on the phone. It’s too hard. So I’ve just been blah, milling around for the last two weeks and that’s crazy. I know. And today I had administrative things that I had to do and I’m sorry that I lost it on your camera.

Taya Graham:

No, it’s okay. It’s completely understandable.

Stephen Janis:

I remember Eric when we were talking maybe a year ago, you thought the parole board was not going to grant you release. What do you think finally convinced them? I know you’ve been on great behavior and you hit every achievement you were supposed to inside the system. What do you think kind of finally pushed you out that door?

Eric Brandt:

I don’t know what eventually convinced them to release me. I’m a little surprised that I wasn’t released earlier. The risk instruments suggested that I should have been. So I really was pessimistic about it. And then when I got the halfway house, I was surprised the halfway house application went by very quickly. Once I was in the halfway house, parole was likely at that point. And I know that you and I talked about things. I didn’t really share a lot of that with the public at the time because there were certainly opportunities for people to try and sabotage that. But

Once I was at the halfway house, I had a pretty high degree of comfort that they would choose to release me. And then I had my hearing and it went status quo. It went what the instruments should have suggested, which is release upon completion of the halfway house program. I think that’s what the public expects, right? If they release you early before you finish the program, they’re like, “What’s the purpose of the halfway house program?” If they were to have delayed that further, then they would almost have to justify that publicly. So I think that that was really the only appropriate answer. And you and I knew about this, of course, some time ago, but again, we kind of kept it under wraps for a while.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. Eric, I hate to take you back to the past, but it’s something that a lot of us have difficulty imagining. If you could just talk about what those past five years incarcerated were like, how did you survive them and what did you do to help work towards actually getting out?

Eric Brandt:

Well, for one thing, I’m not criminally minded, right? So I’m in with a bunch of criminals. You get to know these people. A lot of the guys that are in there, they’re in there for a reason. And all of my instruments scored pretty low on things and my requirements and my needs were a lot lower than a lot of people. I have good education, so I wasn’t in a lot of the educational programs. So my situation was a little different. Behaving is actually easy to do. And I know that when people look at my work, what they see is misbehavior and they really have to delve deeper. And then I think that you guys did a pretty good job of that with the documentary, which I recently got to see finally. But there’s a lot that was going on there. So it wasn’t misbehavior because it was misbehavior.

It was misbehavior or civil disobedience, if you will, for a purpose. And so the classic things that I didn’t have the sexual misconduct issues that are prevalent in there. I didn’t have the theft. I didn’t have the violence, the frauds, drugs, all of these things that are really what the majority of the people I was around were involved in, that just wasn’t me. So behaving was always easy for me and my five-year track record shows that. So what did I do? I used my time to help develop programs. I helped develop a veterans program. We did a lot of service. We did a lot of community service, not just in service to the guys in the prison, but we actually extended that and did community service in the local community.

Taya Graham:

Didn’t you help pack up Thanksgiving dinners for families outside of the prison?

Eric Brandt:

Oh yeah, absolutely. We got feedback from that immediately too. We raised money internally from the inmates and we were able to raise enough money to put together. The first year we did it, we made 40 boxes and it was a complete Thanksgiving dinner box for a family. So everything that you would have at Thanksgiving was in this box. And we got immediate feedback. One guy, his wife had just passed and he didn’t know what he was going to do. And then we got a thank you card from a family whose house had just burned down. They were moved into a hotel room with their three kids. They had nothing except for the Thanksgiving dinner box.

Stephen Janis:

Wow.

Well, Eric, was there ever. I remember talking to you when they brought you down to Louisiana for that other case. Was there ever a time when you kind of gave up hope or you felt like we’re not. Because I remember being really worried about you in that particular part. And just so people know who are watching, we talked to Eric at every point that we could while we were working on the film and just trying to keep in touch with him. Was there ever a point where you’re like, “I’m never getting out of here,” or you ever felt like this wasn’t going to work out for you?

Eric Brandt:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. When I went in, 12 year sentence, I was pretty harsh and I always believed in the back of my mind that there would always be something else. They would drag something up from somewhere. And so then when they grabbed me for Louisiana, I was like, “Yep, this is what I expected.” So I already pretty much knew going into it that that was going to be the rest of my life.

Taya Graham:

Eric, I have a question. There were a lot of people who stood by you during this incarceration and they were ready to stand by you for the full 12 years. What do you want to say to those supporters who stuck by you during your incarceration? What would you want to say to them?

Eric Brandt:

What is wrong with you people?

Taya Graham:

That’s an Eric Brandt answer. Yes.

Eric Brandt:

I can’t even begin to quantify or even understand the tremendous amount of sacrifice that so many people have made. And we have as a group consciously. Again, you and I have had so much communication in the last five years that we haven’t shared with the public and for good reason, but I’m perpetually blown away at how much support there is. I couldn’t have done it without you guys and I couldn’t even begin to list all of the names. I’d almost feel embarrassed if I listed one because I wouldn’t be able to list all 5,000 of them. But I would get things out of the blue from people. Marita Gladson, I’ll tell you about Marita Gladson. She sent me cartoons and jokes on a nearly weekly basis for the entire time. Oh my

Taya Graham:

Gosh. That’s

Eric Brandt:

Amazing.

To the point there where we would come downstairs and check the list to see if we had mail for the day and the officers would be in there and they would see me in the hallway and they’d wave me over because they saw Marita’s envelope and they knew they were going to get their Marita jokes that day. They recognized the Marita envelopes. Lacey R. Abby Irizarry, Melody, Johnna, Aaron, Joe Cool. I mean, some of these people, do you have any idea how angry these people would get if I didn’t call them by a certain time of the day? And you know how I knew they were angry is because the captain would call me to the office and want to know why he was getting phone calls.

Taya Graham:

There you go.

Stephen Janis:

That’s cool.

Taya Graham:

It just shows how much concern these folks have for you.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

I was going to ask you, because I never really got a chance to ask you this, but when you were in that courtroom and they gave you 12 years, because I did a lot of research, I could not find a sentence for threatening speech without some act of violence, which you did not do anywhere across any case I could find. I couldn’t find a case even remotely close. I mean, people threatened congressional members of Congress and got in two or three years. What did you think when the judge handed down that sentence and why was it 12 years?

Eric Brandt:

I’m stunned. To this day, I find it stunning. I turned to my lawyer and I said, “Did he say consecutive?” And she’s like, “I think he did.” We didn’t even comprehend it at the time. And you have to maintain a certain kind of decorum in that circumstance, and it was really my intention to accept my consequences with dignity.

Taya Graham:

I just want to pivot here a little bit because we haven’t really had a chance to speak to you publicly about the film that featured your story. Now you’re not the only cop watcher in the story, but you are a central figure. Now, okay, I’m not saying you have to necessarily give the film a thumbs up, but how did you feel watching your life unfold on screen?

Eric Brandt:

Well, so full disclosure to everybody, when I was in Louisiana, you guys sent some draft work to my lawyer. It hadn’t been through any post-processing. It wasn’t complete, but you sent it to her in case there was anything in there that we could use for mitigation. I thank you. I appreciate that. So I had the opportunity to see it or to see parts of that. I got to see it once through just really briefly. The first thing that I noted to my lawyer was I said, “Thank goodness it’s not all about me.”

Taya Graham:

It was

Eric Brandt:

Such a great story and so much of that story was not me. And that’s the point, right? I’m only on this stage for a brief time and the world is run by those who show up, and it was nice to see that there was momentum and good happening in people’s lives. It was so nice to see so many different positive aspects of all these people that are in union with my circle, but they’re doing their own thing. I was just so thankful that it wasn’t about me. Thank you. I’m

Taya Graham:

So glad. It was such a pleasure to work with you and to, like you said, one of the things that we learned through doing the documentary is that there was this circle of people that you touched that sort of reached out kind of like a constellation all across the country. And it was kind of amazing to see the effect that the copwatching and the copwatching community was having in communities all across the nation. So it was really beautiful.

Stephen Janis:

One thing I was making, I was like, the whole idea of YouTube is the minute you go on YouTube, things just go downhill and you don’t connect. But you guys were the opposite of that. It was like you went from YouTube into real life connections where

Eric Brandt:

You

Stephen Janis:

Were – It’s amazing

Eric Brandt:

How many of those connections are still active.

Stephen Janis:

I know.

Eric Brandt:

It’s impossible for me to respond to everybody in a given day. It’s just so much going on and there’s so many people involved and these are real people with real lives and yet still somehow find time for each other. And that’s what I really got out of your program was that things are really kind of good out there. People are living lives and that’s all we can hope for is that people live a good life.

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, I didn’t want to just fall into the same narrative of the YouTube spiral, which is sort of the mainstream media take on it that, oh, these are people who were like-minded in their pushback against what they felt was a faulty government, and they were able to help connect with each other in ways that were not possible without YouTube. So that’s why I focused on that part of it. I didn’t just do you got sentence. That was the beginning, but really the end was about what came out of those relationships. It’s cool to hear you say that you still have them, right? I mean, you’re still connected to these people.

Eric Brandt:

And what I think is really great is that so many of these people, they’re able to live their lives and then we touch and our gears mesh for a little while and then we live our lives. So we’re not dependent on each other. If you go off and do your thing, you’re not going to ruin my life. You’re not going to ruin my life. You’re going to enrich my life while we’re connected, and I am happy that you’re enjoying your life when we’re not connected. And so a lot of folks, we touch and then we go and we touch and we go. And even a lot of people that maybe there wasn’t a great super mesh, it’s still there. I think that’s how human connections work.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I agree. One thing I wanted to ask you about, I’ve always wanted to ask you this, you have a lot of fans and a lot of critics and some people who say Eric Branch just went too far. I don’t care what he wanted or how he felt about the homeless or police. What do you say to them now? Given the perspective you have of more time, how do you feel about the people who are like, “I think Eric Branch is into the antics. He’s not really fighting for something specific, but just making a show.” How do you answer them now?

Eric Brandt:

Well, I suppose that’s a compound and complicated question.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, sorry.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah. Well, first of all, I was never in it for the antics, right? The street theater was the vehicle. Sorry, our rooster is apparently objecting to the interview over here.

Stephen Janis:

He doesn’t like your answer?

Eric Brandt:

No, the rooster of. I have a critic right here. No, I mean, I don’t know how you address critics. I have. I’m sorry, guys.

Stephen Janis:

No, it’s okay.

Eric Brandt:

He’s got to get his girls under control here. I’ve actually spoken with a lot of my critics, and I have a lot of critics who have turned. I would say critics that have turned friend or at least friendly, and that’s important. So the reality is I’ve never been afraid to sit down and talk with somebody intellectually, but sometimes it’s really hard to open the door, and sometimes the contrast is important too. So for example, if you look at my five-year institutional record, they make notes, they put things in the notes, you can read that and you can see the character of the person. And what you see in there is a lot of interactions with would-be foes, right? These are cops. It’s the government, it’s the man. The reality is that you are the government.

I am the government. This is government by the people, and governed by the people only works when the people bother to show up and do it. So when we have put trust, and frankly, a lot of money in the hands of these strangers, then yeah, we need to have good relationships with them. And different kinds of message and different kinds of activism at different stages requires a different kind of hat to be worn, and I’m very good at wearing the hat that’s necessary or that the work tells me it needs to be worn at the time. So what would I say to my critics? I would say, “Come have a conversation with me.” I’m not going to put any of my critics on blast. They might not appreciate that, but those of you that are watching, you know who you are, and we’ve had some good conversations, and I would have those conversations again.

Taya Graham:

It’s interesting you were talking about wearing the different hats, because one of the difficult parts of the film was trying to show how many successes you had at filing lawsuits, and you had a really big win with Liberty Freak, making case law that I believe enshrines in the 10th circuit, the right to film police. I think this came out when you were incarcerated, that’s when that ruling came out. So what are your thoughts about this win, and do you have any other lawsuits that are still cooking?

Eric Brandt:

I don’t have any that are still cooking. We had some pretty good ones going and the defendants died, and that pretty much puts an end to the litigation because you can’t get damages out of a corpse. I think I’ve had now, in my entire career, I’ve had three or four defendants die before trial. That’s terrible for a lot of reasons, and your questions don’t get answered because the litigation becomes moot. When I came to the halfway house, for the last two years, I’ve had no litigation open. I do have an active litigation right now that I can’t really talk a whole lot about.

Taya Graham:

You

Eric Brandt:

Can read what’s been filed on Pacer, that’s as much as I can give you now, but that litigation is earned, and there are some questions that need to be answered there. I lost track of the question. What was the question? Litigation successes.

The point of the work is not to have a litigation success, right? There’s no such thing as a successful litigation. All litigation is injurious, and so I wouldn’t encourage people to do litigation or to go into it for the litigation. The risks are very high. Take the liberty freak when Irizarry versus Yahia, for example. I was the primary author of that initially because we were together, and you may recall that I actually was found guilty for that incident, and so therefore I lost my part of that lawsuit under collateral estoppel. It was barred because I had been found guilty, and I, in fact, got a six-month jail sentence out of that. So this guy tries to run me over, and I ended up with a six-month jail sentence out of that, but Abboty didn’t. Abody didn’t even get charged, so his continued to move forward.

When the judge granted the officer’s qualified immunity, that’s when things really sped up. We learned that a lot of people watch these cases. The attorneys that wanted to take up that appeal crawled out of the woodwork for him. So getting it to the 10th circuit, yeah, that was my work in collaboration and collateral with Abody. Is that a great success? Well, no, there’s no such thing as a litigation success. It would’ve been better if it had been legislated instead of litigated. So I don’t consider litigation to be a success. Good litigation is difficult, it’s expensive, it’s risky, and you really don’t know what the outcome is going to be. As strong as you. You’ve got a slam dunk case. Slam dunk in the real world is like 80%. You’re not going to get better than that. You could get a weird adverse ruling and lose a perfectly good case, or more importantly, you could have a really good question with the wrong judicial environment to bring it in, and you could end up with a bad ruling.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, we end up in the Fifth Circuit, which is also where good lawsuits go to die.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah. I’m pretty sure that the Fifth Circuit placed a moratorium on brains. I read that somewhere.

Stephen Janis:

Which for people that don’t know, Fifth Circuit basically covers Texas.

Eric Brandt:

I know.

Stephen Janis:

I’m just letting people know who don’t know because we’re talking about 10th Circuit would be the Denver area.

Eric Brandt:

Let me tell you one of the great comedies in my life is the Ninth Circuit.

Stephen Janis:

Which is where? Which is, just so people know.

Eric Brandt:

Okay. This is where the comedy comes in. The Ninth Circuit includes Idaho and California.

Taya Graham:

That’s a little

Eric Brandt:

Schizophrenic.

Taya Graham:

Wow. Wow.

Eric Brandt:

And it’s dominated by the San Francisco side, so those poor libertarians up in Idaho have to endure this liberal shit. Can I say shit on TV? I’m sorry.

Stephen Janis:

No, no, no. Speak the truth. No, I

Eric Brandt:

Do find that to be judicially comedic.

Stephen Janis:

Wow.

Eric Brandt:

Litigation successes though. I mean, the litigation is necessary sometimes, unfortunately, and it’s part of how we push back. There’s virtually never any accountability at the street officer level, and that’s unfortunate. And how much better would the world. Do you have any idea how many hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on attorney’s costs in Irizarry versus Yahia?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, you had the electronic frontier, you had the Cato Institute.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, you had amicus briefs that were supporting you from really great

Stephen Janis:

Institutions. From really high powered organizations that probably have very expensive lawyers, I would imagine.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah. I hope that didn’t buzz through on you. I’m rejecting a call. I’m sorry. Yeah. Even in my case with the jury nullification, we had the ACLU come out from New York. Wow. They were given time to speak at the questioning of the Supreme Court here, Colorado Supreme Court. We had an amicus brief again from the Cato Institute, surprisingly. And if you took. Well, let’s take a look at the Westminster case. I was arrested for speaking about police brutality at the public microphone. It took six years to get to trial. Six years.

Taya Graham:

The

Eric Brandt:

Federal jury was impaneled. They found the city guilty or liable. In civil court, it’s liable. They found him liable of violating the First Amendment by dragging me out of the podium and arresting me for trying to talk about police brutality at my public microphone time. And I will tell you that I did tell the mayor it would be in his best interest if he let me finish my speech. That case cost the city of Westminster about $400,000 just in attorney’s fees alone.

Taya Graham:

Incredible.

Eric Brandt:

And the judgment was fairly small. It was $12,000. So you want to talk about litigation successes. There’s not a lot of money in civil rights, right? I wasn’t beaten. I was in jail overnight.What’s the real injury here? The real injury is to the community. It’s to the constitution. So while prosecutors like to say, “Oh, all these crimes, the victim is the community.” Well, that’s also true with civil rights violations, but they don’t pay out. So the fee shifting, the ability to recover attorney’s fees if you win is great. That can help convince cities to settle with you, but unfortunately, that’s money that does not go into officer training.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, good point.

Eric Brandt:

So we have a bunch of officers that we’re going to presumably say that at least a substantial fraction of them go into the business because they want to do something good for the community. And what they end up is they end up in this morass of, “I have to write my report a certain way so that I don’t lose my case.” That takes a few years for them to figure that out. So the reports go from being detailed and honest to being vague and boilerplate and embellished, and they’re not really remembering the incident. They know how to write the charges for the eight big charges that they file on a daily basis, and it’s really not refreshing their memory. It’s just one of the things. So they become jaded, and you have to remember that they’re being trained by a population that believes that they’ve been taxed enough already.

So we’re giving them the absolute most training that we can squeeze out of a population that is taxed enough already. Now, layer that onto the litigation costs. So Westminster, instead of being able to pay $400,000 for officer training, they instead paid lawyers to take that money out of their community. Those property owners were taxed for that.

That cost of litigation passes right onto the bill with no representation. Cost of litigation is the one thing that they tax you on that you don’t have a say because it has

Taya Graham:

To be

Eric Brandt:

Paid. So the community paid for that. Did they really get a half a million dollars worth of training out of that? And I seriously I don’t really question that. So what’s the word there? Again, there is no such thing as successful litigation. All litigation is an injury to the community and to everybody involved.

Stephen Janis:

Well, Eric, let me shift gears a little bit here. What do you think, you remember people called you a copwatcher. I think you were a copwatcher. I don’t know if

Taya Graham:

You’ve

Stephen Janis:

Been able to follow it from prison, but what do you think about the copwatcher movement at this point that you were a big part of? And in some cases it seems like it’s like James Freeman took down his YouTube channel. There’s been a lot of, I think, commotion in the community. Do you think it’s still as viable as it was five years ago or is it kind of waning or what do you think?

Eric Brandt:

Well, let me first be honest that I don’t have enough time to watch all of these channels. Right,

Stephen Janis:

Of course.

Eric Brandt:

So I guess I’ll give you some off the cuff observations that I’ve made in the last few months that I’ve been able to do that. First of all, when you put yourself out there and you put yourself in the public light, not only do you have supporters, but you also have critics.

And worse than critics is you have the silent enemies. You have the people that are watching your channel just to find the grew up. No, I’m talking about when your life is completely on blast all day long, then you have placed a target on your back. The guy in Texas, the head of the police union, Grimaldi or whatever his name is, I remember him saying once, “We are sick and tired of having a target on our back every day.” And I’m thinking to myself, “Well, stop putting it there.” Well, that’s the same thing with a copwatcher. You’re sticking your neck out. You are exposing yourself to liability. You’re exposing yourself to them taking a tiny little jaywalking ticket and turning it into a prison sentence. You have to look at the great risks that are there. If you have a family, if you have kids to pick up from school and you get arrested doing activism, social services is happy to give those kids a ride and you’ll see them in six months maybe.

If you have a mortgage, you can’t. We’ve seen a lot of cop watchers. I’m using the term copwatcher very loosely. I’m not famous.

Stephen Janis:

I’m famously

Eric Brandt:

Despised labels, but I’ve known a lot of activists, we’ll call them activists, that have lost their employment over their activism. So cops do go to these employers and say things to them and try to do that. That’s another reason why I’ve not shared where I’m employed because I don’t want turmoil with my employer. Does that make sense? That totally makes

Stephen Janis:

Sense. Because

Eric Brandt:

There’s risks there. There are mala factors out there. If we say that 99% of the population is good and 1% is genuinely malevolent, then if you have a channel with a hundred thousand people, you still have a thousand malevolents out there working against you and you’re just one person. Yeah. I haven’t thought of that way. There’s a lot of risk there. And so it’s not at all a surprise to me that some of these activists are flash in the pan, if you will. They do their little activism, they get into a little bit of trouble, then they’re done. And that’s as much as we can expect out of a population, that’s a tax. People can only handle so much tax and so much pressure. It requires all kinds. I will say, I don’t think I’m a big fan of the standing on the side of the road with the Zoom lens in the dispensary.

I’m not sure that I’m really advancing the First Amendment. I may be creating animosity with the First Amendment if we’re basically going after private citizens. And I’m not a big fan of the watch these people freak out until the one asshole gets sauced. I’m not a fan of that. I don’t think that that’s advancing the First Amendment very well. I think that that’s trying to make money in clicks and views. I’m not finding a lot of value in that work, but that makes me the critic and they have to make their own decisions. So

They’re there and I think that we have to tolerate it and accept it whether we like it or not. And you may like it, I don’t know. And your viewers may like that stuff. It does seem to get noticed, but that’s not my fan. My attack is against the government. I want government actors to be made aware and I want the public to be aware of the government misconduct because they’re the ones that ultimately make the decisions. They make the pressure. If you’re out there on the street creating the scene, then there are people in the back that are talking about it. If you don’t mind, I’ll talk to you about the power of how these things make it to the dinner table conversation. I had jury selection going on in an incident in Westminster, this is now about a decade ago, and we’re questioning the jurors.

And one of the jurors says, “I don’t know if this is the same guy, but my kids came home from school a while back and they were talking about a guy with this big sign and with this uncomfortable message. And we had to explain to our kids that this was not the language that we espouse, this is not how we like to live in our lives, but they used it as the teachable moment to explain the function of the First Amendment and the Constitution. So who am I to say that a particular incident does not reach the dinner table in a certain way?” And ultimately those are the people that talk in the background and that’s where the real power comes from. So I think that copwatching is still active and alive. I still see it. I do like some of these channels like John Eagle’s channel and Audit the Audit channel where they kind of go in depth on the story and they seem to put a lot of work into that.

And I would certainly, what’s that channel? She’s got the hair. We were talking with her earlier today. Oh, the police accountability report, that one.

Taya Graham:

I’m glad I’m on your list. Of course

Eric Brandt:

You’re on my list. But these are also important, right? So you have this street antagonism and then we have Tea Graham coming into us with the intrepid reporter in the field, Stephen Janice, and they kind of break down an incident or they break down a story. There’s a lot of money that goes into that kind of journalism. And so it’s so complicated and there’s so many moving parts and it’s really important for people to appreciate all of them.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, we confronted that, but go ahead Tea, you had the next question.

Taya Graham:

I wanted to ask you something because we’re talking about criticism and I was just wondering, just looking back on your life, on your activism, do you have any self-reflection or criticism for yourself? Because I know, for example, I was there when you were in the courtroom in Colorado and I saw you make a statement apologizing to the folks who were affected by your speech. But looking back now, do you have any criticism for yourself or is there anything you would change?

Eric Brandt:

Oh, that’s a complicated question. Do I have criticism for myself? Absolutely. And a lot of criticisms are internal. Some of them we’ve talked about. Yeah. I mean, nobody gets it right all the time. And that’s kind of the problem when you’re out there with the spotlight on you 24 hours a day is that all of your flaws are out there. And I’ve owned my flaws. I tell people I’m bulletproof. Everybody knows I’m a schlub, right? I mean, pick the negative moniker and I’ve probably done it at least once. So that makes me essentially bulletproof. You can’t attack me. Go ahead. Try to insult me. And you have to, to a certain degree, have that kind of attitude if you’re going to go into this. You have to have a thick skin. You have to be able to handle it. I will confide in you now today that what really pushed me over the edge was them taking Otto’s kids.

Taya Graham:

That

Eric Brandt:

Was existential to me. That was so horrible. And that was too much vicarious trauma for me to endure that broke me.

Stephen Janis:

I’m sorry, Eric.

Taya Graham:

I understand that. A lot of people were very deeply affected by that.

Eric Brandt:

Oh, horribly affected. That was a horrible, horrible thing. And just because he was with us, all that, I’ve seen all of that case from both sides. I’ve seen all the body camera footage and none of it made it any easier to swallow. It made it harder. It was even harder if you knew the backside of it. So I’ll tell you that the biggest criticism is that I had too much going on at the same time. I mean, my strength was that they would kick me down and I would get right back up. And I had so many things that were being juggled and then the auto incident was just more than I could bear.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Just so people who are watching, just so they know, Otto, the watchdog, he took his kids camping and they separated him from his kids accusing him of –

Eric Brandt:

For three years.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, for three years. So it

Taya Graham:

Was an ordeal. And that’s for Otto’s First Amendment activism. Otto was primarily, essentially police would approach him for holding signs. He was not putting a camera – Still approach him. He still out there. He’s still out there holding those signs, but putting cameras in people’s faces. He wasn’t approaching police officers. He was merely standing on the side of the road holding signs. And that was the beginning of his persecution.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, Eric, so what’s next for you? I mean, we’re kind of wrapping up and listen, we appreciate your time.

Taya Graham:

Oh, absolutely. Oh,

Stephen Janis:

I appreciate your time. What’s next for you? What’s your future look like? I mean, people want to know, what are you going to do next?

Eric Brandt:

I had intended to get out and go to the ranch and build my ranch. And there’s a lot of work that needs to be done there and that’s my forever home. That’s what I want to build.

Stephen Janis:

With a septic tank, right?

Eric Brandt:

With the septic tank, right? My life’s ambition is a pile of shit and I’m excited about it. Well, I think it’s – Oh, you guys

Taya Graham:

Are

Eric Brandt:

Going to have to bleep out a lot on this video, aren’t you? Yes. I

Taya Graham:

Think it’s absolutely wonderful that you’re creating a life for yourself where you’re going to be able to live off the land and give back to the land, help cultivate your chickens, maybe grow some food. I’m really into pepper stuff myself, ready for the urban apocalypse. So I definitely appreciate being able to live off the grid. Well, if

Stephen Janis:

There is no population left

Taya Graham:

There.

Eric Brandt:

I want to essentially build a biodiverse zone.

Taya Graham:

Yes.

Eric Brandt:

My goal is 50 trees a year for 10 years.

Stephen Janis:

Oh,

Taya Graham:

That’s

Stephen Janis:

Great.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Very nice.

Eric Brandt:

I hate to say, I have a certain amount of experience and education and expertise, so you’re not going to see Eric Brandt running down the street with sparkly purple toenails and a giant fuck the cop sign. That’s just not in the cards. So

Stephen Janis:

Those days are over. Those days of crazy YouTube videos are over.

Taya Graham:

No more Pikachu outfits.

Eric Brandt:

Maybe Pikachu.

Taya Graham:

Don’t give

Eric Brandt:

Up Pikachu. My situation is now different, right? I can’t tolerate another prosecution. The most minor thing now, if I lose, would be a very major thing for me.

Stephen Janis:

Eric, well that- That’s great. I kind of had a feeling that you weren’t going to stop working on this type of reforming the criminal justice system. And I commend you and laud you for that. That something you’re doing when you just got out. But we really appreciate you joining us today. Absolutely. It’s been fascinating discussion. We have very much enjoyed covering your career and film. Yute, you want to

Taya Graham:

Take up? And also being one little part of that constellation, of that Eric Brandt constellation. We’re grateful for you helping us be a part of that community. So thank you, Eric.

Eric Brandt:

Thank you so much for being there.

Taya Graham:

We really appreciate you joining us and sharing your thoughts and your feelings during this critical moment in your life. And we really appreciate your candor about copwatching and the criminal justice system and your own personal reflections about what you’ve been through. Now, Steven, for me, there’s not going to be any rant today for me. I mean, I thought this was a really profound conversation. I feel like there’s nothing I have to say here. I mean, love them or hate him. Eric is always insightful and thoughtful and kind of a mad genius, but not just about his own work, but the broader issues that prompted his activism. But Steven, before I walk us out, do you have any thoughts about our discussion?

Stephen Janis:

Well, it’s just interesting that Eric has projects already kind of percolating to do reform. It’s interesting to see that the activists within him did not die in prison. It came out. And also, well, I think a lot of people don’t understand the trauma of being incarcerated.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:

And to see Eric’s emotional reaction should be, I think everyone should see that because it’s not a big deal. It’s not a small deal to put someone in a cage and confine them. And Eric showed how that affected him. And I think we should all recognize that. Absolutely. We have to be careful about how we run our criminal justice system for a variety of reasons. But the emotional toll it took on him really moved me. And also the fact that he understood that we tried to connect the dots in his life and others and show it in a way that wasn’t just mercenary or that we use the conflict to create a story, that we showed a story of some positivity and some true emotional connections. So I was really glad that he saw that because I worked very hard to try to bring that out of the film.

So it wasn’t just about crazy cop watchers. As Eric points out, they’re people with lives.

Taya Graham:

Steve, that’s a really good point. I mean, we could have made that documentary incredibly sensationalistic, but instead what we wanted to show was the community that was there. And I’m really glad that Eric was so open with us. Okay. We’re going to keep you up to date on Eric and his work, putting his life back together, and also his upcoming litigation or legislation. We’ll see what happens. And we’re also working on new episodes of the police accountability report, which we hope to debut soon. So please stay tuned. And finally, our camera will be in the courtroom when a judge hands down his decision in the dramatic trespassing trial of Long Island Audit. This was after the popular cop watcher defended himself against charges that he broke the law when he knocked on the door of Connecticut State Trooper Brian Fahey. And as always, please be safe out there.