Police Accountability Report

09/09/2025

I Am But The Mirror: The Story of American Cop Watching has racked up 175,000 views on the streaming service Fawsome in just 45 days. The film, which explores the growth of YouTube-based cop watching across the country, reached the milestone primarily through word-of-mouth marketing.

YouTube-based cop watching has exploded over the past decade, fueled by activists who film their encounters with police and post them online. The practice has been both popular and controversial, with YouTube channels amassing millions of views while critics accuse practitioners of intentionally provoking officers to garner clicks and views.

Produced and directed by Stephen Janis and Taya Graham—hosts of The Police Accountability Report—the documentary examines this debate through the lens of one of cop watching’s most divisive figures: Eric Brandt.

Brandt was a Denver activist who pushed back against the treatment of unhoused people by Colorado police. His flamboyant and, some say, offensive public protests led to multiple arrests and lawsuits.

In 2021, Brandt pled guilty to three counts of electronic harassment of Denver judges, which prosecutors characterized as death threats. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison and has been incarcerated since. The film explores both Brandt’s extreme approach and the journalists who covered him. It also delves into how the YouTube algorithm helped create an unlikely community that worked together to change lives.

The film was produced under the auspices of The Real News Network, a non-profit news service based in Baltimore, MD. TRNN covers movements and politics around the world and is part of the Movement Media Alliance, a coalition of roughly 20 independent news organizations producing social justice–driven journalism.

The network’s YouTube channel has over one million subscribers.
Stephen Janis and Taya Graham are investigative journalists who cover politics, inequality, and law enforcement. In 2019, they launched The Police Accountability Report, covering policing across the country. The show has garnered roughly 60 million views.

They have also produced several award-winning documentaries, including The Friendliest Town, which recounts the firing of the first Black police chief of a racially divided community on Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore, and Tax Broke, which documents the history of doling out tax breaks to developers to build luxury housing in Baltimore.

I Am But the Mirror is distributed Filmhub, an independent distributor. For more information contact: [email protected]

To watch the film for free on Fawsome click here:

https://lnkd.in/eh7KA3ak

https://lnkd.in/eYXP_Wuq

I Am But The Mirror: The Story of American Copwatching - Official Trailer
youtube.com

This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn

19/08/2025

BALTIMORE CITY AND MARYLAND RESIDENTS PLEASE BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR 15 YRO OLD GIRL WHO DISAPPEARED AUGUST 16TH. She was last seen at Church Square near a nail shop. Her last text message was sent to her family begging for help saying that she may have been kidnapped.
PLEASE IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING CONTACT BALTIMORE CITY POLICE OR Tawanda Jones on FB.

30/07/2025

This Thursday night, July 31st, we’re back with a special episode of the Police Accountability Report — and we’re revealing part of a project that’s taken over four years to create:
🎥 “I Am But the Mirror: The Story of American Cop Watching”
In this episode, we sit down with John Filax and Otto The Watchdog - Watchdog News Network to explore the power, risks, and truth-telling of Cop Watching in America.
Over the course of four years, we interviewed activists across the country — James Freeman LackLuster, Laura Shark, DJkdot the Party NC TYRANT HUNTER Tom Zebra Joe Cool of Chicago, Pajama audits, liberty freak TV and many more. This documentary is a tribute to their work, and to the movement to hold law enforcement accountable.
Please Join us for the Live Chat Premiere:
🗓️ Thursday, July 31st | 🕘 9 PM EST
https://youtu.be/FHjqwBaveZg


🎬 Full documentary FREE to watch:
https://fawesome.tv/movies/10695125/i-am-but-the-mirror-the-story-of-american-cop-watching
📺 More Full Unedited Cop Watcher interviews:
https://www.youtube.com/

I’d also like to take a moment to offer heartfelt condolences to the Lion1 community. My thoughts are with you.

'I Am But the Mirror: The Story of American Cop Watching' is the first documentary to ever cover cop watchers as a grassroots people-powered movement. Taya G...

26/07/2025

The story of Eric Brandt - and the community of cop watchers who worked with him - seems at first fairly straightforward.

A group of down and out men, mostly, seek attention by filming police. Their antics lead to millions of YouTube views, and dubious notoriety. Eventually, Eric went too far, and law enforcement struck back with a lengthy prison sentence for him.

If you watch their assorted Youtube videos, that description isn’t far off.

Standing on the 16th Street Mall in Denver singing“Happy F**k the Cops Day” at the top of your lungs seems not so much like activism but pathological attention seeking.

But if you take the time to explore their lives off camera, and why they decided to pick up a cell phone to film law enforcement in the first place, you start to understand how their work fits into something bigger than their inidivuall foibles: the mosaic of inequality in this country.

Of course, the sometimes outlandish, and Eric’s case, often extreme behavior seems entirely unrelated to the politics of inequality. . Yes they film cops. And yes they profess and extol skepticism of police. But their colorful antics while playing so-called “verbal judo” with a law enforcement over a sidewalk hardly seems like an ulterior commentary on a society striated by excessive apex wealth.

To most, cop watchers are simply the inevitable tide of the disgruntled. Misfits who cannot cope with generational economic change, and instead of working to join it, have simply decided to dissent without an apparent objective.

But dig deeper and a different narrative emerges.

First, all of the cop watchers we interview in this film have led complex, and compelling lives. Some are veterans - Munkay83 served in Iraq and Eric on nuclear submarines. Some were entertainers - like Liberty Freak who hosted televised shopping shows in the 90s. Brian Loma - Cut The Plastic - is a celebrated environmental activist whose award winning work to save the planet has won him renown throughout the state of Colorado.

All, though, have experienced firsthand the cruelty of our current form of capitalism. A world built upon the philosophy of profit, that offers little support, or solace when life goes awry.

So by confronting the most visible form of government power, Cop Watchers are offering a direct rebuttal of the institutions that have failed them. Standing on, and defending the right to film from a sidewalk, they illuminate how the most basic of our constitutional rights are on perilous grounds. The fact that hundreds if not thousands of activists do so on a daily basis, is not an expression of nihilism, but actually affirmative. By picking up a cell phone to actively participate in our democracy, while not always pretty, they seek to contribute to it in a unique and creative way.

And that is why we spent five years creating the documentary I Am But The Mirror: The Story of American Copwatchin. We wanted to give this veritable folk movement the attention it deserved.

Hopefully we did so.

You can watch it for free here: https://fawesome.tv/movies/10695125/i-am-but-the-mirror-the-story-of-american-cop-watching?fbclid=IwY2xjawLx3eBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHuxlmaTlFBBhNdizprgS3aA1tsY67H0GzGH9hv8xPeLxKFJpkYmbHXQMUniI_aem_cJ2jyQKsWLvTs5-NOHDVYw

Over the past decade, hundreds of YouTube channels have emerged solely devoted to the practice of filming police: digital activism driven by outsized personalities. But one cop watcher stepped over the line and paid a heavy price. This is his story.

14/07/2025

Munkay83 is a veteran. He served his country in Iraq honorably. But when his service ended, his country forgot him. In our film "I Am But The Mirror: The Story of American Copwatching we tell his story. How he found purpose in watching cops. How he found friendship and community with fellow YouTubers. How he found a mentor in Eric Brandt. And he is embraced by people who were connected only by Youtube but joined together to make his life better. You can watch his story and more by clicking here: https://fawesome.tv/movies/10695125/i-am-but-the-mirror-the-story-of-american-cop-watching

12/07/2025

New report from Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News shows sharp decline in local journalists in last 20+ years.

10/07/2025

Please join us tonight for a very important live chat and full PAR investigation...They told him his sign was illegal. What happened next shows cops don't know the law....
Timothy Michael Randall was 29 years old when he was stopped for an alleged traffic infraction. Within one minute of stepping out of the car at Deputy Iversion's request, the unarmed young man was shot and killed. Cop Watcher Otto the Watchdog arrived on the scene in Henderson, TX, to protest the brutality and was promptly arrested for disorderly conduct related to alleged profanity on his signage. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis of the Police Accountability Report engage Sgt. Iverson's credibility issues as a state trooper, the dismissal of his criminal charges for the death of Randall, and the potential loss of qualified immunity for Iverson's shooting.
Please join us for the live chat Tonight, at 9 PM Eastern time and we are going to be revealing a special project.
And...we have been working on for over 4 years. I have been giving you hints about it, and we're going to have a full episode on it next Thursday for our patreons and later for our community!!!! And as always, my amazing, wonderful and beautiful patrons will receive priority in the live chat. And of course, my gratitude always!
I hope I will get to see you there. And if not, please feel free to take the time to watch and leave a comment later. I'll see you there and hopefully I'll be able to pick you out for a comment of the week!
And as always, please be safe out there!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hjBVnPs83U

Timothy Michael Randall was 29 years old when he was stopped for an alleged traffic infraction. Within one minute of stepping out of the car at Deputy Iverso...

02/07/2025

Eric Brandt turned a camera into a weapon against abuse.
Now he’s behind bars—and the movement he helped start is under fire.

I Am But The Mirror tells the raw story of cop watchers, citizen journalists, and the blurred line between truth and performance.

Is it activism? Journalism? Or something else entirely?

I Am But The Mirror follows controversial cop watcher Eric Brandt and the reporters who tried to cover him.

It’s a film about YouTube, confrontation, and the collapse of traditional media.

If you believe in the First Amendment, you need to watch this film.

Over the past decade, hundreds of YouTube channels have emerged solely devoted to the practice of filming police: digital activism driven by outsized personalities. But one cop watcher stepped over the line and paid a heavy price. This is his story.