They came with cameras and they left in handcuffs.
On Labor Day weekend two years ago, three self-proclaimed “First Amendment auditors” — people who purposely test their constitutional protections, often by filming police officers and other public officials — arrived in downtown Colorado Springs as bars let out.
The trio zeroed in on a handful of officers who were speaking with other people in a parking lot about a fight. The auditors stood a few feet from the officers and filmed them. Colorado Springs police Officer Kristopher Czajkowski told the trio to move back several times.
Then the officer started a countdown.
“You have five seconds to move this way, over into this parking spot,” he said, according to video posted online. “Five, four, three, two, one. You are all under arrest now.”
Among the auditors was Chris Cordova, who runs YouTube channels where he features videos of his confrontations with police in the Denver area. He was arrested and cited for interfering with police, a municipal charge, took the case to trial and was acquitted, his attorney, Milo Schwab said.
And last week, Cordova sued the Colorado Springs Police Department over the incident, alleging he was wrongfully arrested and maliciously prosecuted as retaliation for exercising his right to record police officers.
It is legal to film police officers in Colorado, as long as the filmers do not interfere with the officers’ work.
“Right now, in the environment we have and are living through, we have to push back on every unlawful arrest,” Schwab said. “And whether the officers… are making the arrests and filing these charges out of ignorance or out of malice, we shouldn’t — and people in our society shouldn’t — be subject to criminal prosecution for things that maybe a police officer finds annoying but is not an actual crime.”
Caitlin Ford Blanco, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Springs Police Department, declined to comment on the lawsuit. She said none of the officers named as defendants in Cordova’s complaint violated policy, and none were disciplined in relation to the September 2023 arrests.
Cordova, like many other First Amendment auditors, runs monetized YouTube channels — his have more than 250,000 subscribers — where he shares videos in which he attempts to film people in public places, public officials and police officers. (He posted footage of his Colorado Springs arrest in a video titled “Cop Gets BUSTED for ARRESTING Auditors! CAUGHT in Multiple Lies! Cop OWNED!!!”)
“From what I can tell, some people have made it their mission to sort of test the limits of the First Amendment in various situations, like recording police, going into government buildings and recording actions that take place inside there, going into courthouses,” said Jeff Roberts, executive director at the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.
Anyone can film police in Colorado, Roberts noted, though filmers are prohibited from interfering in police actions, and that line can be hard to define.
In 2018, Colorado journalist Susan Greene was handcuffed and briefly detained by Denver police officers who told her to “act like a lady” when she refused to stop filming officers and first responders as she stood on a public sidewalk; two officers were disciplined and she later won a $50,000 settlement from the city, municipal records show.
Over the last five years, people have sued at least 10 times over alleged wrongful arrests or retaliation related to filming Colorado police officers, according to a database of court cases maintained by Courthouse News Service.
Schwab said auditors want to strengthen First Amendment rights by forcing officials to recognize them even in uncomfortable situations.
“Yes, they can be annoying,” he said of the auditors. “That is true. The First Amendment is not there to protect popular opinion and popular conduct. We wouldn’t need it if the only thing it was protecting is politically popular speech.
Roberts worries that the auditors’ sometimes intentionally antagonistic approach — and walking right up to the line of what is protected activity — can ultimately have a harmful impact on public access. Supporters of a law in Arizona that made it illegal to film police officers within eight feet without their permission pointed to First Amendment auditors as a reason for the law, which a judge struck down as unconstitutional a year after it passed.
The First Amendment is not without limits, Roberts noted, and some institutions — like courthouses — make their own rules around whether members of the public can film inside.
“I’m all for people exercising their rights under these laws,” Roberts said. “…The worry is that people who are trying to test the limits of the First Amendment and are doing things that may be disruptive or borderline disruptive, it can backfire, and more rules can be put in place for everybody when that happens.”
The arrest in Colorado Springs was not Cordova’s first.
In 2023, Cordova was convicted of federal crimes for filming inside a Social Security Administration office in Littleton where filming was prohibited. He was sentenced to serve 15 days of incarceration, complete two years of probation and pay a $3,000 fine.
At the time, federal prosecutors said Cordova had earned $11,000 over five months from one of his YouTube channels, including just over $700 from the video in which he entered the Social Security office, which they described as “ill-gotten gains.
Prosecutors sought a sentence that included prison because, while the federal case was pending, Cordova was arrested at least twice more on misdemeanor charges relating to filming in public places and filming around police, according to a July 2023 sentencing statement.
Cordova did not return requests for comment.
Schwab hopes Cordova’s lawsuit against Colorado Springs will encourage “better policing” going forward, and said police officers across the state use obstruction and interference charges too liberally.
“The use of it seems to be becoming abusive,” he said. “They are not focused on the actual physical act or threat that would impede an officer, but instead a more generalized feeling that this is in some way distracting… And that is not the law.”
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