After Capitol riot offender Daniel Warmus posted videos of his encounters with Hamburg police, the police department’s nonemergency phone lines were “inundated” with complaints and, in many cases, threats of violence, according to the U.S. Probation Office.
The calls came after Warmus posted the videos on his YouTube channel, with the most recent one posted July 3 showing an officer issuing a traffic warning to a motorist in Orchard Park.
“We’re in Orchard Park here,” Warmus says on the video. “Just busted this piggy out of his pigpen.”
The volume of phone calls to the town’s dispatch center overwhelmed dispatchers, who were unable to field calls regarding genuine emergencies, according to the probation office document filed in federal court Monday.
Most of the callers are from across the country and are not local, according to the office.
Warmus operates a YouTube channel called “Auditing Erie County,” and he publicly posts videos of himself dealing with police officers at police stations and local government officials at government buildings over the right to film inside the buildings. His YouTube channel has nearly 72,000 subscribers. In most of his videos, he wanders around the buildings and shows his encounters with public employees, some of whom are friendly and others who seem uptight because of his presence. Warmus says he is exercising his constitutional right to film on public property.
His YouTube channel has a significant following, with many of his viewers often reacting to his encounters.
“Since Mr. Warmus’ first video of an interaction with a Hamburg police officer, the department has received hundreds of frivolous calls threating violence towards their officers or other members of law enforcement,” according to the court filing. “When the formal process to file a complaint is explained to the caller, they do not do so.”
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