BRATTLEBORO — The man billed as “Hank with Brattleboro News” first appeared on YouTube in April, filming a local police officer eyeing a downtown sidewalk dotted by blood stains.
“The officer,” the citizen journalist said to the camera, “did not seem to be too fazed by it.”
Seven months later, a rising number of viewers — living in a community with a 16% increase in police calls — are riled up in a debate about such content and its creator.
Hank Poitras’ social media sites (most locals know him only by his first name) show police, firefighters and EMTs responding to reports of impaired driving, public overdoses, threats, fights and thefts. There also are plot twists, such as a Fourth of July car blaze that ended with fireworks exploding inside the vehicle, or a wanderer who found an idling car carrier, only to take it on an 84-mile joyride amid pursuit by authorities from three states.
The up-to-10-minute videos don’t name those being filmed, but do show their faces and handcuffed hands. Each report ends with police explaining any resulting charges and Poitras closing with the line, “Just because you are arrested does not mean that you’re guilty of a crime.”
Poitras has released more than 100 videos so far, with some racking up 7,000 YouTube views in a town of 12,000 people. Add sharing on other online platforms and, in the case of a recent report on a 10-acre brush fire, they’ve been clicked on as many as a half-million times, according to his analytics. Collectively, they explicitly show the extent and effects of poverty, substance use disorders and mental health issues in the community.
Some viewers, usually commenting under a pseudonym, offer responses as simple as “Thank you Hank.”
“His intentions I believe is to get the community aware of rising concerns and stop offenders from reoffending,” a Facebook commenter named Angel Maria Weste wrote.
But other social media users have condemned the content — although VTDigger couldn’t find anyone who would identify themselves on the record.
“Why do you let him do this?” one woman asked police as Poitras filmed their August interaction in a parking lot.
“It’s his First Amendment right,” an officer answered.
“To exploit people who are living in poverty, who are living with drug addiction, and living with problems, who are homeless and in the streets, to exploit their issues?” she replied.
Poitras knows many people think he’s motivated by hate or hard-right thinking, which he denied in an interview with VTDigger. Instead, he rewinds about a year ago to when he bought a BMX bike at a downtown store, only to have it stolen.
“I wanted the town to get better,” he recalled, “and thought, ‘What can I do?’”
A fan of the television documentary series “Cops,” Poitras came up with an answer: “When a call comes in on the scanner, I’ll follow the police. If they go to a millionaire, a middle-class or poor person, I’ll document what’s happening so people can watch and then we can talk about how to fix it.”
Not all locals agree with Poitras’ thinking and have told him on social media and in person, his videos confirm. He loudly vents his feelings about crime (“We have major problems”) and his critics (“The group that claims that they’re full of compassion? They sure spend a lot of energy trashing out Hank”) in a separate weekly recap called “The Planet Hank Live Show.” But the citizen journalist is within the law, according to experts.
“Taking photographs and video of things that are plainly visible in public spaces is a constitutional right,” the American Civil Liberties Union reports on its website.
David Blow, a journalism professor at Vermont State University at Castleton, said tracking police calls reminded him of his early years as a reporter for The Post-Star in nearby Glens Falls, New York. But he did that before the dawn of cellphones and personal computers, which bring more questions than answers for his media ethics class.
“With everybody filming basically everything, it’s a new issue,” Blow said in an interview. “I think there is value for police to have scrutiny, but if that was my loved one, would I feel the same? There are benefits and pitfalls, and I think it’s smart to talk about it.”
An anonymous poster on a 13,600-member “Brattleboro, Vermont” private Facebook group recently tried to do so by asking, “Has (Hank) been trained regarding the concerns of ethics, free speech and nonpartisanship, just to name a few?”
In response, Poitras points to his “Planet Hank” umbrella website that shows he’s a videographer with a degree in film production who has taken journalism classes at Keene State College in neighboring New Hampshire. But he limits his public biography to his career.
“I’m very private,” he said, “and I drive a hard line when people encroach on that.”
Poitras isn’t alone in his practice. In Burlington, freelance photographer Wayne Savage has filmed police calls for both mainstream and social media outlets for years. In Texas, another citizen journalist recently made national news when the U.S. Supreme Court revived her case against authorities who arrested her for seeking information for her 200,000-follower Facebook page.
The Brattleboro News videos are drawing not only viewers but also sponsors, with the local Ford dealership topping a closing-credits list that ranges from an area home security service to a hair stylist.
Poitras said the financial support — which he likened to traditional media advertising and underwriting — allowed him to focus on the work.
“Would I do this without it?” he said. “Yes. But the money helps.”
Authorities can assist, too. Police didn’t bristle when Poitras filmed a man detained for disorderly conduct repeatedly cursing and spitting at them.
“You said the only good cop is a dead one?” an officer was heard asking the man in the resulting video.
“Yep, I always said that,” the man said.
“Very nice,” the officer concluded before eventually releasing the man with a citation.
Brattleboro Police declined to comment further. But they responded to a call from Poitras this summer when a bare-chested man with a large Nazi swastika tattoo allegedly threatened to kill him with a knife during filming in a public park. The resulting video shows the man being arrested before he was placed in state Department of Mental Health custody.
Poitras, acknowledging his critics, has branched out into less controversial content. In one recent video, he filmed problems with an elevator broken for nearly a half-year at downtown’s Snow Block affordable housing project. In another, he showed the town’s animal control officer hosting a public “puppy playdate.”
“Some people are going to call me coldhearted, and I do say more than if I worked at a corporate news company,” he said. “I’m not perfect. This is an evolution. I am listening.”
But such public service projects receive only hundreds rather than thousands of views. More people watched a recent video of a downtown fight that featured a man spotting the citizen journalist and his camera.
“Hank’s here, Hank’s here,” the man could be heard shouting before speeding off. “Let’s go.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: In Brattleboro, a citizen journalist is breaking — and making — news.