2:42 PM: Thanks for the tips. Police have received calls this past hour about two masked men in The Junction, photographing people and businesses. Officers checked them out in the vicinity of the Post Office and Eagles aerie; they told dispatch the men weren’t doing anything illegal (permission is not required to photograph anyone or anything visible from a public space like a sidewalk or street). What some who’ve seen them report to be unsettling is their outfits (here’s one photo texted to us), reminiscent of what plainclothes ICE agents have been photographed wearing, but one report we’ve received say the men identified themselves as “independent media.” They were also described as “belligerent.”
2:55 PM: Someone just called this into 911 again, and officers told dispatch they’d made contact earlier and “there’s nothing we can do.”
3:31 PM: As noted in comments, this is apparently a practice called 1st Amendment Auditing, carried out by provocateurs. It would explain why we thought we heard officers tell dispatch the men were “auditors.”
4:40 PM: We’ve received a couple photos of both.
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