Description
RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 30, 2026
ESTIMATED DURATION: 75 MINUTES
First Amendment Auditors are individuals who attempt to enter and remain on city or public property to record your employees, officials, and operations, or to engage in other expressive conduct. They claim to be testing your knowledge of First Amendment rights and are well known for directly confronting and recording law enforcement officers on duty. Their goal is to record how your employees respond to their recording and to see if you violate their first amendment rights. They often engage in verbal tactics to “rattle,” “bait,” “anger,” or “surprise” your employee or official to illicit a “recordable response.” They record from areas that are publicly accessible and any action taken by your employee to challenge or prevent them from recording may become grounds for a lawsuit and/or the video may be placed on YouTube for public viewing. They have challenged employees at banks, restaurants, city halls, and government facilities among other locations. This session provides common sense guidelines on how to properly respond to these frustrating and potentially volatile confrontations.
SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT:
Barry Thompson is a nationally recognized subject matter expert, consultant, and former banker, with over 40 years of service to the financial institution industry. Barry’s financial services career spanned 22 years before he “retired” to establish Thompson Consulting Group, LLC, his consulting firm that assists financial institutions in competing more effectively by providing services specifically targeted to risk management and security. During his career, he served as executive vice president, senior vice president, treasurer, compliance officer, and security officer. In these positions, he has worked in or managed operations, accounting, investments, mortgage processing, and special assignments and has worked with architects and contractors in remodeling and designing institution facilities. Barry has investigated embezzlement cases, identity fraud cases, check kites, and almost all possible criminal incidents against financial institutions. As a security officer, Barry handled over 900 security cases. He has been involved with investigations and prosecutions on the federal, state, and local levels and has testified before grand juries, county courts, bankruptcy courts, family courts, and the New York State Supreme Court.
Thompson Consulting Group, LLC provides consultative training services for financial institutions that are looking for experts with actual industry experience. With our firm, you learn to handle real-world issues using methods based on practical solutions for the community institution — unlike security firms or computer penetration companies, which only know our industry from the outside. We provide training, risk management advisory services, banking expos, community programs, and physical risk assessments.
LEARNING METHOD This training is available as an on-demand webinar, organized into chapters. Learners can choose to watch individual chapters or complete the entire program. Unlimited testing is provided as the last chapter.
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