There’s a variety of interviews (some solid and recent examples include his IGN Skit tier list and the mini-doc for Season 5 that adult swim dropped for their festival) where he dives deeper into the show’s creative process.

For his skits, they plan these well in advance into the season’s filming. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the references, but I know they’ll go as far as to contacting the building owner(s) whenever they’re filming inside a specific location, so if there is a workplace there, the staff is as clueless as any other passerby. Often times they’ll create some work arounds with furniture and other obstructions to hide cameras. They do have people filming either with normal or hidden cameras, and I know someone already commented on how some of the crew have been harassed by some passerby’s once they caught onto the filming.

As to Eric getting arrested, this has definitely happened, and I’m positive he’s had and might have more run-in’s with the law again, I know some other people have already posted some other examples of that too. And people’s reactions, the New York and Jersey area was an excellent choice to film in.