Re: Being a jerk is not a crime

Here is another one this week.
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2011/06/01/mta-officers-detain-man-for-taking-pictures/

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 4, 2011, at 12:21 PM, Mike Findlay <[email protected]> wrote:

> There are way too many judges who are the same type of pig, (and I will keep 
> using pig to describe these types - they are relatively intelligent, they feed 
> on power like a pig feeds on slop, and they become filthy as they wallow in 
> their power), as way too many cops.  They were prosecutors before they were 
> judges, indoctrinated and intoxicated with the power of the state.  
> 
> 
> These kind of things are happening way too often to be dismissed as isolated 
> incidents.  While these cases may be rectified by a higher court that is a high 
> price for a citizen to have to pay to have his pre-existing rights vindicated.  
> And nothing is done to discourage the underlying swine-like behavior of the cop, 
> prosecutor and judge who validated the abuses in the first place.  
> 
> 
> Mike F.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Lance McLain <[email protected]>
> To: DADL-OT (Mailing List) <[email protected]>
> Sent: Fri, June 3, 2011 7:59:49 PM
> Subject: [DADL-OT] Being a jerk is not a crime
> 
> Being a jerk is not a crime. That's a lucky break for many of us, but it wasn't 
> enough to keep Nate Cox out of hot water. On a fine spring day in April, Cox was 
> driving down the street in Richmond, Virginia when he spied a member of the VCU 
> campus Police Department nearby. Cox grabbed a bullhorn and shouted, "Stop 
> harassing people, we pay your paychecks!" (Why did he have a bullhorn? That's an 
> interesting question, but orthogonal to the issues here.)
> 
> Officer S.W. Kelley—the target of the taunt—jumped in his car, gave chase and 
> pulled Cox over. When Cox asked why, Kelley told him, "You looked like you were 
> a little distracted when you were driving." Kelley wrote up a charge of 
> obstructing justice -- which is an odd thing to write someone up for if you're 
> concerned that he's not keeping his eyes on the road. Cox asked how he had 
> obstructed justice. Kelley replied that Cox "distracted me from doing my job."
> 
> Cox demanded to speak with Kelley's supervisor. When the supervisor arrived, he 
> and Cox had a frank exchange of views, and Kelley issued a new citation, for 
> disorderly conduct. The supervisor told Cox that yelling at Kelley through a 
> bullhorn was disorderly conduct. Cox, who also had a camera with him, posted a 
> video of the incident online. You can find it at 
> www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y85wzcIYYg—or just Google "the state vs. Nate Cox."
> 
> If you watch the clip, you might come away with the impression that Cox acted 
> like an obnoxious punk. How? He said something that wasn't nice to a policeman, 
> and he said it loudly. And as Kelley testified, "his attitude and the way he 
> went about carrying himself" were on the sassy side—though there's no law 
> requiring citizens to display cringing submission in the presence of a 
> policeman, either.
> 
> Now, none of us is a mind reader. But it seems fair to wonder whether Kelley 
> would have written Cox up if Cox had bellowed something more flattering to the 
> ego, such as: "Thanks for keeping our streets safe, Officer!"
> 
> If the answer is no, then it looks as though Cox received a fine and a suspended 
> jail sentence simply for expressing an opinion the government doesn't like. They 
> do that sort of thing—in places like Cuba and North Korea. We're not supposed to 
> do it in America.
> 
> But suppose the answer is yes. Suppose Cox had been given a summons for 
> distracting Officer Kelley with high-decibel flattery. Does yelling at a cop as 
> you're driving by meet the standard for disorderly conduct?
> 
> Not hardly. Virginia law specifies that disorderly conduct "shall not be deemed 
> to include the utterance or display of any words." Further, it must have "a 
> direct tendency to cause acts of violence by the person … at whom … such conduct 
> was directed." And there is a whole string of cases in which the courts have 
> found that people who said things much worse to police officers than Cox did had 
> a First Amendment right to do so. In one, Ford v. City of Newport News, the 
> accused "was so loud and boisterous that apartment dwellers in a nearby building 
> came out on their porch and asked if the officers needed help." Yet the court 
> found no basis for a disorderly-conduct charge.
> 
> Then there is City of Houston v. Hill, in which Raymond Wayne Hill started 
> yelling at two Houston cops during an incident in 1982. "Why don't you pick on 
> someone your own size?" he hollered. One of the officers asked, "[A]re you 
> interrupting me in my official capacity as a Houston police officer?" Hill shot 
> back, "Yes, why don't you pick on somebody my size?" The officers took him up on 
> the suggestion and arrested Hill for violating a city ordinance prohibiting 
> "intentionally interrupt[ing] a city policeman … by verbal challenge during an 
> investigation."
> 
> This, the Supreme Court said, was wrong: "The freedom of individuals verbally to 
> oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the 
> principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police 
> state," the court ruled. (By poetic coincidence, one of the officers in the Hill 
> case was named Kelley.) Time and again, the courts also have said police 
> officers should "exercise a higher degree of restraint" than the average 
> citizen, even in response to so-called fighting words.
> 
> Yet despite all this, a couple of weeks ago Nate Cox was found guilty.
> 
> Earlier in the proceedings, Cox's lawyer had made a motion to dismiss the case. 
> Richmond Judge Robert Pustilnik was unpersuaded. "Based on the content of the 
> statement, your client was trying to be a jerk, and create trouble in a 
> situation which had nothing to do with him, in which he had no business. Motion 
> is denied."
> 
> Pustilnik is not what anyone would call a sworn enemy of the First Amendment. 
> Back in December, he struck down the city of Richmond's new noise ordinance as 
> unconstitutional, on the grounds that it was overly broad and that it 
> discriminated in favor of religious utterances, which it exempted.
> 
> But this case, Pustilnik said during the trial, "is not a First Amendment 
> situation. This is not some free-speech rights. This is a person who was … 
> trying to aggravate an officer and incite something … for absolutely no reason."
> Cox has appealed. Five bucks says he'll win. Charles Dickens may have been right 
> when his Mr. Bumble called the law "a ass—a idiot." But there's nothing in it 
> that says you can't act like one.
> 
> A. Barton Hinkle is a columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. This article 
> originally appeared at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
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