I saw a darkie breaking into the house across the street...Follow

Nothing you just said invalidates my response to you. Yes, these two cases limited the scope of the ruling and restricted the wording severely. However, if a municipality were to construct such a law that states it is unlawful to verbally address an officer in such a way that attempts to provoke the officer into a response, it would likely be upheld. Therefore, my original statement that the right to verbally abuse an officer depends on local ordinances is still a perfectly valid statement.

Your underlying argument here is that calling an officer an ******* is likely protected under free speech, and I would agree. However, telling the officer you're going to kick his *** or "you haven't heard the last from me" can easily be interpreted as "fighting words" and thus is unlikely to be protected by free speech in the presence of a well-constructed law forbidding such language. Whether such a law exists, as I first stated, entirely depends on local and state ordinance.

I'd be willing to concede that the law is more restrictive than presented in my original citation if you're willing to admit that language directed at an officer that can reasonably be interpreted as intending to provoke a response (aka "fighting words") is still unprotected by free speech law and thus potentially restricted or prohibited by local ordinance.

You're funny when you are indignant.

And you get funnier by the minute. Maybe if I get you angry enough, you'll write some nonsensical spam script or some such shenanigans that you get into when your honor is sullied.

Who cares about Gates anymore? There's gonna be a Reunion!

I don't know how much simpler I can make this. I think this is a case of two guys being ******** to each other, and one of them was a cop. Maybe the asshattery was racially motivated! It's possible. It's also entirely possible that the officer - the one who hasn't given any indication of being a racist ever before now - thought that Gates was just some uppity black man who needed to know his place. I think it's much more plausible that this is a case of two guys PMSing on a front lawn because they have stressful jobs, and not a case of a black man valiantly fighting to defend his rights against a malevolent and racially prejudiced officer of the law.



Believe it or not, I wasn't even thinking of Stonewall when I wrote it.

This is what I mean when I say you're making this more complicated then it needs to be. You're reading way too much into what I'm saying.



Look, there's a certain fine line between criticising a misuse of police authority - a misuse that was not even present until Gates was, in fact, arrested - and telling an officer to go **** himself. The first has positive intentions and will in a decent world have positive outcomes. The other is something idiots do. Gates is an insanely smart person, but everyone does stupid **** sometimes, and telling a police officer - who up until then had been working well within reasonable parameters - that he should go **** himself is some pretty stupid **** where I live.

I'm not going to blame a guy for being in a ****** mood, but I don't see how you can say that Gates was reacting to an abuse of authority or an infringement on his rights when there was no abuse or infringement present until after he'd started shouting at the cop.

This isn't a case of an officer breaking into Gate's home, molesting his children and administering a savage beating. This is a cop responding to a false burglary call and getting pissy when Gates got angry at him for doing his damn job.

It's not often I agree with Pensive.

Pensive is clever, and I agree with him more often than not, but I think he needs to go out a bit more. He's a bit like the guy in the Alchemist who spends all this time reading books. But then he meets the guy who gets all his views from the outside world, and they both realise that they need to diversify their sources of learning.

I think that's what will happen to Pensive. Except the guy will be a girl. And he will fuck her.

Anyone else wants their future read?


Edited, Jul 30th 2009 10:59am by RedPhoenixxx

I thought that went without saying.

Edit: What I mean is that all cops do that. It's like, eighty percent of what cops do. Presumably, it was what Crowley tried first with Gates, but I guess it didn't work. That was what I meant when I said



If someone's dead set on starting a fight with a policeman and doesn't back down or react to mediation, then arrest is the last option. That's not entirely what I think happened here. The responsibility for the whole shebang here lies heavily with Crowley for overreacting to Gate's behaviour. The point I was getting across is that the cop certainly can't fight back in the situation. He's expected to be nice when other people are rude.

Edited, Jul 30th 2009 11:31am by zepoodle

Omega,

I just have one question....WHERE'S SCREECH?!

No, they really are trained to de-escalate situations. The idea is to not arrest people if possible. Arrests mean paperwork and lots of inconvenience for the officer and the arrestee alike. This training is such a core of police education that it is a consideration when applying disorderly conduct laws.

If this situation is as the officer describes it, he has a pretty low threshold for conflict--I've had to deescalate people who were acting much more off the wall. You have to let **** that people give you roll off your back, otherwise, you won't survive your job. What people almost WILL press charges for are direct threats--direct, provable threats. Otherwise, this **** should have been cake for a guy this experienced--I mean Jesus.

Maybe it's regional but the cops in Maine are not trained to be sensitive - not in the same sense as a social-worker or DMV employee. My job required me to respond to emergencies with police/fire/EMT etc. Ive been required to take Personal Safety Training at our State Police Training Academy. We are certainly trained in recognizing and de-escalating situations and techniques to attempt to diffuse them. However it's a very different message than the more traditional personnel training in which we're taught effective listening, compromise techniques etc. In this training with the state police, we're taught different stances, postures - it's all about appearing unintimidated. A VERY different approach.

I don't know about the paper work generated from arrests, but in 2004, 1700 people were arrested at the RNC in New York - 75 of them were convicted. The 2008 party conventions were little different. This is definitely using 'arrest', regardless of constitutional rights, to control people.




Edited, Jul 30th 2009 5:21pm by Elinda

I'm next!