A first amendment case out of Alabama

Some people are not so much human.
There is such a thing as a bad dog.

 

Watch the first 10 mins of that video if you can. Getting ran out of the building, chased out to the sidewalk, intimidated, ID demands, no forms, not giving forms to fill out, being told to leave the city, and getting arrested for nothing.

One of the cops he was requesting a complaint form put him in the hospital...

Bluke gave it a come on man and I'm curious why.

 

We are all human, we are all capable of acts of madness and depravity in certain circumstances

 

The point is that Trump had to pardon them because they were convicted. No system of justice is perfect but there is arguably a far greater system of accountability in the military than there is for police interacting with citizens.

 

Original sin and all that. Manichean heresy

 

For now this is probably true. The high leadership of the military is full of people with advanced educations and liberal arts degrees, you definitely cant say that about the police, the closest they get to an advanced education are near pseudo-sciences like criminology. There are probably only a hand full of places you can get a better liberal arts education than West Point or Annapolis. But that can certainly be transformed. The whole "woke military" thing is something the right talks about. Institutional rot can happen there too.

 

True. The military is arguably the institution that survived the first Trump administration with its honor intact. But it will be sorely tested in the second Trump administration. People high up in Project 2025 very much envision the military as primarily a tool to use against domestic enemies. They thirst for the blood of opponents.

 

Basically the only thing that separates us from Latin America is a relatively apolitical military. I suppose if this happens, we will have to cultivate our own Hugo Chavez to end the reign of the oligarchs and usher in a glorious era of American Bolivarism.

 

I didn't see the video. Unless there's more to it, seems like a strong First Amendment defense and ethics problem for the Judge.

 

Question for the board about "disrespecting" an officer...

Imagine yourself on a sidewalk in Gainesville. It's noon on a Friday. You have a sign that says "Keep Billy Napier" or "Fire Billy Napier," your choice.

A GPD officer shows up and says "You can't be on the sidewalk with that sign. Give me your ID or name and date of birth."

You say "No. I haven't broken the law therefore I'm not required to provide that info. "

Is that disrespect?

 

This is a free country. If a cop is being a dick, I'm allowed to call him on that. How does protecting people's free speech rights from government officials abusing their power do any good? I'd say the answer is in the question.

 

yes, you're allowed. you can chew out the clerk in the convenience for not being quick enough. but what's the point?
if the cop was out of line, there are channels to follow that might actually do some good. "Get your ass out of the way" does not.

Other than a couple of tickets here and there (and they were years ago) I've always had good interactions with police. But I'm also white, educated and incredibly pleasant.

 

None of this speaks to the problem. We're all people. We all have bad days. We aren't always our best selves. We should not have to walk on eggshells around people in positions of authority because they are placed above the law. These people would be more inclined to treat others with respect and courtesy, which is what you want, if they knew there were consequences for abusing their authority.

Yet, it does matter. A mechanic can't throw me in jail for using harsh words with him.

The only way we can change the system is if people stop making excuses for it and start demanding accountability. When your kids do something wrong, do they face consequences? If your kid stole something from a store, would you punish your kid, apologize to the store, and offer to make them whole? Or would you offer advice to the store on how they should arrange their security so people don't keep stealing from them?

 

There doesn't have to be a point. People have bad days. Cops can be dicks. It doesn't much matter what prompted it. What matters is that cops and judges shouldn't be able to abuse their power to punish people for being unpleasant to cops.

 

Interesting analogy. To make it appropriate, we'd have to say my kid was accused of stealing something from the store. He believes he didn't, the owner believes that he did. I would hope that my kid works with the owner/manager to shed light on the situation wherever it can be done. If he believes he did nothing wrong and the owner/manager is just being a jerk, I wouldn't want him to name call the owner/manager. It could be the case that the manager mislabeled one of the items or the code otherwise didn't ring up properly in the self-checkout line. If the police are called, still be respectful. See if your evidence works in your favor, if not, just go with it until we have an opportunity to get the situation corrected. Depending on the level of accusation, it most likely won't involve anything significant from the police or even warrant a call to the police, you never know. Depending on the age of my kid, it might be appropriate to have me come down there to learn the perspective of the management and see what my kid is being accused of and how that matches up with the evidence at hand.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

I don't know what the law requires here, but I would say the behavior is either legal or illegal, not disrespectful. Sometimes people think they are legally right and they are not. That doesn't have to be disrespectful, and it doesn't need to draw a disrespectful response, either. A person can be arrested without disrespect just the same (regardless of whether or not this rises to the circumstance).

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

From the description in the original linked article it sounds like the police officer was an a-hole, the guy who was pulled over and ticketed was an arrogant a-hole and the judge who issued the order was also an a-hole who stretched the limit his authority. Paraphrasing Shakespeare from Romeo and Juliet, a pox on all their houses.

 

I wonder how long the officer had been driving around with a radar that was purportedly broken, requiring him to issue tickets using his cruise control? I'm not sure if this officer had a body camera on or not, but it appears that Alabama law enforcement have a lot of power to refuse to release body cam video even assuming it exists. May not matter much in this case since both sides agree about the word that was used, but it would be interesting to see to see how it got to the point it did.

How Alabama’s ‘weaker’ body camera access laws stack up against other states

Gunita Singh, a staff attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said this week that Alabama, compared to other states, has “one of the weaker body-worn camera access laws in the country.” Her comment comes after a 2021 story by The Hill that listed the 9 states with the “strictest rules on releasing body cam videos,” and Alabama was among the group.

****

In Alabama, the release of body camera footage is a “bare minimum” position, Singh said. State law passed last year allows people depicted in body camera footage to petition the agency to view it. Even then, there is no guarantee a law enforcement agency that owns the footage will release it to the requestor.

The media and the general public have no legal recourse to view the footage. The Alabama State Supreme Court, with an 8-1 ruling in 2021, decided that police bodycam and dashcam videos are investigative materials and exempt from disclosure requirements of the state public records law.