Does your local police allow Facebook comments?

What are your thoughts on this? Should the public be able to post comments on official police Facebook pages?

I've noticed a pattern that when video of something egredious that the police have done goes public, they disable comments on their FB pages. An example from this morning is a story being circulating of a Laramie County Sheriff's deputy assaulting a special needs 8 year old. Without being asked by school administrators, the deputy tackled a 2nd grader to the ground, bloodying his nose and giving him rug burns to his face. It's alleged that the deputy tried to delete body cam footage of the incident.

Lawsuit accuses Wyoming deputy of tackling 2nd grader | 9news.com

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A federal lawsuit accuses a Laramie County, Wyoming, deputy of violating an 8-year-old boy's rights by tackling him to the ground and restraining him at school when he hadn't done anything wrong. The deputy then deleted body camera footage of the assault, the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit says the deputy happened to be standing near the principal's office while a teacher and the principal were talking with the boy, identified in the lawsuit as J.D., about comments he had made to a cashier in the lunchroom. J.D., who has a neuro-divergent disability, had been going to the principal's office during his lunch recess for the last few days in accordance with his Individualized Education Plan, the lawsuit says.

The discussion was going well, the lawsuit says, and at no point did anyone request the deputy help or intervene.

The deputy "deleted portions of his body cam video of the event in an effort to conceal his wrongdoing," according to the complaint.



So I was wondering what the public had to say about it, so I went to the Laramie County Sheriff's Office Facebook page. In a complete shocker to no one, FB comments have been disabled around the time that the story broke.

Laramie County Sheriff's Office | Cheyenne WY

According to the ACLU, a federal court ruled that a public official's facebook page relating to that persons official duties is a "public forum." I'm not a lawyer, obviously, but this seems like it would cover official police pages as well. I guess my question is if a police department's page have comments turned on for a period of time, then turns them off to stiffle speech critical of them, is that constitutional?

This article covers blocking individuals from commenting. While similar, not the same as blocking everyone as opposed to blocking certain individuals.


(2019)
Court Rules Public Officials Can’t Block Critics on Facebook | ACLU

One of the core purposes of the First Amendment is to allow people, regardless of their views, to hold the government accountable through expression. So, if your elected representative has an official Facebook page where she invites comments, can she block you from commenting because you criticize her work?

On Monday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the interactive portion of a public official’s Facebook page is a “public forum,” so an official cannot block people from it because of the opinions they hold.

The case arose after the chair of a local board of supervisors in Virginia, Phyllis Randall, briefly blocked a critic from her official Facebook page and deleted a comment he made about her colleagues’ management of public funds.

The critic, Brian Davison, represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute, filed a lawsuit arguing that Randall had violated his First Amendment rights by removing him from a public forum — space the government makes available for people’s expressive activity — because she disagreed with his views. Randall countered that she has the authority to control the page’s content — including the comments. (President Trump has used some of the same arguments in a lawsuit against him for blocking people on Twitter.)

As the court rightly held, that includes any time that they’re controlling a Facebook page they maintain in their official roles. Specifically, the court recognized that when a public official uses a Facebook page as a tool of governance — that is, when she uses it to inform the public about her government work, solicits input on policy issues through the page, and swathes it “in the trappings of her office” — she is controlling the page as a government actor.


A federal court held that a police department’s use of Facebook content filters violated the First Amendment. Public colleges could be next.

A federal court held yesterday that a police department’s use of Facebook’s content filtering tools violated the First Amendment. The ruling could impact how public colleges and universities regulate online speech, too.

The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas ruled that the Arkansas State Police unlawfully used Facebook’s content moderation tools to censor speech on the department’s Facebook page. The agency set Facebook’s profanity filter (which deletes comments if they contain certain objectionable words) to the strongest available setting and blacklisted a custom set of words they selected, including “pig,” “copper,” and “jerk.”

That’s why government actors — like public universities — act unlawfully when they create public forums for speech on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, only to employ filters and other similar features that censor content or block certain users. The Arkansas court’s reasoning about the actions of its State Police mirrors concerns FIRE raised after surveying use of these same tools by public universities.

The customized blacklist. The “page moderation” filter allows an administrator to establish a custom list of blocked words. Like the profanity filter, this filter automatically hides posts or comments if they contain a phrase on the custom list.

So, should an official police page be able cut off commenting at any time?

 

I don't mind it. With so many people on FB, adding another avenue of visibility isn't bad, imo.

However, in my legal layman views, this is similar to roping off the steps of city hall. In fact, I see fewer time/place/manner restrictions on a FB page than I do on more tradional public forums.

 

"But the police union objected that both officers qualified as crime victims because they had been menaced by the people they shot."

Because of course they did.

 

This is the argument I've heard, all or none.

But leads me to wonder, if an event makes the department look bad, can they go from all to none, given that before said incident, everyone was allowed to speak their minds?

 

Just looked at Alachua County Sheriff's FB. Commenting was disabled on Sep 28th.

Gainesville PD had 2 comment-able posts since July. That's as far back as I went. But, this note at the bottom seems iffy.

 

Don't conduct personal business from your Commissioner John Doe account, and don't conduct public business from your personal John Doe account.

Fot example, I'm pretty sure that if he used his dept issued cell phone to take personal pictures, that would be generating a public record, and be subjected to FOIA requests. I could be wrong.

 

I agree. I didn't think it would be possible, and if it is, it definitely shouldn't be! There's already occasional shenanigans when it comes to FOIA-requested footage.

 

That's my understanding. Thanks.

I've seen where courts have ruled against PD's for deleting negative comments. What are you're thoughts on abruptly turning off comments (for everyone) when they were previously turned on?

Say for example, if Minneapolis PD turned off commenting once the Chauvin footage went public? To me, that's like that's like roping off the steps of city hall and the sidewalk surrounding it the day after the mayor was found guilty of stealing tax payers money.