Police Claim They Arrested Man Who Burnt American Flag Because Of Threats He Received

from the huh? dept

Hey, guys, how was your 4th of July? Good? Lots of hot dogs and brats? Nobody firecrackered their nuts off or anything? Maybe just drank a little too much? Whatever your 4th of July experience, it sure wasn't as bad as this guy's.

Meet Bryton Mellott. Bryton's just a guy from Urbana, IL. A guy with a Facebook page that he uses to share stuff with friends, post hilarious memes, and post a picture of himself burning the American flag on the 4th of July, the anniversary of when President Washington personally haymaker-punched the King of England right in the face (I think), thereby setting all some Americans free of our British overseers.

As you can imagine, lots of people didn't like Bryton's picture. Some called the police about it for reasons we will get into in a moment. Others threatened him with violence and death. Still others threatened him with violence and death at his place of work. A few meager folks stuck up for him. You know, Facebook.

And at the end of the day, Bryton was arrested by Urbana police. Per the department's own press release.

On the morning of 7/4/16, the Urbana police department began receiving calls concerning a Facebook post that portrayed Bryton Mellott, a citizen of Urbana, burning an American flag. The images and narrative in the post caused some to call and request police action against Mellott and others to call and express concern for the safety of Mellott and those around him. Officers viewed the post and saw that there were a rapidly growing number of social media responses. Many threatened violence against Mellott and his place of employment, which fielded a large volume of calls regarding the post.

Given the volume of responses and specificity of threat against his place of employment (a location where an act of violence would likely cause harm to others), prompted police involvement in this case. After investigating the incident and speaking to both Mellott and his employer [Walmart -EV], Mellott was placed under arrest for flag desecration. The police report lists Mellott as an offender of both flag desecration and disorderly conduct as well as a victim of disorderly conduct. After consulting with a member of the States Attorney’s Office, Mellott was released from custody and given a notice to appear in court. Mellott’s release was due to questions about the constitutionality of the 2013 Illinois flag desecration law.

The Urbana Police department recognizes that this is a case where the right of free speech comes into conflict with the safety of uninvolved citizens. The actions taken in this case have been to try to assure the safety of the public and Mr. Mellott. The Urbana Police urge the public to express themselves in a peaceful way and to not retaliate against unpopular speech.

There is just so much wrong in that press release that it's hard to know where to begin. Let's start with the flag desecration bit first. The end of the PR piece says that Bryton was released because there are questions about the constitutionality of Illinois' flag desecration law, which makes it illegal to burn the American flag. Yet there are zero questions about it, actually. The Supreme Court was quite clear in rulings in the 80s and 90s that laws like the one in Illinois, which was enacted in 2013, are flat out unconstitutional. The burning of the flag can make you mad and sick, but it's speech, and it's worth protecting. That additional bit about consulting with the States Attorney's office wasn't so much a consultation as it was that office telling police to let him go and then refusing to charge him because they couldn't.

The State’s Attorney’s Office is declining to file charges against (Bryton) Mellott as the act of burning a flag is protected free speech according to the US Supreme Court decision, Texas v. Johnson, 491 US 397 (1989).

Now, to the disorderly conduct portion of this. That charge as well is completely nonsensical. If the burning of the flag is free and valid speech, the uproar that occurred on social media, including the threats of violence, can in no way be made the fault of the free and legal speech. Bryton didn't make any threats. He didn't act disorderly in any way. He was purely a victim here.

And the court has made clear since 1949 that the government can’t punish someone for “disorderly conduct” simply because his speech offends people and leads some of them to threaten violent retaliation. The police must protect the speaker (even though such protection understandably involves cost and risk for the police), rather than criminally punish him for his speech, except perhaps in some extremely rare cases that involve brewing riots on the street — a narrow category into which this speech doesn’t fall.

Which brings us to the police's use of those threats as part of its excuse for involvement and the eventual arrest of Bryton to begin with. Keep in mind, whatever you think of it, that what Bryton did was legal. For others to threaten him and his place of work with violence, and to then use those threats to arrest Bryton is one of the most blatant examples of victim-blaming I can think of. The summary here should make this clear: a man, on the 4th of July, engaged in free speech, had threats made against him, and then those threats were the excuse used to arrest that man. Nowhere does the department's comments state that any other arrests have been made, such as the arrests of those who actually committed a real crime by making violent threats.

Being an advocate for free speech means protecting speech you don't like. I can't think of a more pure example of the opposite of that than this story.

Filed Under: bryton mellott, disorderly conduct, flag burning, free speech, illinois, july 4th, urbana

Seventh Circuit Court: Chicago Cops Can't Use 'Annoyance' As Reason To Stifle Free Speech

from the 'disorderly'-free-speech? dept

As long as there have been cops, there have been crowds. And as long as there have been crowds, there has been the mantra, "Move along, nothing to see here." Dispersing crowds has always been part of police work. But in recent years, the crowd dispersion process has broadened to include anyone whose presence isn't wanted. This overreach has led to the catchall charge "disorderly conduct" being used to cover all sorts of behavior, much of which isn't so much "disorderly" as it is simply "annoying" to the law enforcement officers in question.

This "stop irritating me" via handcuffs has become so common it has its own term: "contempt of cop." Abusing the intent of the law to shut someone up (or confiscate their recording equipment) has become so common that entire blogs and websites are able to fill page after page with accounts of these actions.

Fortunately, the judicial system has pushed back. A decision handed down recently by the 7th Circuit Court goes even further than simply declaring a certain situation as being unconstitutional. Judge Joel Flaum's decision actually invalidates a section of Chicago's municipal code.

First, the background:

Buddy Bell participated in a January 2008 protest against the Iraq War in downtown Chicago. While President George W. Bush was at a luncheon nearby, Bell held a banner that said: "End the war and occupation TROOPS HOME NOW."

After Chicago police arrested a protester who entered the street carrying a banner, Bell and two other protesters also stepped into the street and approached the police squad car, chanting, "Hell no, we won't go. Set him free." When the activists refused to get back on the sidewalk, the police arrested them for disorderly conduct.

In particular, the police charged Bell under a Chicago municipal code that makes it a crime to disobey a police officer's instruction to leave the scene when other individuals are engaging in nearby acts of disorderly conduct that "are likely to cause substantial harm or serious inconvenience, annoyance or alarm."

Unfortunately, this sort of catch-all charge is far from unusual. Bell's filing of a federal complaint against the city of Chicago isn't that unusual, either. Many cities are finding themselves paying out thousands of dollars to settle lawsuits stemming from abuse of citizens by law enforcement. Bell challenged this particular part of Chicago's municipal code as unconstitutional. District Judge John Darrah originally dismissed Bell's claim for "lack of standing," but the Seventh Circuit Court reversed the dismissal.

Judge Flaum went further, invalidating that particular section of the Chicago Municipal Code after finding that it "substantially inhibits protected speech and is not amenable to clear and uniform enforcement."

"To the extent that [the ordinance] authorizes dispersal when an assembly creates or is threatened by 'substantial harm,' it does not improperly infringe upon protected speech," Judge Joel Flaum wrote for a three-member panel. "We cannot say the same, however, for authorizing dispersal on the basis of 'serious inconvenience, annoyance or alarm.'"

Unlike the code's provision for responding to nuisances, the ordinance "does not specify what inconveniences, if performed by three or more individuals, may trigger an order to disperse," the 35-page decision states.

"Nor does it clarify that, whatever the inconvenience at issue, dispersal must be necessary to confront the violation," Flaum wrote. "To this end, the ordinance lacks the necessary specificity and tailoring to pass constitutional muster, and we must conclude that the ordinance substantially impacts speech."

Flaum does more than shut down a purposely vague ordinance. He also throws in a dig at the circumstances that called this ordinance into question ("if performed by three or more individuals"). He also calls attention to the other terms used to justify charges being brought under this code, noting that "alarm" is still dangerously non-specific, but saves the real criticism for "annoyance."

As for "annoy," Flaum noted that the ordinary meaning, "which is 'to trouble, to vex, to impede, to incommode, to provoke, to harass or to irritate,' compels this reading: not every annoying act gives rise to imminent danger or nuisance."

"Avoiding annoyance is never a proper basis on which to curtail protected speech," he wrote.

"We cannot conceive of an annoying behavior, however annoying it may be, that could constitutionally draw as a remedy dispersing others engaged in protected speech," Flaum added.

Chicago's stance is that this ordinance is in place to ensure "safety." But safety for whom? Certainly not the public. And does law enforcement really need to be kept safe from "inconvenience, annoyance and alarm?" The Seventh Circuit Court says it doesn't, not if the cost of the safety is the Constitutional rights of citizens.

Filed Under: annoyance, chicago, disorderly conduct, free speech, police

Does The NYPD Really Think That Shooting Photos/Videos Of Protests Is 'Disorderly Conduct?'

from the censorship-at-its-finest dept

The mess in NYC with the way the NYPD are handling the whole "Occupy Wall Street" situation continues. We've already covered the story of the police falsely claiming that video evidence of an incident where an officer (Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna) pepper sprayed women did not show the full story. In those posts, we highlighted the importance of photographic and video evidence from people around the incident, and noted how important the right to film police is for a functioning democracy. Now there's increasing evidence that the NYPD targeted people reporting on, videotaping or filming the police, in making a bunch of arrests.

Reporter John Farley, working for WNET MetroFocus -- which is part of New York's PBS station -- wrote the story after being arrested himself, on "disorderly conduct" charges. What was his disorderly conduct? Apparently it was attempting to interview some of those women who were pepper sprayed by Bologna. He properly identified himself to the police as a reporter, but they did not care. He was still arrested and spent nine hours in custody. While some of the others in custody with him were, in fact, protestors, some were merely bystanders trying to record what was going on. He notes two such stories. The first is of a guy who was working at a cafe right by the pepper spray incident:

The arrest of my cell mate, Sam Queary, 24, adds another dimension to the issue: that of the inadvertent, spontaneous citizen journalist. Queary happened to be at work at Grey Dog Cafe near Union Square when the protesters marched by.

“I heard a commotion and went outside to find cops macing women and arresting people and hitting people with nightsticks, so I started taking pictures,” said Queary. “I followed a young, black male as he was being accosted by five cops. As I tried to take a picture I was pushed away. I asked why I was pushed away and then the next thing you know I was being judo flipped.”

The second involved a woman who just pulled out her camera phone as events were unfolding in front of her, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the protest:

I also met Rosa A., 33, in the police van while we were being transported to the 1st Precinct for processing. She had been shopping at the Barnes and Noble on Union Square when she saw the protesters outside. As many New Yorkers do when they see something unusual, she snapped a picture. And she was arrested.

“I’ve never been arrested,” said Rosa A., in visible pain from the plastic handcuffs. “I was just there looking at magazines.” She laughed, lightening the mood in the police van. Even our arresting officer, in the van with us, chuckled.

While an NYPD spokesperson has been telling the press that police did not target those with cameras, it's hard to understand any other reason for those three people being arrested and charged. Besides, given the fact that NYPD spokespeople talking about this incident have already had their credibility destroyed by the video evidence, it's tough to take those claims seriously. Even if the police weren't officially targeting people with cameras, as Farley noted, they didn't seem to make any attempt to distinguish protesters from bystanders or press:

I don’t know precisely why I was arrested, though I have been charged with disorderly conduct. But what I realized is that in a sudden burst of urban chaos, how can the police distinguish between passersby and protesters who may be committing civil disobedience or any other type of punishable offense? Or between citizen journalists and professional journalists?

In the past, we've seen police use "disorderly conduct" charges against those who film them. It's a nice catch-all that police can use to arrest almost anyone. Perhaps we should be looking to fix the law that allows arrests on "disorderly conduct" when such a law seems to be regularly abused by police to target those who are respecting the law, but doing things the police just don't like?

Filed Under: anthony bologna, disorderly conduct, evidence, journalism, nypd, occupy wall street

Philly Police Harass, Threaten To Shoot Man Legally Carrying Gun; Then Charge Him With Disorderly Conduct For Recording Them

from the lovely dept

As police are insisting that having the public record them is a dangerous situation that shouldn't be allowed, we get a striking example of just how important that right is at times. Julian Sanchez points us to a story of a guy in Philadelphia, who had a license to carry a firearm in a city where it's legal to openly carry a firearm -- but who ran into a police officer who apparently did not understand his city's own laws:

On a mild February afternoon, Fiorino, 25, decided to walk to an AutoZone on Frankford Avenue in Northeast Philly with the .40-caliber Glock he legally owns holstered in plain view on his left hip. His stroll ended when someone called out from behind: "Yo, Junior, what are you doing?"

Fiorino wheeled and saw Sgt. Michael Dougherty aiming a handgun at him.

What happened next would be hard to believe, except that Fiorino audio-recorded all of it: a tense, profanity-laced, 40-minute encounter with cops who told him that what he was doing - openly carrying a gun on the city's streets - was against the law.

"Do you know you can't openly carry here in Philadelphia?" Dougherty asked, according to the YouTube clip.

"Yes, you can, if you have a license to carry firearms," Fiorino said. "It's Directive 137. It's your own internal directive."

You can hear all of this via the YouTube clip, embedded here: It gets worse and worse. Dougherty threatens to shoot Fiorino for trying to show him his license:

Fiorino offered to show Dougherty his driver's and firearms licenses. The cop told him to get on his knees.

"Excuse me?" Fiorino said.

"Get down on your knees. Just obey what I'm saying," Dougherty said.

"Sir," Fiorino replied, "I'm more than happy to stand here -"

"If you make a move, I'm going to f------ shoot you," Dougherty snapped. "I'm telling you right now, you make a move, and you're going down!"

"Is this necessary?" Fiorino said.

Other cops show up and they continue to curse at him and scream at him, while he calmly responds to their claims. They discover that he has a recording device in his pocket, and they go even more ballistic, telling him he broke the law with that as well. Eventually, they finally realize that he wasn't breaking the law with the gun and let him go... But once he posted the audio on YouTube, suddenly the District Attorney took renewed interest in the case, and charged him with "reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct," claiming that he refused to cooperate with police. If you listen to the tapes, it's hard to see how anyone could make that claim with a straight face. It seems pretty clear, from the beginning, that it's the police who were recklessly endangering someone and who were disorderly in how they dealt with Fiorino.

No matter what your opinion is on guns or open carry rules, it's hard to see how this guy deserves the treatment he received from police who clearly did not understand the law in their own city -- and it's even more ridiculous to see him facing a (trumped up) charge, after he uploaded the audio. It seems like a pretty clear case of vindictive prosecution, even as part of the issue is that the very thing that pissed off law enforcement is precisely what proves this guy was perfectly reasonable throughout the encounter.

Filed Under: disorderly conduct, guns, harassment, open carry, philadelphia, police, recording

Teen Who Used Facebook Images To Rank Looks Of Female Classmates, Arrested For 'Disorderly Conduct'

from the facemash? dept

For anyone who's seen The Social Network or is familiar with the history and lore of Facebook, you know that prior to starting Facebook, Zuckerberg got in a bit of trouble for creating "Facemash," which took photos of students from various online "facebooks" around Harvard, put two of them together, and let people vote on who was hotter. So it's interesting to hear that a teenager in suburban Chicago has been arrested for using Facebook to do something similar with is own classmates:

A teenager who allegedly ranked females in a list on Facebook by their physical appearance has been arrested, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune.

The 17-year-old, whose name isn't being released because he's a minor, is a former student of Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, Ill., and the girls he is accused of ranking in the list include former classmates, the Tribune said.

Oak Park Police believe he not only created the "offensive list" but also was responsible for circulating it online, the report said. The teen was arrested Monday at home and is being charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct, the Tribune said.

While I agree that this may have been a real jerk move by the kid, it's hard to see how this should be an arrestable offense. Disorderly conduct seems like a ridiculous charge here. How is being a jerk online "disorderly conduct"?

Filed Under: disorderly conduct, rating people