>In March 2016, Novak set up a Facebook page that purported to be that of the Parma Police Department. He published six satirical posts in 12 hours, one of which claimed there was a job opening to which minorities were encouraged not to apply and another that warned people not to give food, money or shelter to homeless people.

>The police department, claiming the posts had disrupted its operations, launched an investigation and ultimately searched Novak's apartment, arrested him and jailed him for four days.

First, can the department detail how their operations were disrupted since that is the charge? Second, if it was clearly satire then it's protected speech. Third, what exactly are these posts so that I make sure not to do the same thing from out of state.

Edit:

>That's because there was no court precedent saying it's a violation of the Constitution to be arrested in retaliation for satirical remarks when the officers have probable cause, the court said.

But there is precedent that satirical remarks are protected, thus eliminating the probable cause I would think.

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Hows them government boots taste? Not like free speech...

The news isn't about this dude, it's about the increasing scope of qualified immunity.

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> You impersonate a government official, get arrested

This is the key part of it. You can impersonate a government official just fine if it's clear that it's satire. I'm sure you've heard of SNL or Chappelle Show as examples of popular shows in recent history that impersonate government officials.

If you're arrested for satire then acquittal doesn't matter because your rights were violated and you should sue since satire is protected speech.

Social media isn't official for operations, it's a collection private platforms. Now if the government wants to nationalize them, you'd have an argument.

So…you’d think.

It I’m pretty sure the SCOTUS has held that it does not violate the 4th amendment to be arrested even when an officer doesn’t know the law and is literally making up an arrest-able offense on the spot.

As long as they have a good faith belief you are breaking the law (even if what they allege you are doing doesn’t violate a law)…they can arrest you.

Compete insanity and I don’t agree with SCOTUS there.

My guess is the DA drops the charges.

And then the cops will low key harass and target this guy until he leaves town.

Scary ain’t it.

I think it's the same as "there's no court precedent for tasing a naked man to death on the side of the road so you can't be held liable for your actions" and similarly great legal decisions.

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Police is supposed to have thick skin but I guess not.

They're thick, alright.

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That's what you get when your entire police force is made up of high school dropouts, or roided up jocks that couldn't get a scholarship, who are trained as if they're an occupying military force instead of community guardians.

Many countries require a degree of some kind in criminal justice in order to become an officer. The US has hilariously lax training requirements.

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Another case of the police making shit up and getting away with violating someone's rights because they were butt hurt.

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And because there's no precedent saying it's bad, there can never be a precedent. Because the case is dismissed for not having precedent which in turn doesn't generate new precedent.

time for a flood of Supreme Court parodies?

There’s nothing in the rule book that says a dog can’t play basketball.

Ah, but there's no cuter precedent saying that THIS police department couldn't arrest THIS guy for THOSE exact comments. Without that exact precedent, how could the officers possibly know what the law is? /s

Yep. Although my understanding is that sometimes precedents do get set, because it's basically left at the judges' discretion whether to throw out the case or not. So it's not an automatic loss, just a likely one. I.e. it's worth trying to sue if you have the resources for it, not necessarily for yourself but for everyone else that comes after you.

Qualified immunity/Conservative SCOTUS.

It takes more training to be a barber in Texas than a cop anywhere in the state.

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I remember reading an article stating that some police departments have IQ caps. oh here it is: https://www.yourtango.com/news/police-high-iq-max-limit-degrees-police-reform

The charges were already beaten with his acquittal. This was the civil lawsuit.

The judges are part of the problem.

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The constitution is a contract between the government and the people. If the government, including the supreme court, will not abide by it, we have no contract. If we have no contract, the government has no power to compel us other than through violence as they have no legal authority. If they will compel the people only through violence, there is no legal justification for not responding in kind. It's how we got here. Respect the constitution or resign your government position.

More proof the US Supreme Court is a political institution.

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Absolute travesty of justice here

I got threatened with being arrested for jaywalking after a I assume a trumper tried to run me over in the street in front of my own house. I was like wtf he tried to kill me and the cop said he was well within his rights to run me over since I would have delayed him. Fucking dirty cops all over this country.

It went to trial.

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Why? The court is already a joke

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Wouldn't part of it being obvious satire versus outright impersonation be some kinda fine print somewhere? I get free speech and all that but you can't have some random making too good of a duplicate of the police for a mountain of reasons

Per the article one of the postings was something like "we have a job opening, but minorities don't bother to apply." If that could be confused with the actual police department (I know they could be that way, but would never be that open about it) then there are much larger problems in that town.

"supreme court" what a joke

>can the department detail how their operations were disrupted since that is the charge?

While I disagree with them arresting the person, I can see how this could happen. People read the fake site, think it's real, and start calling the police to complain. Their phone operator is now spending half the day dealing with people complaining about fake posts.

Or I could also see somebody just getting mad about it and trying to strong arm him into shutting down the site.

What happens when the SCOTUS treats the Constitution like word salad?

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Check out this PDF to read the amicus brief written by the folks from The Onion.

So essentially, through qualified immunity, it appears to an outsider that the SCOTUS hold that those sworn to uphold the law are not required to follow it.

According to the Criminal podcast the police department got 11 calls related to the fake site (either complaining about it or alerting the PD of its existence.) Calling 11 calls “disrupting operations” seems like a stretch.

> I’m pretty sure the SCOTUS has held that it does not violate the 4th amendment to be arrested even when an officer doesn’t know the law and is literally making up an arrest-able offense on the spot. > > As long as they have a good faith belief you are breaking the law (even if what they allege you are doing doesn’t violate a law)…they can arrest you.

Heien v North Carolina. A car was pulled over for having one brake light out, which lead to the officer searching the car and finding cocaine. Driving with one brake light was not illegal under North Carolina law (although iirc the law's wording was a bit unclear). SCotUS ruled that (Wikipedia's phrasing) "a police officer's reasonable mistake of law can provide the individualized suspicion required by the Fourth Amendment".

What is and isn't covered under fair use is ultimately decided on a case by case basis, so part of the courts' job here would've been determining whether the page and posts constituted parody, if they hadn't just fallen back on protecting the cops via qualified immunity.

I'm a lawyer and this is the single best piece of legal writing I've seen since graduation

the pd received a baker's dozen phone calls. most letting them know there's a parody site

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I'm honestly glad scotus didn't rule on this. it could have had dire consequences.

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It's rulings like this that incentivize the police to NOT learn the law. Police: "I thought it was illegal and was never trained otherwise." SCOTUS: "All righty then, it's a good bust."

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That specific case was even a bit more nuanced than that. People like to dumb it down and say, "Cops don't even have to know the law!" It wasn't quite that simple.

The law in North Carolina had even been enforced by judges and prosecutors up until that point. If I recall, for many years. Then, an attorney looked closely at the law and realized, due to unclear wording, it's not explicitly clear that it's illegal to drive with only one tail light. They argued, and won.

People don't realize how specific laws have to be, and how often they can be on the books for YEARS before someone makes an argument that something is in fact, not illegal. In my state years ago a criminal case came up where one of the reasons for the initial stop was driving down the shoulder of the road. I think everyone agrees, it's illegal to drive down the shoulder. Well.....it kinda wasn't. The law that referenced improper usage of lanes referenced another section of the code, but that section didn't mention the shoulder, but kind of did lay out the areas of the roadway are between the fog line and center divider. So it was vague, and it didn't EXPLICITLY say you couldn't operate on the shoulder.

I always wondered how many citations got issued, over many many years, before an attorney finally realized the discrepancy and successfully argued it?

SCOTUS-centipede needs to get their heads out their asses. They're really setting a precedent for a police-state that answers to no one? Good luck when they come for them too.

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> My guess is the DA drops the charges.

Per the article, he was acquitted in the case brought by the police against him. The supreme court decline to allow the case where he sued the police for violating his rights.

These are two different things.

Yeah, but laws are just words written on pieces of paper and the court went with the, "Fuck you that's why," reasoning.

You're assuming any of that matters to this court. And it doesn't. It's a big part of why a lot of people view the Supreme Court as illegitimate.

By design.

Oh hey, it's also the same article someone posts to farm karma every time this topic comes up. Of course, nobody ever actually reads it including yourself because if you did, you would have seen that it's not a widespread practice.

The case in question was at one small agency, in a small town, with one candidate, over twenty years ago and the candidate was 49 years old at the time he took the entrance exam.

Most cops retire at 50. The agency didn't want to spend thousands of dollars training someone only to have him quit or retire a year later.

But hey, just keep believing the false narrative that people push that police agencies only hire "high school dropouts or roided up jocks". Every agency requires a high school diploma as a minimum and the drug and background check before being hired is more strenuous than many other jobs.

Not a cop supporter by the way, reform is needed in many departments in the country, but really tired of people spreading misinformation. The average redditor would not pass the hiring process for their local police department whether it be for doing drugs, not passing the entrance exams, not meeting physical requirements, bad credit or having a criminal history or just plain not having enough life experience.

Those "many other countries" don't have 18,000 police forces like the US has. They have one regular police force, sometime supplemented by gendarmerie.

Remember that every single one of those 18,000 police departments is a fully independent police force that has nothing to do with any of the other police departments in the country. They each answer to and only to their local city council. And we all know how "competent" and corrupt an average "small town USA" city council is. So you get police force to match. Many of these small towns use their police departments as money making machine.

If you are angry at your police department but keep voting same people in for mayor and city council (or worse don't bother to vote, or have no idea who the people running for those offices are and just skip that part of the ballot)... You are totally missing your target. The mayor and city council are 100% responsible for every single thing that the police department does. They are the ones who appoint and command the police chief.

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they just killed freedom of speech in this country.

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The average "local police department" applicant couldn't get a 4-year degree. Raising that bar up just the slightest bit to require a B.S or B.A in a Criminal Justice field before they even get to care about physical fitness or credit ratings would clean up a great deal of those 'rare bad apples' whom so frequently appear on the news each day.

Catering to the lowest common denominator results in exactly more of what we already have plenty.

I completely agree, but then if this was implemented, people would longer be able to make themselves feel better by saying “haha police departments only hire dumb people”.

The news mainly only reports on these bad apples because it gets ratings. You never see news about the thousands of cops who spent their day just doing their jobs. It’s too boring.

One big problem that will also happen and that you’re overlooking is that there would be almost no recruits. Most people who have the means to complete a four year degree don’t want or need to go into law enforcement.

> Most people who have the means to complete a four year degree don’t want or need to go into law enforcement.

That would appear to be the very root of the problem, would it not? It doesn't take a psychologist to understand how that inevitably leads to scraping the bottom of that candidate bucket.

Maybe we should start there.

[edit] And now that I think about it, one more thing:

>The news mainly only reports on these bad apples because it gets ratings.

The news reports on those bad apples for doing things that would get the average Joe imprisoned for decades or executed in several states. Is that what it takes to get "ratings?" Unarmed, non-violent people being executed by government officials, in broad daylight, on sidewalks and in their cars and in their homes?

I changed my mind. Let's start there instead.

The Supreme Court is run by political hacks

this is the standard response he was blocked by qualified immunity. It's a catch 22 where since there is no precedent for that specific circumstance no one can sue over that specific circumstance. It's obvious bullshit and needs to go.

Hotdog necks.

I feel like these different police forces should all be abolished so that each state has one uniform police department with one, uniform, set of policies.

The majority of agencies already hire candidates with a college degree over candidates who don’t. Having a high school diploma is a minimum requirement.

You’re casting a way wider net regarding the news, certain cases involving misconduct, and the justice system in general.

The point I was trying to make is that most cops go through their days doing their jobs. In fact, most cops never fire their service weapon a single time in their careers while on duty. The news never reports on them because it doesn’t get ratings.

It’s the same reason news only reports murders, accidents, and other bad news 24/7. They don’t report on babies being born, rainbows and puppies.

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And this is what kills me when it comes to educating my kids about how police are aloud to behave in the US. "Law enforcement" means you are enforcing the law. You can't enforce the law if you don't know what it is.

"Oh. I thought the speed limit for that section of road was 25mph. I thought it was a bit odd everyone was going 20 over, but... Oh well! Lucky me!"

"I thought it was illegal for a black man to walk around town in a red hoody. So, arrested him for possession of meth, even though he had nothing on him. Oh. He's also dead because I accidently shot him four times in the back with what I thought was my taser while he was handcuffed and in my car."

SCOTUS: Yup. Seems legit.

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I’d call it a miscarriage of justice but then they’d have to imprison themselves

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Look there is a lot of fucked up shit going on, but this is mostly a non story. The supreme Court declines hearing most cases it doesn't mean they agree with a cases outcome they just choose not to hear the case. Clarence Thomas I know wants to overturn qualified immunity.

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If you are on faceBook, you are the new whiteTrash 🤮🤮🤮

If they let him. 100% they harass you to get a reaction out of you so they can kill you. You embarrassed them, and you will be punished for it, and any form of retaliation, even after the fact, is punishable by immediate execution.

The news doesn’t report on them because that isn’t news, it’s what should be business as usual. Police killing unarmed citizens because they feel like it, however, is news.

And with this case they have to either admit it was satire or admit it is believable that they would have “free abolitions for teenagers provided by the police in the wal-mart parking lot.” Unfortunately they chose the latter.

3rd party review on ALL police interactions resulting in any injuries. Police should also have harsher and more exclusive charges for crimes committed on duty, since they enforce the law, if they abuse it, they should be held to a higher standard. If I commit a crime and get 25 years for it, an officer that commits the same crime should get 30. Above all else, no bad actors left uncharged.

I think you're missing the whole "one bad apple corrupts the barrel" thing. There's no such thing as good cops, because those "mostly good cops" know their fellow officers commit horrible deeds and actively cover for them.

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This court is worthless and a sham.

They know…

And that would be bad how?

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There are precedenrs saying that satire is covered by the first amendment.

However, there are no court cases where the police have been told that satire is covered by the first amendment. And therefore they get qualified immunity.

And the real shit cherry in top of this feces pie? This case doesn't establish that precedent either.

These rulings merely say that the cops have immunity because they are ignorant, by doesn't actually say that they are not allowed to arrest someone for satirical facebook pages. So they're free to violate the exact same rights again and would have immunity that time too.

And as exact as qualified immunity exceptions have to be, even if it was rules that facebook satire isn't covered, that precedent wouldn't apply to a satirical Myspace page.

If you've played Skyrim or Fallout 4 you probably have more hours in that than it takes to be a cop in most the US.

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Insane isn't it. This denial by the court to take up the appeal boils down to qualified immunity is more important than protecting free speech.

You don't have to guess that the DA will drop the charges, the article literally explained that Novak was arrested, tried, and acquitted. No charges were dropped, a jury found him not guilty.

Though (and this is speculative) it may be because the state could not prove that Novak's conduct was intentional/"knowing" . Novak may have thought that his content was obviously satirical and would not disrupt anything, which moves it out of "it's a crime" space and into the "stupid mistake" type space when people actually mistook his satire for reality.

I guess I’d be Chief of Police by now. Lol

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Elections matter.

You realize that cops as a group are better educated than the general population right?

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> It's rulings like this that incentivize the police to NOT learn the law.

That's intended. The entire idea of qualified immunity is a judicially-created concept. It has no basis in law itself since Congress once considered it and then explicitly decided not to implement the idea.

However, since the judiciary in the US has never had its continued self-granted expanse of power checked by other branches, these kinds of abuses continue and will continue.

I mean sure, but that doesn't really change the underlying facts.

They were operating on false information, but the fact that operating without a taillight is legal was confirmed so why would any evidence found during a follow up search not be fruit of a poisonous tree?

It shouldn't matter what the officer thinks, it should matter what the law is. If you prove that the probable cause is bunk, then the search wasn't legal despite being done with "best intentions".

They had to put you behind a desk after you took an arrow to the knee.

The fascists say wrong things on purpose.

A "good faith belief" is now literally "any excuse a fascist gives for committing a crime".

If people like Tucker Carlson can get away with the defense that no reasonable person should take his statements seriously, the same should apply to the obvious satire here.

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>You realize that cops as a group are better educated than the general population right?

Police in the US have a combined 9% rate of a bachelor's or higher education. Masters and Ph.D. rates are statistically insignificant to the point that those are effectively 0%.

The average US population above age 25 has a 4-year degree rate of 38%. Roughly 14% has a Masters. Roughly 2% has a Ph.D.

Most of us have access to an internet search engine. This stuff isn't that hard to look up.

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Did I say that they had a higher percentage of bachelor's degrees?

Given the Republican hacks on this Supreme Court, it's likely they would have ruled that law enforcement was not tyrannical enough in this situation. That would certainly be dire.

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You do realize you're argument was invalidated by him showing statistics that you can look up yourself right? Saying they're more educated than the average citizen honestly doesnt sound right with what we hear daily.

My claim: cops are more educated than the general public

Their claim: cops have fewer bachelor's degrees.

Do you see that these claims are different?

No, not really. College is a decent-ish indicator of someone that can properly read, process information, and make proper conclusions from it.

Now account for law which requires you to read -or at least absorb the information of the law in some fashion-, process information from the scene, suspects, and victims, and draw a conclusion that matches the information.

yup. goodbye free speech

I'm going to guess the argument is the posts resulted in xoncernes members of the public contacting the police department leading to wasted time

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