Memo to law enforcement officers: Swearing at you is not a crime

The Adams County Sheriff’s office must stop charging critics with crimes, under a U.S. District Court injunction issued this week. The injunction is part of an agreement to settle a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of Red Oak resident Jon Goldsmith, the ACLU of Iowa announced on July 8. Goldsmith faced a third-degree harassment charge last year after putting up a profanity-laden Facebook post about a sheriff’s deputy.

The sheriff’s office will pay Goldsmith $10,000 in damages, cover the ACLU’s attorney’s fees, and “provide its officers training approved by the ACLU on free speech rights,” while adopting an ACLU-approved social media policy.

The injunction permanently forbids the sheriff’s office and its employees from bringing or threatening to bring criminal charges against any person “on the basis of the lawful content or viewpoint of those comments, posts, or other speech protected by the First Amendment,” and “from deleting comments protected by the First Amendment on their official Facebook pages, or blocking users who comment on comment on its Facebook page, based on the lawful content or viewpoint of those comments.”

In a news release enclosed below, Goldsmith expressed hope that the training will stop the Adams County Sheriff’s office “from doing this to other people. It’s ridiculous that I had to get a lawyer to defend my right to free speech. People need to be able to speak up when an officer is doing wrong.”

Read more: https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2019/07/10/memo-to-law-enforcement-officers-swearing-at-you-is-not-a-crime/