Should it be illegal to try to identify a police officer?
Interesting (read: absurd) case:
Twitter Link
Quote:
New Jersey police department is pursuing cyber harassment charges against five people in connection with a protest photo uploaded to Twitter in June. Complaints were served against the original tweeter and four other people who retweeted the message, alleging that they caused the officer to fear for the safety of his family.
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The Nutley Police Department filed its complaints in late July over a tweet posted during a June 26th protest. The now-deleted message included a photo of a masked on-duty police officer with a request that “If anyone knows who this bitch is throw his info under this tweet.” Because of the mask, the officer is not readily identifiable from the photograph, and there do not appear to be any replies revealing his identity.
The original poster and the retweeters are charged with cyber harassment, a fourth-degree felony punishable by up to 18 months in jail.
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The department charged Sziszak and others on behalf of Detective Peter Sandomenico, who the complaint identifies as the officer in the tweet. It alleges that the photo and accompanying caption threatened the officer “acting in the performance of his duties, causing Detective Sandomenico to fear that harm will come to himself, family, and property.”
At the time Sziszak posted her fundraiser, the post had no replies and five retweets. It’s unclear how the department discovered its existence. However, some departments use automated social media surveillance tools to track all the tweets sent from a particular location. Had such a tool been used to surveil the Nutley protests, it would likely have surfaced the Sandomenico tweet.
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The campaign description says Alfaro was upset by officers who were “very friendly” with counter-protesters and covered their badges, a practice that some officers across the country have adopted to dodge complaints from protesters. “In an attempt to identify a specific police officer who was befriending someone harassing me, I uploaded a photo.” His tweet includes a picture of the “Thin Blue Line” American flag printed on Sandomenico’s mask — a symbol that’s used to signify police solidarity but is fraught with racist associations.
The department’s legal argument against the five Twitter users is murky. A 2014 New Jersey law bans online harassment when it threatens someone with physical harm or crimes against their property, or when it involves sending “lewd, indecent, or obscene” material — it’s more typically applied in cases involving persistent harassment campaigns and cyberstalking. The First Amendment also protects the right to photograph on-duty police officers.
There’s particularly little precedent for punishing retweets, even in lower-stakes non-criminal cases.
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The complaint implies that requesting Sandomenico’s “info” was an invitation to harass or doxx the officer. [...] The Nutley Police Department did not report any harassment beyond the original tweet, which itself didn’t call for any action beyond identifying Sandomenico.
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Alexander Shalom, ACLU-NJ’s director of Supreme Court advocacy, declared the charges specious. “[The law] is designed to prevent venal harm, not hypersensitivity and hurt feelings,” he told The Verge. “What this appears to be is a police officer flexing his ability to charge someone notwithstanding the fact that he cannot establish the elements of the crime.”
I'm ambivalent about crowdsourcing the identification of ordinary private citizens acting like unhinged asshats, but police officers should be readily identifiable when performing their duties in public. This looks like an attempt by a group of uniformed pussies thugs trying to abuse the law to harass political enemies.
The charges have already been dismissed by the prosecutor's office, but they've already had a negative impact; this cop used his authority irresponsibly in a desperate attempt to cover his ass.
