Five charged with felonies for tweeting or retweeting a cop’s photo | Hacker News Reader

Five charged with felonies for tweeting or retweeting a cop’s photo

arstechnica.com

43 pointsryanwatkins19 comments

> Update (~4pm ET): Mid-afternoon on Friday, August 7, the Essex County Prosecutor's Office dropped its cyber harassment charges against all five defendants, the Asbury Park Press reports. These charges stemmed from an incident involving a Tweet attempting to identify a New Jersey police officer. Our original story on the situation appears unchanged below.

Sometimes a little publicity is all the defense you need.

"If anyone knows who this bitch is throw his info under this tweet." - it's not just "tweeting a cop's photo"

True, it's not just a photo; it's also a request to identify a police officer, which has legitimate purposes.

Unless you think that calling a police officer a bitch is a felony.

Worded as such it does appear threatening. If someone tweeted that about me I would feel worried about my personal safety and that of my family. The law specifically states that placing a reasonable person in fear for their safety via online communications is a crime.

If you're going to request personal information for a legitimate reason then you should word it in a non threatening manner.

You aren’t a public official. Police officers are. You’re entitled to privacy. Police officers on official duties are not.

What is the threat?

IRL, cops behave far more threateningly than calling someone a “bitch” on Twitter, and yet they don’t get charged.

"...it's also a request to identify a police officer, which has legitimate purposes."

And given the context of calling a police officer a "bitch", do you think the requester was doing so to accurately file a complaint... or doing so in the hope that armed with the cop's identity, somebody would engage in harassment of that man and/or his family?

Being charged with a felony for the tweet is absurd.

But painting this as an innocent request for information is almost equally so.

> And given the context of calling a police officer a "bitch", do you think the requester was doing so to accurately file a complaint...

To be honest, I read that tweet as fairly ordinary use of vernacular and I wouldn't assume malicious intent.

Make sure to note the publicly employed police officer was wearing a mask, which hides his identity.

"Identify this public servant" isn't against the law. I for one want strong third party oversight of our police from the public and from journalists. Police should be identifiable and although they didn't phrase it very nicely, the request isn't illegal.

I hope they get good lawyers and tell the prosecutors to pound sand. What a sick joke.

Yes and can they sue for this too? Not sure how it works but this does sound it is like creating unfair stress for people to have to now defend themselves because they retweeted something or expressed an opinion on twitter.

I have the impression that being charged with a crime has permanent consequences even when it is rapidly dropped.

There may be rules about how people and organizations aren't supposed to hold it against you, but if records are retrievable then it won't go away.

Someone with more legal knowledge might chime in, but I feel like I've seen questionaires asking something like "have you ever been arrested, charged, or convicted of a crime..."

It's like in court when the judge tells the jury to disregard something, can they ever really do that 100%?

Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, in most of the jurisdictions harassment is a crime and its for the courts to decide.

Thats the question. Is this harassment? Is the retweet harassment?

“People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should afraid of their people”

https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/nypd-backs-down-from-bust-of-c...

The behavior of these cops is deplorable.

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