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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> if someone has a right not to be harassed, when doing their job in an office, why doesn't a cop, when doing their job on the street

Please show precedent for anyone being prosecuted for rendering an “intimidating smirk” in any other context. Or filming someone working in public.

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They're being prosecuted for smirking at cops while destroying pro-cop signage, which can be read as assault. Ask yourself whether in today's age someone could get away with destroying an LGBT sign amidst a pro-LGBT protest, while staring down LGBT people, and get away with it. I don't agree with where the standards are, but most people would observe that this is the standard. Whatever anyone's personal rationalization for preferencing one group over another, in this type of enforcement, it is immaterial as far as the criminal code is concerned. There are no marginalized group allowances for assault.

If she tore it up and threw the pieces in their face then maybe it could be construed as assault. If she was tearing it up and smirking without physically threatening the cops then how could it possibly constitute assault?

Read assault laws. As is common, you are conflating assault with battery.

FYI, this depends on where you live. In some states a threat of violence can count as assault while in others that’s not true. Some states don’t even have a battery charge, they only have assault.

I'm not. There has to be some kind of physical threat for it to be assault. Smirking is not that. Neither is tearing up paper.

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