Court Finds That A Citizen’s Right To Criticize The Police Stops At “Go Fuck Yourself”

Telling a cop to go fuck him or herself is not necessarily protected free speech:

Screaming an anatomically impossible obscene suggestion at a police officer is against the law, a Manhattan judge has decided.

The quirky ruling, made public yesterday, concerns the case of Brooklynite Ramon Morena, who is charged with creating a public disturbance by shouting “Go f – – – yourself” at a cop in the Theater District in March.

Morena’s lawyer had tried to convince the judge that civilians enjoy a First Amendment right to criticize and verbally challenge police officers. The charges, he argued, should therefore be thrown out of court.

But Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Richard Weinberg didn’t buy it. If you’re disorderly, you’re disorderly, the judge wrote — and there is no “police officer exemption” to the rule.

Morena now faces up to 15 days jail if found guilty of disorderly conduct.

. . .

. . . [A]ny alleged screaming would be merely “a private annoyance” limited to the cop, the defense lawyer argued — and as such should have rolled off the officer’s back.

The judge countered, “To adopt defendant’s arguments would be to effectively carve out a police-officer exception from the disorderly conduct statute and to condone the heaping of verbal abuse upon a police officer regardless of the circumstances. This the court will not do.”