The party of free speech and freedom is at it again. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kentucky-bill-insult-police-officer-crime/ Senate Bill 211 mandates up to three months' imprisonment for a person who "accosts, insults, taunts, or challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words," or makes "gestures or other physical contact that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person."
Seems a bit like the new War on Drugs, no? Although the irony of this is that the other side is the typical one calling for banning of offensive speech.
Its harrassment IF YOU MAKE EVERYTHING ILLEGAL THEN THEY ALWAYS HAVE A REASON TO HARRASS PEOPLE and Then the real power of SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT goes full start So now cops can harrass and arrest anyone at any time .. . and their bigotry, bias and prejudices will inform who they harrass Rocket River
On the basis of established law my understanding is this wouldn't be constitutional. This supreme court might change that, though.
An insult in kentucky could be something like “your sister was prettier before you married her”. Thems fightin’ words!
"Kentucky Bill Would Make Insulting a Cop a Crime": https://reason.com/2021/03/05/kentucky-bill-would-make-insulting-a-cop-a-crime/ excerpt: The Kentucky legislation is ill-conceived, probably unconstitutional, and would simply give police another tool, in addition to old standbys such as obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct, to ticket people for what's known as "contempt of cop." This has already played out in other states, such as Pennsylvania, where The Appeal reported in 2018 that police were using hate crime laws to charge people with "ethnic intimidation" for insulting them. Such prosecutions have no place in a country of citizens, rather than subjects. As Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote in 1987, in a ruling striking down a Houston ordinance that made it unlawful to oppose or interrupt a police officer, "The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state." more at the link
If we were to contract out policing to private companies, then those private companies could do anything they want. They can run their businesses as they see fit. QED
If this law passes this would be an actual case of censorship. A law limiting private individuals speech, backed by police force. That is a far far different thing than a private business deciding on their own not to publish something.
