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New Jersey Prosecutors Drop Charges Over Tweeting a Cop’s Photo [Updated]

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday August 09 2020, @02:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the chilling-effect dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

New Jersey prosecutors drop charges over tweeting a cop's photo [Updated]:

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.

A New Jersey man is facing felony charges for a tweet seeking to identify a police officer. Four others are facing felony charges for retweeting the tweet, the Washington Post reports.

[...] The complaint against Sziszak claims that the tweet caused the officer to "fear that harm will come to himself, family, and property."

"As a 20 year old that simply retweeted a tweet to help my friend, I am now at risk of giving up my career, serving time, and having a record," Sziszak wrote.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by number11 on Sunday August 09 2020, @05:50PM (2 children)

    by number11 (1170) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 09 2020, @05:50PM (#1033910)

    If there's a problem with the officer you make a formal complaint to his dept

    And we all know how well that works, don't we?

    Nobody was getting stalked. Don't you believe in "personal responsibility"? Why wasn't the officer (who, it turns out, was "outed" by whoever made the criminal complaint) wearing a name badge that anyone could read? It shouldn't be necessary to appeal to social media for an ID.

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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @06:25PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @06:25PM (#1033928)

    And we all know how well that works, don't we?

    The officer in this case did nothing wrong, so I'd hope it wouldn't work.

    Nobody was getting stalked. Don't you believe in "personal responsibility"?

    Then why ask for the officer's personal information to be made public and how was the idiot asking somehow exempt from personal responsibility?

    Why wasn't the officer (who, it turns out, was "outed" by whoever made the criminal complaint) wearing a name badge that anyone could read?

    If he wasn't, it's precisely because leftist protestors dox them [newsweek.com] and he still had his badge number displayed.

    It shouldn't be necessary to appeal to social media for an ID.

    They had a photograph, the department can easily id their own officer for the non-crime of talking to a third party who the protestor claims was "harassing" them. There's no police report for this harassment because political disagreements are not harassment and a police officer engaging in conversation is not usually actionable.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @02:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @02:27PM (#1034319)

      If you're scared to publicly BE a police officer, you don't need to be one.