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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   
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.

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Original Submission

• Re:It did what it was intended to do (Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 09 2020, @06:57PM

  by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday August 09 2020, @06:57PM (#1033950)

  The kind of person who will patiently wait at a door for 3, 12, or 36 hours, waiting for a suspect to exit the building

  German police do this - there are some squatters buildings (at least one in Hamburg) where the residents never leave when the cops are anywhere in sight, and the cops have staked them out for months on end... I believe they consider it inhumane to turn off the water to the building, so the situation dragged on for years and years.

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  🌻🌻 [google.com]

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+3
  Interesting=2, Informative=1, Total=3
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		5