By Carlos Miller
Every once in a while, I get a commenter calling for the murder of police officers.
The commenters are always anonymous and from what I’ve seen, they are not even regular readers, but people who happen to come across this blog during times of heavy traffic due to a popular post.
In the past, I’ve let those comments stay in the interest of free speech, but I’ve been deleting them in the last few weeks because I am not going to advocate murder on this site, even if it just from people talking out of their ass.
Today, I came across an article of a man who was arrested by the FBI for making these types of threats on an online forum.
Jeffrey Weaver, 48, admitted making threatening remarks about both police officers when he was arrested earlier this month saying he was “angry” when he wrote the comments on the Web site infowars.com, an FBI agent wrote in a report.
Using the tagline, “F—ThePIGS,” Weaver wrote several messages threatening to kill Mehserle and other officers who have killed people. The threat against the Virginia police officer came after the officer Tased a 17-year-old boy who died from the electric shock.
Weaver is accused of posting three threats after Mehserle killed Oscar Grant III of Hayward on New Year’s Day.
In the first post before Mehserle was identified as the police officer who killed Grant, Weaver wrote, “F- the pigs and if I find out who the pigs is then I will kill the pig who killed him.”
So I want to make it clear that I will delete any comments in the future that call for the murder of police officers or anybody else for that matter. That’s never been my agenda.
All I’m about is asserting my rights to shoot police officers with cameras. Nothing more or nothing less.
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15 responses so far ↓
1 xdamousex // Jun 10, 2009 at 4:49 PM
Yep, people become very reckless about the things they say in an anonymous online forum.
2 Jay R. // Jun 10, 2009 at 5:40 PM
I’m not disagreeing with you, I don’t think those kinds of comments belong here either, but there’s a difference between a generalized threat and a specific one.
If Weaver hadn’t made it specific i.e. “I’m going to find…”, then there’d likely be no basis for charges.
3 Ken // Jun 10, 2009 at 5:45 PM
This is a pet peeve of mine.
Free speech is a right we have with respect to the government. It is not a right we have with respect to private individuals.
If you deleted all cop-threatening prose — or all comments by people named Billy-Bob, or all comments that failed to praise you — that would not be a violation of free speech. That would be an exercise of your free speech.
Using “free speech” to mean “the right to be free from private individuals shunning, banning, or deleting my words from their homes/property/web sites” promotes ignorance of actual constitutional principles.
4 Ken // Jun 10, 2009 at 5:46 PM
Also, great site. My name is not Billy-Bob.
5 Difster // Jun 10, 2009 at 10:04 PM
I believe in harsher punishment for those who abuse others under the color of authority though.
But murder? No.
6 Viv // Jun 10, 2009 at 10:24 PM
A man was also recently arrested in Illinois for making a video threatening police and then posting it on YouTube.
7 Carlos Miller // Jun 10, 2009 at 10:30 PM
Viv,
There was a guy in Miami who did the same last year. He is now serving six years.
http://www.justnews.com/news/16264839/detail.html#video
People obviously do not know that death threats is not protected speech.
8 Pinandpuller // Jun 11, 2009 at 4:23 AM
And yet Sandra Bernhardt is still walking around free.
Oh my bad-she merely made vague rape threats against Sarah Palin.
Trying to threaten or intimidate anyone is stupid and counterproductive. Everything comes back around.
A flame war, however, is only three Hail Mary’s if anyone is interested.
9 Anton Lee // Jun 11, 2009 at 7:42 AM
Police officers that kill people are no different than any other murderer.
Difference is, some people say it online, but we can always trust cops to go out and kill all kinds of people on a daily basis.
10 Ms Calabaza // Jun 11, 2009 at 8:15 AM
Carlos,
I’ve been a fan of this blog for quite a while and I’ve never seen you advocate any hate speech. You are not a zealot. You do good work. :~)
11 grog // Jun 11, 2009 at 11:56 AM
Carlos,
I’m a fan of the site, but you might want to talk to an attorney on this one. If you get into the habit of deleting comments, are you taking on responsibility for the content of other comments you didn’t delete? If so, to what degree would you be liable? what happens if you miss one? obviously, there aren’t a whole lot of comments for each posting, but considering how much traffic you get and the likelihood that any one post might potentially have hundreds of comments depending on how incendiary it is, you may want to consider it.
12 Carlos Miller // Jun 11, 2009 at 1:12 PM
Thanks for reading, Ms. C.!
13 Carlos Miller // Jun 11, 2009 at 1:51 PM
Grog,
I’m just talking about deleting comments that say things like “kill all pigs” that bring absolutely nothing to the discussion at hand.
I’m don’t believe I am liable for anybody’s comments. In fact, I believe there was a recent court decision that confirmed this.
However, my decision to delete these comments is more of a personal matter than a legal concern.
People who come here and simply call for the murder of cops are no different than the abusive cops I write about.
These comments display a lack of professionalism, which is what I’ve been demanding from police since launching this site.
14 Fred the Fed // Jun 11, 2009 at 3:35 PM
Per 47 USC 230 et seq., Carlos is legally absolved as long as he has no editorial control over comments before they appear.
15 woj // Feb 4, 2010 at 1:25 AM
I still hope all these prick bastard cops who are on a power trip wind up with metastatic colon cancer.
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