Facing a Year in Prison for Smirking While Stomping a Back the Blue sign

[Bucky]

Link: Salt Lake Tribune

A 19-year-old woman was charged with a hate crime after allegedly “stomping on a ‘Back the Blue’ sign” at a gas station in Panguitch.

According to the affidavit of probable cause, a Garfield County police officer was conducting a traffic stop for speeding at a gas station when the officer saw a woman “stomping on a ‘Back the Blue’ sign next to where the traffic stop was conducted, crumble it up in a destructive manner and throw it into a trash can all while smirking in an intimidating manner towards me.”

The officer writes they asked the woman where she had gotten the sign, and she stated it was her mother’s. According to the affidavit, the officer told the woman that the local Sheriff’s Office produced those specific signs and that they believed “she had acquired it in our community"...

[Bucky]

1. A year in prison seems disproportional

I mean, seriously, she's definitely shouldn't have swiped that sign or lied about it. But being a shithead is not a crime. Smirking is not a crime.

Swiping political yard signs is a misdemeanor and the police probably can't prove she stole it. I hope the judge throws this out.

I do kind of wonder just how intimidating that sneer of hers is. 😆

[Buckeye_Democrat]

3. Maybe I misunderstand their law, but the article...

... made it sound like it wouldn't matter if the sign was her own property.

Unless the article left out some key parts, it would seem to also apply to someone being "terrorized" by a ripped-up BLM sign that the person had bought themselves.

Weird to me, if that's how their state laws work.

The Utah Code states a person who commits any primary offense — such as misdemeanor property destruction — with the intent to “intimidate or terrorize another person or with reason to believe that his action would intimidate or terrorize that person” is subject to a class B misdemeanor primary offense becoming a class A misdemeanor.

The code also defines “intimidate or terrorize” as “an act which causes the person to fear for his physical safety or damages the property of that person or another.” According to the code, the act “must be accompanied with the intent to cause or has the effect of causing a person to reasonably fear to freely exercise or enjoy any right secured by the Constitution or laws of the state or by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

[Bucky]

4. That's one way to interpret the law. So you're technically right

It's the job of the judicial branch to interpret laws as they're enforced by the executive branch. Having written a few incident reports myself over the years, this reads to me like the cop in the situation simply felt like he didn't have any power and couldn't command obedience from this teenager.

Legally, if you shake your fist at someone, they can file an assault charge against you. That's why the crime itself is usually called "assault and battery." That's not a redundancy. But in pragmatic terms, there needs to be a whole lot more context before a cop will slap cuffs on a dude for shaking a fist.

So yes, I was being generous on the cop's side and assuming she had taken that sign for somebody's yard. She kind of gave that away by starting off claiming her mom gave her the sign, before landing on the smart response that she just "found it." As I said, the police can't prove it, so there's no case there. It's not worth sending out the CSI to find where the yard sign came from -- LOL.

The real injustice is, as another poster said, this is just a coward with a badge & gun wanting to assert his "authoritah"

[Buckeye_Democrat]

6. I agree that it's authoritarian BS.

I'd like to see several "feelings" laws stricken from the books.

Only in Ohio and Maine, for example, a spouse can be convicted for domestic violence because the other claimed to feel threatened. No evidence of actual harm or witnesses needed, so there's going to be at least some cases of bitter spouses using those laws strictly out of spite after an argument or whatever.

[Walleye]

2. Snowflakes with badges and guns

[MineralMan]

5. Case Dismissed!

No case to bring, really.

[USALiberal]

7. What would we say if was a BLM sign? Nt

[Bucky]

8. I'd hold the same criterion

There would have to be a display of a threat of force or violence before it meets the hate crime test. A single teenager tearing up a sign and sneering, whether it's BTB or BLM, isn't an enforceable crime.

At the end of the day, the fact that she got cuffed tells me where the real power was in that interaction. This was a frivolous arrest.

[USALiberal]

9. I 100% agree! Nt