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The sheriff that arrested him should face criminal charges for misuse of authority. That he doesn't reflects a structural weakness in US law. In most European l

The sheriff that arrested him should face criminal charges for misuse of authority. That he doesn't reflects a structural weakness in US law. In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it.

vitally3643 5mo ago
It's not a structural weakness, it's an intentional feature. Our legislature specifically and intentionally made it impossible for citizens (or anyone) to hold police responsible for anything.
- idle_zealot 5mo ago
  It is a weakness, but yes, an intentional one. Why a weakness? It leads to structural instability.
- db48x 5mo ago
  This is a misunderstanding. In most cases you cannot sue the federal and state governments, with very important exceptions, but you can definitely sue the police. Government officials, such as the police, usually only have _qualified_ immunity rather than absolute or sovereign immunity, and even then only when they were acting in good faith and are not being accused of violating someone’s constitutional rights. The real problem right now is how the courts determine if an official was acting in good faith. Right now they are assumed to have acted in good faith unless it has already been “clearly established” that what they did was illegal. This means that the official can argue that they didn’t know that their actions were illegal because no prior case ever dealt with that exact fact pattern. This works far too often and has let a lot of very guilty police get away with their crimes. Still, some police officers _are_ held to account, so it is not actually impossible.
  - petsfed 5mo ago
    Which has led to police officers using "the punishment I received is far in excess of the last time an officer of this department was punished for habitually arresting and raping minors!" as a defense, and it works.
- mandevil 5mo ago
  Not the legislature: the Supreme Court. Qualified Immunity was created out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court back in the 1960's when a police officer arrested- and then a judge convicted- a group of black and white Episcopal priests for "making a disturbance of the peace"- that is, having black and white people out in public together as equals. This was Pierson v. Ray, decided by the Supreme Court in 1967. The current implementation of it- where you need to have "clearly establish" a Constitutional right with a prior case in this region- is based on Pearson v. Callahan from 2009, and it takes a terrible Supreme Court precedent and makes it even worse. This has created the patchwork "no case in the circuit has clearly established that a police officer must not make a warrantless search on a Tuesday in May" sort of quibbling. The work of legislatures has been to roll back qualified immunity. Colorado, New Mexico, and California have removed qualified immunity for their law enforcement officers at the state level. LEO's can still claim qualified immunity for suits under federal law, but they cannot for some suits brought under state law or the state constitution in those states. The Supreme Court has also, at the same time they've made it harder to hold police to account, made it harder to hold politicians to account, gutting bribery laws and expanding "free speech" to include paying politicians. And the recent idea that a President can't be prosecuted for any "official acts" is also nonsense created by the Supreme Court. This isn't Congress fault, there were laws that prevented it. The Supreme Court just decided that they didn't want to enforce those laws. The Supreme Court at the root of a lot of the dysfunction in American politics, and somehow still has more respect than they deserve.
  - throwworhtthrow 5mo ago
    What's your source for: > California [has] removed qualified immunity for their law enforcement officers at the state level. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#State_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#State_law, it's Connecticut, not California, as the third state which limited qualified immunity.
    - mandevil 5mo ago
      California SB 2, signed by Gavin Newsome in 2021, removed Qualified Immunity as a defense for all lawsuits brought under the Tom Bane Civil Rights Act. I'm not a lawyer, and I have never lived in California so I don't know how much that covers. The QI removal I knew best was Colorado (CO's law also made individual LEO's have to pay with their own money, up to certain limits), and was doing some googling which listed California and New Mexico.
idle_zealot 5mo ago
In the US we grant immunity to the law in proportion to power. Rather seems it should be the opposite if you ask me.
Supermancho 5mo ago
"In return, Bushart will drop the federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against Sheriff Nick Weems, investigator Jason Morrow and the county for violating his constitutional rights." Even at his age of 60 (I'm getting up there), I wouldn't have made that deal. https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/jailed-for-37-days-for-posting-a-meme-of-pres-trump-tenn-man-reaches-settlement-for-civil-rights-violation https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates...
- LastTrain 5mo ago
  Under today’s administration and courts a federal lawsuit like that was going nowhere anyway, except maybe an executive order praising the Sheriff.
  - Analemma_ 5mo ago
    "Thrown out due to Qualified [read: absolute] Immunity"
    - nickff 5mo ago
      Absolute immunity is much broader than qualified immunity; the former generally applies to government officials (judges, prosecutors, legislators, etc.), and the latter applies to law enforcement officers (e.g. police).
- criddell 5mo ago
  Maybe he should try to get compensation through the new Anti-Weaponization Fund. > “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-anti-weaponization-fund https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...
  - crooked-v 5mo ago
p0w3n3d 5mo ago
> In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it. I wouldn't say in most. In many they wouldn't
kgwxd 5mo ago
At the very least, taxpayers should be looking to make him personally responsible for the $835,000.
Arubis 5mo ago
In a sane, fair, and (crucially) long-term stable system, persons given privilege and authority over others are subject to a higher standard for their own behavior. The long-running US trend of the inverse (additional legal protections for positions of authority) is incredibly destructive. This is a moral and values judgment, yes, but it's not just that -- it communicates to the population at large that they should find their own solutions rather than using the established system. More succinctly, down this path lie guillotines.
- lokar 5mo ago
  The death penalty should be reserved for people who violate a position of public trust and authority.
  - embedding-shape 5mo ago
    Hot take, but I feel like no humans should be killed as a punishment... But I'm also probably too European to understand the true value of death penalty.
    - s5300 5mo ago
      [dead]
    - Sohcahtoa82 5mo ago
      I'm only against the death penalty for the simple fact that courts have convicted innocent people. Sometimes, that conviction happens when the court actively blocks exonerating evidence. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/284/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/284/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/547/319/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/547/319/
      - OkayPhysicist 5mo ago
        Anybody who is wrongfully executed was basically guaranteed to spend their entire life in prison. Death row inmates get dramatically more access to legal aid than anybody else rotting in a cell, so if they couldn't win their appeal, the guy doing life isn't, either. Generally, I'm against incarceration for that reason. I think the relatively muted violence of it is too easy to stomach for the public, which leads to people letting the system get sloppy. For public and infamous crimes, however, where the question is not "what act took place", but rather "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what is the punishment?"-type cases, I'm perfectly fine with capital punishment being on the table. We trust public officials with significant authority, and abuse of that authority is utterly irredeemable. Frankly, for elected officials I'd support a "two-thirds vote and you hang" policy. If you want power, and seek out power, you have an immense responsibility to live up to your constituent's expectations.
pjc50 5mo ago
Eh, in the UK this is only true for the most absolutely serious cases where someone has been killed or seriously injured. Wrongful arrest doesn't. It may face career risks. Ultimately the US lacks some sort of Federal "inspectorate of police" that would be able to ban people from being law enforcement officers or at least require e.g. retraining or restriction of duties, without leaving it up to frankly corrupt local authorities. Double-edged sword though when the Feds get captured by the Party, though.
- ericmay 5mo ago
  > US lacks some sort of Federal "inspectorate of police" I don't think this is true, or at least it's not entirely true. Various states and law enforcement agencies have an office of the inspector general which at least should provide some oversight. We also have the courts and individual officers and agencies can be sued in the court of law which also provides a means of oversight. You seem to be suggesting that everything is corrupt, corrupt local authorities, corrupt feds captured by the party. I think that level of perceived corruption is not reflected in operational reality. Some states or local police organizations do in fact look at past police records for applicants. There's a bit of variation here, but it's probably a bit better organized than, say the EU where outside of other bureaucratic hurdles I don't believe there is any real way to stop some German citizen who should be banned from being a police officer from moving to Estonia and being a police officer. Though perhaps I'm wrong and there is an EU-wide database that all countries and their police forces use? I know the UK isn't in the EU, but I just bring that up as I think it may be a bit closer of an example.
  - tialaramex 5mo ago
    Piscis primum a capite foetet
    - ericmay 5mo ago
      Catchy, I suppose, but ultimately without much meaning.
okeuro49 5mo ago
In the UK 30 people are arrested a day for social media posts online. Only about 10 percent resulting in convictions. Police don't face criminal charges for this. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages-zbv886tqf https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
- Manuel_D 5mo ago
  The UK has different speech laws than the United States. Presumably, the actions of the police making those arrests are within the scope of UK law. Even if 90% don't result in a conviction, the police may still be operating within the scope of their authority in those arrests.
  - okeuro49 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Manuel_D 5mo ago
      Linehan was arrested for making this post: > If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls This seems like a straightforward call to violence to me. And he was released after police ascertained that he had no intent to act on these statements. If someone made posts along the lines of "Christians are abusive, punch them" would it be surprising if CBP took them aside for further questioning?
      - jvanderbot 5mo ago
        yes, actually, it would be suprising if CBP took them aside for further questioning. That's not really how it's "supposed" to work.
        Manuel_D 5mo ago
        Er, no, that's exactly how it's supposed to work: people who make violent threats have those threats more thoroughly assessed.
maerF0x0 5mo ago
The Sheriff absolutely should face some consequences, at least to his career. The money paid to Bushart ultimately is no skin off the government's back. It's taxpayer money, they will just underfund a good thing, raise taxes, or print debt to pay it if there's a shortfall. It'd be an interesting thing to see garnishing of wages, deductions from pension funds, or loss of some kind of bonus system to help balance the scales.
- ajross 5mo ago
  > The money paid to Bushart ultimately is no skin off the government's back. The suit was filed against Perry County, TN, not the state or federal government. A quick google says that its budget is $33M, so in fact this is a very impactful settlement for the county.
  - suzzer99 5mo ago
    *County taxpayers. The people who actually work for the country won't face any consequences.
  - briffle 5mo ago
    Their insurance rates will go up. Its not like they are cutting a check from their county budget...
- sidewndr46 5mo ago
  I highly doubt Tennessee is going to start printing USD.
  - kube-system 5mo ago
    States and municipalities can issue bonds, which is what I presume they meant given a charitable interpretation.
- etskinner 5mo ago
  Seems to me that law enforcement officers should be required to carry liability insurance that they personally pay for. Have a lot of settlements / claims? Your insurance rate goes up. That happens enough and now it's not economically feasible to hold the job
JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> sheriff that arrested him should face criminal charges for misuse of authority Eh, just fire him and garnish a portion of his future wages to pay back the cost to the city. > In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it Do you have a recent example?
s5300 5mo ago
[dead]
suzzer99 5mo ago
In the US, we just pay out a lot of taxpayer money to the victim, and the authority abuser gets some time off with pay.
Kapura 5mo ago
i don't know if you've seen how american law is faring; the supreme court recently legalized racism as long as it's partisan.
joe_mamba 5mo ago
>In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it. No they won't face anything like that. Police lawyers will claim they were just enforcing hate speech laws to protect the country's leadership from far right supremacists and will be let go scuff free. You also won't get anything remotely close to $835,000 from the state for being falsely imprisoned. You're lucky to get maybe 5000 Euros for your trouble. In Germany for instance the politicians are protected by dedicated law against negative comments from the public. You can't even call them fat or they send the police after you. Sure, you won't get locked up for the fat comment, but the point of the police going after people with mean comments is only intimidation, to get people to self censor and stop criticizing the leadership and accept the propaganda like obedient cattle. Americans with their 1st, 2nd and Nth amendments, have an overly rosy view of the EU justice system which is far more lenient to law enforcement abuse of power and speech crackdowns. It's why you easily saw Americans attacking and throwing rocks at masked ICE officers in the US, and why Germans would never dare touch a law enforcement officer in their country, because the courts would never tolerate public attack on law enforcement and challenging the state authority.
AmVess 5mo ago
The same Europe where people who criticize the rapist of their child does more time for causing offense than the rapist did for the actual rape? THAT Europe?
calgoo 5mo ago
Well, its not like thats going to happen when people settle out of court. Not sure if his first amendment rights have been vindicated really... Today, the parties announced in a joint statement that Larry will receive $835,000 in exchange for dismissing his complaint. “I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated,” said Larry.

vitally3643 5mo ago

It's not a structural weakness, it's an intentional feature. Our legislature specifically and intentionally made it impossible for citizens (or anyone) to hold police responsible for anything.

idle_zealot 5mo ago
It is a weakness, but yes, an intentional one. Why a weakness? It leads to structural instability.
db48x 5mo ago
This is a misunderstanding. In most cases you cannot sue the federal and state governments, with very important exceptions, but you can definitely sue the police. Government officials, such as the police, usually only have _qualified_ immunity rather than absolute or sovereign immunity, and even then only when they were acting in good faith and are not being accused of violating someone’s constitutional rights. The real problem right now is how the courts determine if an official was acting in good faith. Right now they are assumed to have acted in good faith unless it has already been “clearly established” that what they did was illegal. This means that the official can argue that they didn’t know that their actions were illegal because no prior case ever dealt with that exact fact pattern. This works far too often and has let a lot of very guilty police get away with their crimes. Still, some police officers _are_ held to account, so it is not actually impossible.
- petsfed 5mo ago
  Which has led to police officers using "the punishment I received is far in excess of the last time an officer of this department was punished for habitually arresting and raping minors!" as a defense, and it works.
mandevil 5mo ago
Not the legislature: the Supreme Court. Qualified Immunity was created out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court back in the 1960's when a police officer arrested- and then a judge convicted- a group of black and white Episcopal priests for "making a disturbance of the peace"- that is, having black and white people out in public together as equals. This was Pierson v. Ray, decided by the Supreme Court in 1967. The current implementation of it- where you need to have "clearly establish" a Constitutional right with a prior case in this region- is based on Pearson v. Callahan from 2009, and it takes a terrible Supreme Court precedent and makes it even worse. This has created the patchwork "no case in the circuit has clearly established that a police officer must not make a warrantless search on a Tuesday in May" sort of quibbling. The work of legislatures has been to roll back qualified immunity. Colorado, New Mexico, and California have removed qualified immunity for their law enforcement officers at the state level. LEO's can still claim qualified immunity for suits under federal law, but they cannot for some suits brought under state law or the state constitution in those states. The Supreme Court has also, at the same time they've made it harder to hold police to account, made it harder to hold politicians to account, gutting bribery laws and expanding "free speech" to include paying politicians. And the recent idea that a President can't be prosecuted for any "official acts" is also nonsense created by the Supreme Court. This isn't Congress fault, there were laws that prevented it. The Supreme Court just decided that they didn't want to enforce those laws. The Supreme Court at the root of a lot of the dysfunction in American politics, and somehow still has more respect than they deserve.
- throwworhtthrow 5mo ago
  What's your source for: > California [has] removed qualified immunity for their law enforcement officers at the state level. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#State_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#State_law, it's Connecticut, not California, as the third state which limited qualified immunity.
  - mandevil 5mo ago
    California SB 2, signed by Gavin Newsome in 2021, removed Qualified Immunity as a defense for all lawsuits brought under the Tom Bane Civil Rights Act. I'm not a lawyer, and I have never lived in California so I don't know how much that covers. The QI removal I knew best was Colorado (CO's law also made individual LEO's have to pay with their own money, up to certain limits), and was doing some googling which listed California and New Mexico.

idle_zealot 5mo ago

In the US we grant immunity to the law in proportion to power. Rather seems it should be the opposite if you ask me.

Supermancho 5mo ago

"In return, Bushart will drop the federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against Sheriff Nick Weems, investigator Jason Morrow and the county for violating his constitutional rights." Even at his age of 60 (I'm getting up there), I wouldn't have made that deal. https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/jailed-for-37-days-for-posting-a-meme-of-pres-trump-tenn-man-reaches-settlement-for-civil-rights-violation https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates...

LastTrain 5mo ago
Under today’s administration and courts a federal lawsuit like that was going nowhere anyway, except maybe an executive order praising the Sheriff.
- Analemma_ 5mo ago
  "Thrown out due to Qualified [read: absolute] Immunity"
  - nickff 5mo ago
    Absolute immunity is much broader than qualified immunity; the former generally applies to government officials (judges, prosecutors, legislators, etc.), and the latter applies to law enforcement officers (e.g. police).
criddell 5mo ago
Maybe he should try to get compensation through the new Anti-Weaponization Fund. > “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-anti-weaponization-fund https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...
- crooked-v 5mo ago

p0w3n3d 5mo ago

> In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it. I wouldn't say in most. In many they wouldn't

kgwxd 5mo ago

At the very least, taxpayers should be looking to make him personally responsible for the $835,000.

Arubis 5mo ago

In a sane, fair, and (crucially) long-term stable system, persons given privilege and authority over others are subject to a higher standard for their own behavior. The long-running US trend of the inverse (additional legal protections for positions of authority) is incredibly destructive. This is a moral and values judgment, yes, but it's not just that -- it communicates to the population at large that they should find their own solutions rather than using the established system. More succinctly, down this path lie guillotines.

lokar 5mo ago
The death penalty should be reserved for people who violate a position of public trust and authority.
- embedding-shape 5mo ago
  Hot take, but I feel like no humans should be killed as a punishment... But I'm also probably too European to understand the true value of death penalty.
  - s5300 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - Sohcahtoa82 5mo ago
    I'm only against the death penalty for the simple fact that courts have convicted innocent people. Sometimes, that conviction happens when the court actively blocks exonerating evidence. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/284/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/284/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/547/319/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/547/319/
    - OkayPhysicist 5mo ago
      Anybody who is wrongfully executed was basically guaranteed to spend their entire life in prison. Death row inmates get dramatically more access to legal aid than anybody else rotting in a cell, so if they couldn't win their appeal, the guy doing life isn't, either. Generally, I'm against incarceration for that reason. I think the relatively muted violence of it is too easy to stomach for the public, which leads to people letting the system get sloppy. For public and infamous crimes, however, where the question is not "what act took place", but rather "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what is the punishment?"-type cases, I'm perfectly fine with capital punishment being on the table. We trust public officials with significant authority, and abuse of that authority is utterly irredeemable. Frankly, for elected officials I'd support a "two-thirds vote and you hang" policy. If you want power, and seek out power, you have an immense responsibility to live up to your constituent's expectations.

pjc50 5mo ago

Eh, in the UK this is only true for the most absolutely serious cases where someone has been killed or seriously injured. Wrongful arrest doesn't. It may face career risks. Ultimately the US lacks some sort of Federal "inspectorate of police" that would be able to ban people from being law enforcement officers or at least require e.g. retraining or restriction of duties, without leaving it up to frankly corrupt local authorities. Double-edged sword though when the Feds get captured by the Party, though.

ericmay 5mo ago
> US lacks some sort of Federal "inspectorate of police" I don't think this is true, or at least it's not entirely true. Various states and law enforcement agencies have an office of the inspector general which at least should provide some oversight. We also have the courts and individual officers and agencies can be sued in the court of law which also provides a means of oversight. You seem to be suggesting that everything is corrupt, corrupt local authorities, corrupt feds captured by the party. I think that level of perceived corruption is not reflected in operational reality. Some states or local police organizations do in fact look at past police records for applicants. There's a bit of variation here, but it's probably a bit better organized than, say the EU where outside of other bureaucratic hurdles I don't believe there is any real way to stop some German citizen who should be banned from being a police officer from moving to Estonia and being a police officer. Though perhaps I'm wrong and there is an EU-wide database that all countries and their police forces use? I know the UK isn't in the EU, but I just bring that up as I think it may be a bit closer of an example.
- tialaramex 5mo ago
  Piscis primum a capite foetet
  - ericmay 5mo ago
    Catchy, I suppose, but ultimately without much meaning.

okeuro49 5mo ago

In the UK 30 people are arrested a day for social media posts online. Only about 10 percent resulting in convictions. Police don't face criminal charges for this. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages-zbv886tqf https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

Manuel_D 5mo ago
The UK has different speech laws than the United States. Presumably, the actions of the police making those arrests are within the scope of UK law. Even if 90% don't result in a conviction, the police may still be operating within the scope of their authority in those arrests.
- okeuro49 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Manuel_D 5mo ago
    Linehan was arrested for making this post: > If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls This seems like a straightforward call to violence to me. And he was released after police ascertained that he had no intent to act on these statements. If someone made posts along the lines of "Christians are abusive, punch them" would it be surprising if CBP took them aside for further questioning?
    - jvanderbot 5mo ago
      yes, actually, it would be suprising if CBP took them aside for further questioning. That's not really how it's "supposed" to work.
      - Manuel_D 5mo ago
        Er, no, that's exactly how it's supposed to work: people who make violent threats have those threats more thoroughly assessed.

maerF0x0 5mo ago

The Sheriff absolutely should face some consequences, at least to his career. The money paid to Bushart ultimately is no skin off the government's back. It's taxpayer money, they will just underfund a good thing, raise taxes, or print debt to pay it if there's a shortfall. It'd be an interesting thing to see garnishing of wages, deductions from pension funds, or loss of some kind of bonus system to help balance the scales.

ajross 5mo ago
> The money paid to Bushart ultimately is no skin off the government's back. The suit was filed against Perry County, TN, not the state or federal government. A quick google says that its budget is $33M, so in fact this is a very impactful settlement for the county.
- suzzer99 5mo ago
  *County taxpayers. The people who actually work for the country won't face any consequences.
- briffle 5mo ago
  Their insurance rates will go up. Its not like they are cutting a check from their county budget...
sidewndr46 5mo ago
I highly doubt Tennessee is going to start printing USD.
- kube-system 5mo ago
  States and municipalities can issue bonds, which is what I presume they meant given a charitable interpretation.
etskinner 5mo ago
Seems to me that law enforcement officers should be required to carry liability insurance that they personally pay for. Have a lot of settlements / claims? Your insurance rate goes up. That happens enough and now it's not economically feasible to hold the job

JumpCrisscross 5mo ago

> sheriff that arrested him should face criminal charges for misuse of authority Eh, just fire him and garnish a portion of his future wages to pay back the cost to the city. > In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it Do you have a recent example?

s5300 5mo ago

[dead]

suzzer99 5mo ago

In the US, we just pay out a lot of taxpayer money to the victim, and the authority abuser gets some time off with pay.

Kapura 5mo ago

i don't know if you've seen how american law is faring; the supreme court recently legalized racism as long as it's partisan.

joe_mamba 5mo ago

>In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it. No they won't face anything like that. Police lawyers will claim they were just enforcing hate speech laws to protect the country's leadership from far right supremacists and will be let go scuff free. You also won't get anything remotely close to $835,000 from the state for being falsely imprisoned. You're lucky to get maybe 5000 Euros for your trouble. In Germany for instance the politicians are protected by dedicated law against negative comments from the public. You can't even call them fat or they send the police after you. Sure, you won't get locked up for the fat comment, but the point of the police going after people with mean comments is only intimidation, to get people to self censor and stop criticizing the leadership and accept the propaganda like obedient cattle. Americans with their 1st, 2nd and Nth amendments, have an overly rosy view of the EU justice system which is far more lenient to law enforcement abuse of power and speech crackdowns. It's why you easily saw Americans attacking and throwing rocks at masked ICE officers in the US, and why Germans would never dare touch a law enforcement officer in their country, because the courts would never tolerate public attack on law enforcement and challenging the state authority.

AmVess 5mo ago

The same Europe where people who criticize the rapist of their child does more time for causing offense than the rapist did for the actual rape? THAT Europe?

calgoo 5mo ago

Well, its not like thats going to happen when people settle out of court. Not sure if his first amendment rights have been vindicated really... Today, the parties announced in a joint statement that Larry will receive $835,000 in exchange for dismissing his complaint. “I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated,” said Larry.