{"id":31524,"date":"2012-08-15T09:14:23","date_gmt":"2012-08-15T13:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=31524"},"modified":"2012-08-15T09:14:23","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T13:14:23","slug":"4th-circuit-impersonating-police-is-not-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=31524","title":{"rendered":"4th Circuit: Impersonating police is not free speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though the Supreme Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act as a violation of the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals says those guarantees don’t apply to folks seeking to impersonate a police officer. From the Wall Street Journal<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Douglas Chappell was stopped in October 2009 by a U.S. Park Police officer on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. In a bid for leniency, he fibbed, telling the officer he was a deputy sheriff in nearby Fairfax County, Va., according to court documents. In fact, he hadn\u2019t been working at the office for about a year. The officer called the sheriff\u2019s office, and Mr. Chappell was found out. He was arrested for speeding and impersonating an officer and was later convicted.<\/p>\n

Mr. Chappell maintained that the Virginia law against impersonating an officer violated his First Amendment rights. The argument failed in federal trial court, so he rolled it up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The 4th Circuit wasn’t amused;<\/p>\n

\u201cTo strike down police impersonation statutes\u2026would risk expanding the oppressiveness of the police function by adding to the legitimate number of officers an untold flock of faux policemen, all without any corresponding salutary benefit. This strikes us as a complete inversion of the traditional balance courts are charged with maintaining,\u201d wrote Judge Wilkinson, who was joined by Chief Judge William Byrd Traxler Jr.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While striking down Virginia’s law might induce more people to impersonate police, doesn’t the same hold true for striking down the Stolen Valor Act? While it could cause some public safety concerns, it’s much easier to check on the validity of a phony cop’s claims than it is to check on military records. And most jurisdictions already have measures in place to combat phony cops – like calling 911 to ask if there are police operating in your area during a traffic stop.<\/p>\n

At least some of the 4th Circuit judges think that US vs. Alvarez makes Virginia’s law unconstitutional;<\/p>\n

Nothing before us indicates that the challenged clause was intended to prohibit citizens from posing as off-duty officers to dodge speeding tickets. Officers, just like judges and all other citizens, are subject to traffic laws and should be ticketed just like anyone else when they fail to obey them. The government interest here is public safety\u2014not the prevention of non-police officers from attempting to obtain benefits that police officers should not themselves receive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Personally, I think any pretenders should be punished, no matter what they’re pretending to be. I think we’ve had phonies who pretended to be in the military police, so if they did it in Virginia, they have a 50% chance of getting off the charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though the Supreme Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act as a violation of the … 4th Circuit: Impersonating police is not free speech<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stolen-valor-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}