Does the First Amendment Protect a Right to Verbally Abuse the Police?

Editor’s note: This post contains vulgar language that isn’t suitable for children and quite possibly many adults. If you’re an email subscriber, your spam filter probably won’t like it, either. Also, it is quite long. A federal court of appeals recently ruled in favor of a man who called a group of police officers “bitch ass fucking pigs,” “motherfuckers,” and “dirty rat bastards.” It found that his arrest on disorderly conduct charges was unjustified because “mere epithets” directed at a law enforcement officer, no matter how coarse or profane, do not constitute fighting words and are protected by the First Amendment. Wood v. Eubanks, 25 F.4th 414 (6th Cir. 2022). This raises the question: do police officers really have to put up with this? Police officers report that they are frequently subjected to verbal abuse. A 2016 Pew Research Center survey found that more than two thirds of police officers reported being verbally abused by a member of the public in the past month. Another survey found that officers overwhelmingly believe that verbal abuse from the public has increased since 2020. “Verbal abuse” includes some extraordinarily vicious remarks. A report from the Brookline, Massachusetts Police Department cataloged some specific examples, ranging from “fuck you and your family” to “I hope you die.” Being targeted by comments like this is discouraging to officers and may contribute to the current challenges police face in morale, recruitment, and retention. Verbal abuse also seems likely to harm the relationship between police and the communities they [...]