Precision
“Offensive” isn’t really the issue.
Met officers guilty of sharing offensive messages with Wayne Couzens
A serving Metropolitan police officer and a former officer accused of sharing racist and misogynistic messages in a WhatsApp group with Sarah Everard’s killer have been found guilty of what a judge described as “sickening” and “abhorrent” behaviour.
Those are the issue – racist and misogynist. They’re the issue because of their relevance to how the police treat people and how they investigate crimes against people.
PC Jonathon Cobban, 35, and Joel Borders, 45, had joked about beating and sexually assaulting women, raping a colleague and using Taser weapons on children, their trial had been told.
I’m sure cops need to let off steam, but doing so by expressing contempt and loathing toward women is not ideal.
The district judge, Sarah Turnock, said WhatsApp, an encrypted social media platform, had been used as a “safe space” where the guilty men believed they had “free rein” to share the grossly offensive comments.
Again – it isn’t the “offensive” part that matters, it’s the focused hatred and contempt. Lots of things are considered grossly offensive that aren’t about focused hatred of particular categories of people.
So we have safe spaces for LGBTQIA++++++++, safe spaces for minorities, and safe spaces for…white men? But safe spaces for women are considered “hateful” because they exclude. Damn it, yes, they are INTENDED to exclude. That’s what a safe space is.
Countdown to how long it takes the TAs to make this somehow about oppressing trans….three…two…one…
According to the Guardian, the officers were convicted of
Bad behavior to be sure, and these people probably shouldn’t be police officers. At the same time, a statute like that would be problematic under U.S. First Amendment law.
Would it? Menacing? I don’t think 1A protects menacing.
It would depend on whether the “menacing” was limited to “true threats.”
I doubt it would in this context because a true threat generally has to be conveyed to the person being threatened. If A and B are talking among themselves about harming C, that wouldn’t qualify. (It might be other things, such as a criminal conspiracy to commit assault, if they actually took an overt act to carry out the harm.) Also, a lot of things that some people think of as threats are considered hyperbole and still protected.