Federal Judge Blocks Seattle Police From Arresting Vandals

[Kamaji]

Federal Judge Blocks Seattle Police From Arresting Vandals, Cites Ridiculously Mind-Numbing Reason

By Mike Miller
June 15, 2023

A U.S. District Court judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked police in Seattle, Washington, from making graffiti-related arrests, despite the city’s ordinance against vandalizing property, which includes graffiti. Even worse, the liberal judge’s reason — excuse — for doing so was laughably absurd on its face.

The Seattle Times reported that U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman’s order prohibits arrests under the aforementioned law, which four plaintiffs claim violated their First and 14th Amendment rights, among other claims, “by being both vague and overbroad.”

Translation: Arresting vandals for damaging public or private property by painting their political (or other) views on said properties violates the vandals’ freedom of speech — and in particular, the free-speech rights of “women and other marginalized genders.”

You see where this is headed, right?

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Here’s more on the plaintiff’s claims that led to the judge’s decision, via the Seattle Times:

The case dates back to January 2021 when the plaintiffs — Derek Tucson, Robin Snyder, Monsieree de Castro, and Erik Moya-Delgado — protested Seattle police by writing statements like “[Expletive] the Police” in charcoal and chalk on a temporary concrete wall outside of Seattle’s East Precinct. According to Braden Pence, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, the first person was arrested after writing “peaceful protest” on the wall with a piece of coal.

The law “is written in a way that maybe, if the police were reasonable and could be trusted to exercise their discretion in a just way, it wouldn’t have ever become a problem,” Pence said. “But the fact is they can’t be trusted.”

[…]

Pechman wrote Tuesday that the city’s current statute could be used for censorship, noting that “there is allegedly a policy not to arrest children drawing rainbows on the sidewalk,” but the statute would allow for that or the arrest of “those who might scribe something that irks an individual officer.”

The injunction caused turbulence among the city’s criminal law staff on Wednesday, as it enjoined the whole of the city’s property destruction code, not just the section related to graffiti.

Only in the minds of the rabid left could charcoaling or painting “F*** the Police,” on private or public property be considered “free speech.”

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Source: 

[Kamaji]

[Fishrrman]

Before too much longer, we'll see all penalties for lawbreaking removed in places like Seattle, Portland, and all across California.

"Laws" may still be on the books -- but the penalties for breaking them will have been removed or reduced to near-nothingness.

UNLESS.... Y0U'RE A WHITE PERSON.
In that case, the penalties for even speaking the wrong words will be nothing less than years in prison.

[DefiantMassRINO]

1st Amendment does not apply to private property nor "acts", of which vanalism is one.

Defacing property is an act that violates of property rights; it is not speech.

[Free Vulcan]

Well if they want that precedent to stand fine, but it's not going to play out like they hope the next time it's a right-wing voice.