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- cross-posted to:
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Tennessee officials will pay $835,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who was jailed for more than a month over a Facebook post he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
While many people across the U.S. lost their jobs over social media comments about Kirk’s death, Larry Bushart’s case stood out as a rare instance in which such online speech led to criminal prosecution. The 61-year-old retired police officer spent 37 days behind bars before authorities dropped the felony charge against him in October.
During his time in jail, Bushart lost his postretirement job and missed his wedding anniversary and the birth of his granddaughter, according to a federal lawsuit Bushart filed in December against Perry County, its sheriff and the investigator who obtained the arrest warrant.
“I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated,” Bushart said in a statement announcing the settlement Wednesday. “The people’s freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy. I am looking forward to moving on and spending time with my family.”
Perry County Mayor John Carroll did not immediately respond to a Wednesday message left with his office seeking an interview.
Bushart was arrested in September after he refused to take down Facebook memes that joked about Kirk’s killing, which had prompted an outpouring of grief among conservatives, including in Perry County, which is near Bushart’s home and which held a candlelight vigil.
I’d love to see a law where if the intentional actions of a department results in X amount of settlement dollars paid out, it automatically triggers a flushing of current police leadership.
As is, there’s no real penalty except to the taxpayer.
At least with that system, there’s incentive for leadership to keep their officers in check, they’re care if their own jobs are on the line, and “was fired cuz we had to pay out millions” makes it hard to get hired a city over.
Cities won’t want someone who’s going to cost them money.
Cops won’t do what’s right because it’s right, so we have to give them a selfish reason to do the right thing. That goes for most people, it’s always best to explain why doing the right thing is right for selfish reasons.
Typically these cases take several years to a decade to work their way through so most often the person in charge when it happened isnt the same person in charge when it finishes. What we need is for actual criminal prosecutions to occur when police trample people’s constitutional rights. No more “paid leave” followed by a resignation or retirement that ends the investigation since they arent employees anymore.
No better way to teach a lesson to an American than to tell them that their actions and their beliefs is going to cost $835,000 … either the cost to them, their office, their organization, their tax payer, their government or to anyone … because in the long run, that $835,000 is going to hang around someone’s neck forever.
Man, I wish…
But there’s tons of examples to look into.
This money almost never comes out of police budgets, and their budgets still increase every year.
They feel zero pain from settlements. The people pay on person for what the cops did, and the cops keep doing it.
As long as that’s the system, it’s gonna keep happening