4th Circuit: Impersonating police is not free speech
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;
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’t been working at the office for about a year. The officer called the sheriff’s office, and Mr. Chappell was found out. He was arrested for speeding and impersonating an officer and was later convicted.
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.
The 4th Circuit wasn’t amused;
“To strike down police impersonation statutes…would 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,” wrote Judge Wilkinson, who was joined by Chief Judge William Byrd Traxler Jr.
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.
At least some of the 4th Circuit judges think that US vs. Alvarez makes Virginia’s law unconstitutional;
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—not the prevention of non-police officers from attempting to obtain benefits that police officers should not themselves receive.
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.
Category: Stolen Valor Act
I got a ticket on that stretch of road myself once.
On the plus side: this does imply, strongly, that laws regulating the wear of military uniforms are consistent with the 1st Amendment and are thus valid. Ditto for the actual wearing of decorations (vice merely verbally lying about having one), since as I recall that’s covered under a different provision of Federal law than was overturned by the SCOTUS in the SVA case.
I’m not sure I would call what Chappell did impersonating. As the decision aptly points out the point of the legislation was not to prevent bozos gfrom claiming to be law enforcement to get out of a ticket. The point is to protect the public. Thus, would it not follow that “impersonating an officer” would require one to done a uniform, show a badge or act in an official capacity?
I would bet that the 9th Circuit would have had a differnt finding…
Wasn’t there recently a case in which some dumbass with lights and siren pulled over an off-duty cop in the same area? Believe the pseudo-cop turned out to be an MP from Ft. Polk or some such. Believe he got in some trouble….
hit send too fast – was in the same area as this, maybe upper VA or lower MD – the Mp was ‘WAY out of his AO
The whole “impersonating a police officer” law is meant to protect people from criminals who may or may not wear a stolen uniform and badge and stop people driving alone. Shakedowns by impersonators stopping immigrants used to go on in Chicago, sometimes still happen. And there have been many incidents of women driving alone at night stopped by someone (not a real cop) driving an unmarked car with the bubble lights.
So any time someone in a cop uniform or not stops me, I always ask for ID, which is what the real cops have told me to do.
This isn’t about freedom of speech. Those laws are in place to protect people.
Impersonating a police officer is NOT free speech, but impersonating a Soldier/Sailor/Marine/Airman/Coast Guardsman is.
“Declaring themselves wise, they made themselves fools.”
I’m going out for a beer and a cigar. When I get back, y’all better have a better story than that one (worked with my kids).
HM2, I’m thinking that there was more than just him saying he was an officer. He may have shown his ID, it says he’d actually been a deputy a year prior to his stop.
If anyone had told me they were an officer/deputy without ID, I’d tend to not believe them. That may have been why the officer who stopped him checked with the moron’s alleged employer.
El Marco: not so, actually. That part of Federal law was not covered by the SCOTUS decision on the SVA. Only verbal or written misrepresentations concerning receipt of military decorations were addressed by that decision – e.g., 18 USC 704(b) Unauthorized wear of military uniforms and decorations are covered by different parts of Federal law, which if I recall correctly were not addressed by the SCOTUS SVA decision. Those are covered in 10 USC 702 and 10 USC 704(a), respectively.
Massachusetts Criminal code speaks directly to the wearing of unauthorized military uniforms and awards.
You will be arrested and prosecuted, for the little that’s worth here in the People’s Commonwealth…