The Daily News (Longview, Wash.) reports:
Hundreds of racist fliers have been left in the streets of this town north of Vancouver, Wash., apparently the result of a flap over the firing of a police officer. . . .
The cards showed a racial caricature [apparently depicting a chimpanzee wearing a police officer's hat -EV] and expressed support for the town manager, George Fox, who was suspended last week pending an investigation into the firing of a black police officer, Carl Mealing. . . .
"George Fox speaks for the silent majority," the cards read. "Make sure Ridgefield stays the way it should be. Washington state needs more officials like Mr. Fox." . . .
The police, the newspaper reports, say that this "is being investigated as a potential case of malicious harassment, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine." That strikes me as quite troublesome. The flier's distributor can surely be charged with littering, if the city would normally charge such people with littering regardless of the content of the material being strewn. But the content of the speech is fully protected, and doesn't fit within any First Amendment exception. (It would have been otherwise if the speech contained, say, death threats, but no such threats seem to have been made, unless the story is omitting the most troublesome part of the leaflets.)
The fliers are appalling, and should be loudly condemned. But they surely may not be legally suppressed.
Have you read about the Lance Armstrong case in Italy?
Do note, however, that the end of the article reports that a recent town census showed that there were 6 black people living in a town of a little over 2,000. Given the concern the police should have in protecting the rights of such a small minority, I don't see the problem with them going through an investigation to make sure that there wasn't any illegal harrassment of this group of people. If the mere existence of the fliers is all they really have, I would assume they wouldn't go forward with the harassment charges, for the reasons that EV and Medis state.
No one needs to associate Fox with the racist remarks. He did fine all on his own.
"The lawsuit [against Ridgefield, filed by the fired black officer] also includes an excerpt from a deposition given by Ridgefield resident Jaclyn Emter, who said [Fox] told her Oct. 2 that he fired Mealing the previous week.
"I said, 'Well, why did you fire him?' " Emter said in her deposition, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday. "And [Fox] said, 'Because he's black.' "
(See, e.g. The Columbian,
Story
RCW 9A.36.080
Malicious harassment -- Definition and criminal penalty.
(1) A person is guilty of malicious harassment if he or she maliciously and intentionally commits one of the following acts because of his or her perception of the victim's race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or mental, physical, or sensory handicap:
(a) Causes physical injury to the victim or another person;
(b) Causes physical damage to or destruction of the property of the victim or another person; or
(c) Threatens a specific person or group of persons and places that person, or members of the specific group of persons, in reasonable fear of harm to person or property. The fear must be a fear that a reasonable person would have under all the circumstances. For purposes of this section, a "reasonable person" is a reasonable person who is a member of the victim's race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, or sexual orientation, or who has the same mental, physical, or sensory handicap as the victim. Words alone do not constitute malicious harassment unless the context or circumstances surrounding the words indicate the words are a threat. Threatening words do not constitute malicious harassment if it is apparent to the victim that the person does not have the ability to carry out the threat.
If the statute were intended to exclude such behavior, I would hope to see language that suggests a reasonable person must anticipate "imminent threat of physical injury or serious damage to property." Such language would, at a minimum, make the statute less vague and chilling.
I thought the police were racist . . . Don't turn my whole world upside down. I am just a young, impressionable law student!
Oh, yah and George Bush doesn't care about black people.
Words alone do not constitute malicious harassment unless the context or circumstances surrounding the words indicate the words are a threat.
It's not vague on that point at all- that flyer doesn't meet the standards set forth for malicious harassment under statute. Washington's law is pretty stringent on that score- the ACLU, which takes a dim view of many hate crimes laws as being incompatible with First Amendment protections, cites Washington's law as a model.