Man Beaten, Arrested, Jailed for Saying ‘F*** You’ to a Cop, Taxpayers Will Now Be Held Liable

Jackson, MI — Freedom of speech, in the land of the free, is not guaranteed. Despite the wording of the First Amendment, claiming that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech,” there are countless laws across the country designed to do exactly that. However, even when there aren’t archaic anti-speech laws on the books, police will all too often deprive people of their freedom — for practicing their freedom.

For saying, “fuck you” to a police officer in Jackson, Michigan, Tracy Leroy Smith was beaten, kidnaped, jailed and tried. What started as a neighborly feud over dog poop quickly escalated thanks to a police officer’s lack of Constitutional knowledge.

The incident happened in 2015 when officer Thomas Tinklepaugh, with the Jackson police department, was investigating a complaint about a dog pooping in a vacant lot. Smith apparently fit the description of a person allowing his dog to poop in a lot.

As FOX 47 reports, Tinklepaugh first talked with Smith’s wife, Michelle Barlond-Smith. Tracy Smith admits he was profane, repeatedly saying “f— you” to the officer while his wife asked him to “Be nice.” Tinklepaugh asked him to stop swearing in front of children and threatened to charge him with being disorderly. Smith responded by saying “f— you” three more times at which point he was arrested.

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According to the lawsuit, a video shows Tinklepaugh “slam” Smith onto the hood of the police vehicle and then violently take him to the ground causing serious injury to Smith. Smith later went to the emergency room to be treated for his injuries, according to the suit.

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According to the lawsuit, Smith was originally only charged with disorderly conduct. However, Smith says the charges were changed to Assaulting-Resisting-Obstructing an officer once Tinklepaugh realized the Michigan Court of Appeals had thrown out the state’s obscenity law in 2004.

According to FOX 47, the 12th District Court found there was no probable cause for an arrest and refused to bind Smith over for trial on the felony charge. The 4th Circuit Court and the Court of Appeals later shot down the prosecutor’s attempt to establish probable cause by arguing that Smith interfered in the investigation into the dog poop by interrupting Officer Tinklepaugh’s conversation with his wife. Those courts also rejected the prosecutor’s argument that probable cause could have been based on Smith’s words being loud enough to violate Jackson’s noise ordinance.

Now, two years later, instead of the officer responsible for arresting a man for his freedom of speech, it will be the taxpayers who are held accountable in the form of a lawsuit.

Should Smith have been polite to the officer? Of course. However, being an asshole is not illegal and a person’s right to nonviolent speech should never be removed.

In the land of the free, a person can be kidnapped and thrown in a cage for arbitrary sounds made with their mouth that cause harm to no one.

Aside from this being clearly asinine, it’s well-established by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional.

In Cohen v. California, the U.S. Supreme court upheld a citizen’s First Amendment right to wear a jacket to court that read “Fuck the Draft,” the court held:

“For, while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric. Indeed, we think it is largely because governmental officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual.”

What’s more, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in City of Houston v. Hill, that police must tolerate even more abusive speech than an average citizen. The court concluded that “in the face of verbal challenges to police action, officers and municipalities must respond with restraint,” and added that, “the First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers.”

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Here at the Free Thought Project, we feel there are no such things as ‘bad words’ but, rather, certain words some people don’t like to hear.

The arbitrary nature of government enforcing laws that dictate what vocabulary a person can use is as ridiculous as it is tyrannical. Sadly, it remains a part of society.

Telling people what words they can and can’t say to ‘protect’ others is chilling. Freedom of speech does not come with terms and conditions as words alone, less the obvious yelling “fire” in a movie theater, cannot cause physical harm.

Have we learned nothing from history?

Extensive Study Shows People Who Swear a Lot are More Honest than Those Who Don’t

Next time someone attempts to shame you for ‘swearing like a sailor,’ thank them — yes, really — then, direct that person to the latest study linking your cursing to — yes, really — honesty.

People who cuss, a newer two-part study swears, tend toward honesty — and the less censorship of vulgarities a person employs, the more honest they are, researchers from the Universities of Hong Kong, Stanford, Cambridge, and Maastricht found.

Any parents out there still rushing for the soap upon hearing profanities spewed from the mouths of their babes might want to reconsider, knowing their potty-mouthed progeny are in actuality following the time-honored adage, honesty is the best policy — even if that honesty rankles traditional etiquette.

Honest folk frequently swear to express their feelings, not to insult or hurt others. The liberal peppering of expletives correlates with a high degree of sincerity — particularly in how swearers portray themselves to others.

Liars, on the other hand, generally prefer pronouns in the third-person and negative speech — a sharp contrast to their blasphemous peers.

“The consistent findings across the studies suggest that the positive relation between profanity and honesty is robust, and that the relationship found at the individual level indeed translates to the society level,” the researchers write.

For the first part of the study, researchers queried 276 willing participants about their cussing habits and levels of candor in certain situations. Additionally, they analyzed statuses and posts of some 73,000 Facebook users, focusing on their cursing and, of course, honesty.

Then, for the second facet, the same researchers examined previously-compiled data to compare individual U.S. states’ level of integrity with how often their inhabitants swear.

Results were the same — no matter which avenue the analysts pursued — use of profanities was inextricably linked to honesty.

An excess of expletives isn’t indicative only of honesty, but of eloquence: researchers previously found a capaciously profane vocabulary bespeaks generally larger vocabulary, overall.

Professor of Psychology, Dr. Timothy Jay, of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts studied “taboo words,” and discovered that — when it comes to the size of one’s … vocabulary — “fluency is fluency.”

“Taboo or ‘swear word’ fluency is positively correlated with overall verbal fluency,” Jay, the study’s author, told Medical Daily. “The more words you generated in one category meant the more words you generated in another category, orally and verbally.”

Jay sought to prove habitual semantic blasphemers do not curse or slur for lack of education or a dearth of ‘more appropriate’ terminology — those who swear, he posited, could not be categorized as coming from a lower socio-economic status as past research implied.

And he was right.

“A folk assumption about colloquial speech is that taboo words are used because speakers cannot find better words with which to express themselves: because speakers lack vocabulary,” the psychologist wrote for the study abstract.

“Overall the findings suggest that, with the exception of female-sex-related slurs, taboo expressives and general pejoratives comprise the core of the category of taboo words while slurs tend to occupy the periphery, and the ability to generate taboo language is not an index of overall language poverty.”

Those who cuss aren’t at a loss for words. Indeed, acuity with obscenities is a sure sign the speaker is an albeit profane wordsmith — a finding which seems starkly apparent, given the astonishing flexibility of the F-word, alone, which can masquerade comfortably as any part of speech the user chooses.

“It’s part of your emotional intelligence to know how and when to use these words. If you’re thinking about it from a moral perspective, you’re missing how common and normal it is,” Jay told Medical Daily. “Everybody knows this language.”

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In conclusion, he noted, “The research has gotten a lot of attention because it confronts the prejudice against offensive language that’s been around for 300 years. Kids swear, it’s normal for people to know how to swear.”

Perhaps the advent and massive usurpation of the public’s attention by cable television, with its far laxer regulations on the use of pejoratives than had restrained traditional broadcasts.

When next a relative or neighbor looks at you askance after you stub a toe and shriek a string of swear words, rather than rolling your eyes, smile — and direct them to these studies proving your semantic acuity and, of course, admirable penchant for truthfulness.