When a person is verbally abusive to a police officer, under what law can the officer arrest the person?

Question

Let's say an officer pulls you over for a speeding ticket. You tell the cop he's an idiot, you swear at him, but you do nothing to interfere with him giving you the ticket. No arms flailing, not even a loud voice. You calmly tell him he's an idiot, and you pepper your verbal abuse with swear words, you talk about his heritage, lots of disgusting stuff. Why are you able to be arrested? You can do the same thing to a normal citizen, and nothing will happen, legally.

Answer 1

The fighting-words doctrine was first articulated in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942). Chaplinsky was convicted of violating a New Hampshire statute that prohibited the use of offensive, insulting language toward persons in public places after making several inflammatory comments to a city official. The Court, in upholding the statute as constitutional, set down those famous words:

There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words — those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.

Answer 2

I once had a conversation with an attorney about this subject. After a minor incident an officer claimed I made a comment (which I didn't) so I asked the attorney about this. The attorney said "So what, that's nothing...you could have called him...... and ...... and every other name in the book, there is nothing legally he could do about it. This isn"t nazi Germany" He said as long as you don't resist or become threatening you're ok. Well, some polisci...sheds some new light on this for me. I'm not in the habit of gettting into it with cops anyway but it looks like maybe you aren't as free to say what you want as I thought.

Answer 3

Disturbing the peace comes to mind as a possible charge,
interfereing with the duties of a police officer (ok, you did not intefere directly, but indirectly.

Next if he tells you to stop, you now have disobeyed the lawful orders of a police officer.

And in gerneral you are just pissing him off and really deserve what you get. As a prior police officer, I could come up with at least a list of traffic violations if nothing else.

Answer 4

Behaving in an abusive manner, public decency,breaching the peace, etc etc..it seems wierd that anyone would think that swearing at and denigrating the officer wouldnt have consequences.....the video cam probably saved you from a punch in the mouth

Answer 5

I think it is considered a verbal "attack", therefore you are able to be arrested. With the uniform must come respect. Granted there are plenty of officers who don't deserve that respect, but most are upstanding people just trying to do their job.

Answer 6

Assalting an officer and probably at least two others and it's not a mistameaner it's a felony and you will do time.
Law enforcement officers work really hard and they deserve our
respect and if you can't respect them gert out of the country!!!!

Answer 7

Cops can't arrest the person verbally assaulting them, but they can if anybody lays _even_ a single finger on them.

Answer 8

You can be arrested for disorderly conduct. As far as doing the same thing to a normal citizen, if they press charges, you can be arrested for disorderly conduct for that as well.

Answer 9

normally they would arrest you for driving while intoxicated. Or resisting arrest your word against theirs. GEEE I wonder who wins without the video tape.

Answer 10

Slow down and stop breaking the law!