Jonathan Turley, a respected legal expert who is a law professor and commentator on constitutional issues, long has taught, and written, about free speech.
And how it’s going away.
He’s written New York Times’ bestsellers on the topic.
Now he’s citing a case of a 15-year-old boy who was arrested, searched and fingerprinted for expressing a joke about a politician’s attire.
He explains Simon Bennett, the leader of the Conservative Party on the Wolverhampton City Council in the United Kingdom, called police on “Fraser,” a 15-year-old supporter of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, over the teen’s fashion criticism.
Fraser, he explained, “found himself searched and arrested by four officers from the West Midlands Police at his home, locked in a cell, fingerprinted, subjected to a DNA search, and taken for a mugshot. The police then searched his bedroom and telephone. All of this was over his joking about how Bennett dressed in public.”
It’s just the “latest example of the anti-free speech culture that has taken hold in Britain, where the government has continued to expand speech criminalization policies,” he warned.
The Telegraph confirmed that Fraser, of Walsall, “says he still does not understand why four police officers arrested him at his home two months ago.”
The report said he “was asleep in bed when four police officers knocked on the door of the family home, a modest two-up-two-down on an impoverished housing estate on the fringes of Walsall in the West Midlands.”
Officers brushed his mother aside and “raced up the stairs where Fraser was asleep, given it was only 8.30 a.m. and the start of the summer holidays. The day before, Fraser, a committed Reform UK activist, had been in Clacton campaigning on behalf of Nigel Farage during the hastily called by-election. He had arrived home late and was groggy from the endless door-knocks.”
He told the publication, “I just remember waking up in my room with these four people around me. They were all in uniform. I asked them: ‘why are you here?'”
It seems his Facebook posts about Bennett, criticizing him for showing up at a meeting in shorts and a T-shirt, were the trigger.
That complaint was followed online by a now-deleted comment about him later wearing a suit and not appearing to be a “rent boy,” a term sometimes used to refer to a homosexual prostitute.
Police told the boy’s lawyer his comments could be “hate” crimes.
His lawyers say they are planning to sue over “wrongful arrest” and “false imprisonment.”
Fraser calls the case against him “politically motivated.”
Turley noted Bennett admitted calling police because he was a victim. “Police have not arrested for no reason,” he claimed.
Turley pointed out how far free speech has fallen in the U.K. “A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers. Another was arrested for an anti-police T-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a ‘leprechaun.’ Yet another was arrested for singing ‘Kung Fu Fighting.’ A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a ‘cult.’ Last year, Nicholas Brock, 52, was convicted of a thought crime in Maidenhead, Berkshire. The neo-Nazi was given a four-year sentence for what the court called his ‘toxic ideology’ based on the contents of the home he shared with his mother in Maidenhead, Berkshire.”
And Turley warned, “Britain is a cautionary tale for our own country. While this speech would be clearly protected in the United States, there is a growing anti-free speech movement in this country that is aligned with European censors.”
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[ H/T WorldNetDaily ]
