A source of consternation is radical demonstrators who set the police department up to look bad. Such events usually turn into battles of hearsay. Nobody’s perfect, and police officers will make mistakes. Unfortunately, a significant portion of Asheville’s police department budget goes toward public relations. I have already written about the recent incident where a couple pinned pictures on a flag and flew it upside-down. It was alleged that a Buncombe County Sheriff’s Deputy broke a window and used excessive physical force to serve a warrant on what turned out to be a legal demonstration of free speech. I also wrote about the global warming radicals who came from out of town to dress like canaries and chain themselves together in a bank to stop global warming. Police in riot gear and firefighters were called to the scene to help the bank resume its business operations. Rumors of tasering were trumped up as part of the scheme.
In the latest incident of cop-bashing for alleged un-Constitutional silencing of free speech, Jonas Phillips allegedly was participating in the latest craze of highway blogging. This exercise is based on the philosophy that people don’t hang out in the town squares anymore, and poor people can’t afford demonstration permits, so in order to reach people for free, one can hang signs over highway overpasses.
The practice is explicitly illegal in some states, and people in Asheville can’t decide if it is legal or not. Phillips supposedly was hanging an “Impeach Bush/Cheney†sign over the highway. An officer approached and charged him with obstructing the sidewalk. Now the police department is saying Phillips was arrested for running across four lanes of traffic to avoid arrest, but that is not the charge. Stay tuned.
