A longtime native cop who was disciplined after calling the late George Floyd a “career criminal, a thief and druggie” has misplaced his federal appeals case.
Cambridge police officer Brian Hussey filed a lawsuit towards town and police commissioner for suspending him for his Fb publish about Floyd. Hussey argued that the punishment violated his First Modification rights.
After a federal district courtroom dominated in favor of town of Cambridge and the police division, a federal appeals courtroom has now additionally backed town within the swimsuit.
“The district court granted summary judgment for the Department, finding that its interest in regulating Hussey’s speech outweighed the relevant free speech interests. After careful review, we affirm,” the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the First Circuit wrote in its latest ruling.
Hussey turned a Cambridge police officer in 1998, working as a patrol officer for the primary decade of his profession. Then in 2009, he joined the division’s Particular Investigations Unit for drug investigations. Hussey was a part of SIU for about 10 years, returning to his position as a patrol officer in 2020.
Then in February of 2021, Hussey shared on his private Fb web page an article titled: “House Democrats Reintroduce Police Reform Bill in Honor of George Floyd.”
Together with the article, he posted the remark: “This is what it’s come to . . . ‘honoring’ a career criminal, a thief and druggie… the future of this country is bleak at best.”
Hussey deleted the publish a couple of hours after he shared it, testifying that he did so as a result of the publish didn’t generate a lot dialog.
Hussey’s Fb account was “restricted,” which means solely folks Hussey accepted as “friends” might view his posts, and he didn’t settle for good friend requests from folks he didn’t know. On the time of the posting, Hussey had 674 Fb pals, together with 90 present or former members of the Cambridge Police Division.
Then a couple of week after his Fb publish, then-Commissioner of the Cambridge Police Division Branville Bard, Jr. was contacted by a senior officer of the Cambridge chapter of the NAACP. The NAACP officer alerted Bard to Hussey’s publish.
Bard ordered the Cambridge Police Division’s Skilled Requirements Unit to analyze if the publish violated division coverage. Hussey was positioned on administrative go away whereas PSU investigated his publish.
About six weeks later, PSU concluded that Hussey’s publish violated the division’s coverage towards “discourtesy, rudeness, or insolence to any member of the public” and its rule that officers should “be courteous and act professionally at all times.”
Two weeks later, Bard instructed Hussey that he was suspended with out pay for 4 days due to his violations. Throughout his deposition, Bard stated he thought-about Hussey’s Fb publish “damaging to the reputation of the Cambridge Police Department” and particularly dangerous “in the context of the national climate.”
Arguing that he was disciplined in retaliation for exercising his First Modification rights, Hussey then filed this lawsuit in federal courtroom.
“Hussey argues that the district court erred in holding that the Department’s interest in preventing unnecessary disruptions outweighed his First Amendment interests,” the appeals courtroom wrote.
“… The Department’s prediction that Hussey’s post could undermine its relationship of trust with the community was reasonable,” the appeals courtroom later wrote, including, “There is no evidence suggesting that the Department’s decision to discipline him was driven by anything other than that reasonable prediction… The record indisputably shows that multiple community members were aware of Hussey’s speech and were concerned that it evinced bias within the Cambridge Police Department.”
A dissenting decide on the panel, Jeffrey Howard, wrote that he would reverse the district courtroom’s ruling.
“There can be no disputing that a police department’s management has a powerful interest in maintaining the public’s confidence that the department serves without bias the entire community it is sworn to protect,” Howard wrote within the ruling. “But a government agency is not free to discipline an employee for simply expressing a viewpoint with which the employer disagrees to friends outside of work.”
The decide added, “Hussey’s expression of one such unpopular perspective on legislation pending before his elected representatives is of the kind quintessentially draped with the utmost protection by the First Amendment.”
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