Ahoy. I was wondering what laws govern flipping somebody off in public, especially in Texas. My friend says you can flip a cop off but only if it’s inside your car since it’s your property. I think that’s very moronic, since riding around naked in your car obviously wouldn’t be acceptable. However, I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t be able to stand on a sidewalk and flip a cop off as he’s driving by. Obviously it’s not going to help you get out of any ticket, but is there actually a law against it?
AFAIK, there is no law against flipping off a cop. The problem is not that they will come and arrest you for it, the problem is that they can come and give you a field sobriety test, or aggravate you for any number of reasons until you get tired of it and get pissed. At that point they can antagonize you to the point where they can arrest you for resisting arrest. As for the car question, how many of us drive well enough to feel comfortable having a cop follow you for a few miles? Don’t come to a complete stop, don’t use a blinker, have a light out, any of these Will get you pulled over by a cop you flipped off.
Now, question for you, why would you want to?
Many jurisdictions would call it offensive behaviour. One defence to that charge is that you had a reasonable expectation of privacy. For example, in the privacy of your own bedroom with curtains drawn, you can get away with any behaviour and remain innocent of such a charge. You might be guilty of some morals law like anti-sodomy legislation or drug laws but you can’t be done for offensive behaviour or outraging public sensibilities. However, you can’t reasonably have such an expectation whilst sitting in a vehicle. The fact that you are trying to offend the cop with conspicuous behaviour would make the reasonable expectation defense irrelevant anyway.
Sounds like your friend was trying to set you up for a beating.
I don’t believe there is a law against it, however I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re wearing mittens at the time. To do so would invite them to find ANY reason to give you a ticket.
Two words, snailboy. Pants pocket.
/hijack
What exactly is failure to provide proof of financial responsibility? Does this mean she had bad credit? Was unemployed and therefore a poor bad person? Seems like a really odd charge to me.
IANAL (not sure but this does stand for I am not a lawyer?) but here in Canada a car is considered a private area, you can have sex in one and not be arrested for public indecency. So I would assume you could flip someone off, cop or not, in one and not be arrested for it. Same goes for a bathroom, as there was a case a while back about gay men meeting up and having sex in the stalls, they were raided, but the case was thrown out as there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in a stall.
The financial responsibility bit just means she was not insured. Most (all, maybe?) states require you to, at the very least, have basic liability insurance on your vehicle.
For the record, I have no intentions of doing it myself. I just wanted to know the truth. So it seems it’s not definite whether or not one can get arrested for it, but it’s certain that being in your car has nothing to do with it. That’s what I wanted to hear.
Not so fast. I remember a while back in New Jersey, they were talking about making it illegal to flip someone off while you were driving because New Jersey is such a lovely state to drive in. So, that would make it illegal only in your car. I do know from having a brother and father as New York City cops, it’s not illegal to flip off a cop. But it is also not a very good idea. Depending on the neighborhood, the cops may show you why this is disrespectful.
And as a slight nitpick
That makes no sense whatsoever. In order to resist arrest, you must be under arrest. And to be under arrest, you must have done something illegal. So, unless your specific town has anti-bird flipping laws, you can’t be arrested for resisting an arrest that hasn’t yet been made.
I just yesterday read a follow-up to this article from southern Oregon’s Mail Tribune. Basically it mentions that there’s no specific law criminalizing middle-finger-based gestures in these parts, but such an action could be considered in building an incitement case if violence results. I assume the follow-up will be added to their online archives soon.
Been there. Done that. Went to court for it. (in Virginia no less)
As a teen, I used to give the finger to every cop I saw. To the point where it was reflex. (It’s a trouble-with-authority kinda thing - but no criminal record here) Most of the time it was only me seeing the cop and not vice versa … but one night…
I was coming home from work one night (probably '97, I was 19), rolled around a corner I took every day, and a cop had someone pulled over on the curb. Apparently he had just finished writing his ticket, and was going back to his car. My reflex had the better of me before I thought twice, and I very directly, with eye contact made, flipped him off. Of course he hurries to his car to pull me over on the next block.
“License and Registration.” I turn them over. A moment passes, then “I know you didn’t just flip me off when you passed me back there.” To which I calmly replied, “I was not aware that that’s a crime.” “You bet it is,” he says. Over the next half hour or so, he calls another car out to the scene, they cuff me, tell me I’m going to jail, and sit me in the back of the car. They searched my car inside and out, asked a bunch of questions trying to incite me (getting only one word replies, saying as little as possible), and generally tried their best to find anything other than the stated cause for stopping me to ticket me for. No luck. I was spick 'n span (that day). He and his cohort then stood there on the curb discussing what they might charge me with. They decided on Disorderly Conduct, wrote me a ticket, and let me go. (After the obligatory threat of going to jail, of course.)
So my day in court comes … We stand before the judge, and the cop starts recounting what happened. The judge laughs from the bench when it comes out. He asks me what I think. I told him that the greatest extent they teach law in the school system is the Constitution, and I figured it must be covered as free speech. His reply: “Well everyone’s a Constitutional Scholar these days, eh?” He basically told me that what I did, while not necessarily Illegal, was indeed Rude. And one day being rude was going to be more trouble for me that it was worth. The example he used was more or less, “flip off the wrong guy one day and you’ll get beat up!” which I could only hear as, “flip off the wrong COP one day and you’ll get beat up!” as I’m not rude to anyone else at random. It made a lot of sense. I have known too many people who have been abused by cops. I certainly have no faith at all in the goodness of police. I know they can get away with whatever they want to do to me. Why put myself in front of that truck?
So the moral of the story is … While it may not be illegal, it is only inviting trouble.
Wanna bet? Get belligerent with a cop sometime and tell me it can’t happen. There are people that get arrested for one thing, resisting arrest.
I’d take that bet. They might cop assaulting police and offensive language to go with the resist charge (the trifecta) but not resisting on its own. Have you got a link to any news articles about such cases?
Don’t you get it? Resisting arrest means that they are trying to arrest you… and you are (drum roll) resisting. If a cop tries to arrest you for doing nothing, then that’s called ‘false arrest.’ In New York, you can sue a police officer for this. Live in California? Go here. Wanna go to New Jersey? Read this. Notice the theme? in order to resist arrest, you must be charged with something else first. In the above two states, the officer could have made up the charges completely, and resisting arrest simply adds to the original charge. Now, in the end, if you’re exonerated of the original charge, you still may pay a fine for resisting arrest, but make no mistake, this is not what you were originally arrested for. It’s just asshole tax for not going with the officers quietly.
Still not convinced?. In Mississippi it’s legal to resist unlawful arrest. That means, my friend, that if the officer in question makes up charges, or simply “pisses you off” as in your example, and you say, “fuck you buddy, I ain’t going with you”, then you haven’t broken any laws at all. I found a few more states where resisting unlawful arrest wasn’t a crime. Louisiana was one.
So, in short, I hope the bet was cash, and a lot of it, cause I’m a bit broke right now, and I could sure use that as my winnings.
Well, I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of people getting arrested for resisting arrest and nothing else. I believe it was basically a case of getting mouthy with an officer and the officer attempting to restrain them that just went wrong.
You still don’t get it.
You’re probably wrong. You would need to do something first, I presume, such as assaulting said police officer, which I guess he could goad you into doing if you were so disposed (though I have enough faith in the judicial system that this would get dispelled in court). Even if you’ve got a crooked cop who would love nothing more than to bring you in, it would be illogical for him to bring you back to the precinct with a charge that can’t hold water.
You are more likely to get harassed at your car, or worse, depending on the disposition of the cop you’re dealing with.
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For some more factual information for the OP:
In Texas, there was a case called Coggin v. State:
Coggin was driving his car (complete with handcuffs hanging from the rearview mirror), when he came upon another vehicle in the left lane that was traveling more slowly than he was. Being the bright guy he was, Coggin proceeded to tailgate the car, flash his headlights, and motion for the car to move into the right lane so that he could pass. As Coggin passed the car, he gestured with his raised middle finger–or “shot the bird” - at John Pastrano and his wife, Robin.
Pastrano, who testified that the incident “made [him] angry,” called 911 and made a report of reckless driving. Coggin was issued a citation for the class C misdemeanor of "disorderly conduct-gesture. He hired an attorney and went on to a jury trial where the jury said: “What the heck are you doing wasting our time with this, you peon.” Actually, they found him guilty.
On appeal, the Court had an interesting discussion of the use of the middle finger:
On the legal side, the Court found that IN THIS CASE, there was not enough evidence that flipping somebody off quickly on the road would “tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” However, the court pointed out that
The court went on to point out that flipping somebody off, if done to their face in a public place, could be the basis for a disorderly conduct charge. It was just that Coggins had done it in a car, for a short duration, and not in a spot where there could have been a public breach of the peace. Those factors made him not guilty.
The court was ever concerned with whether or not Coggin’s finger was inside or outside of the car, which shows your friend is wrong.
Also, in Connecticut, in State v. Anonymous:
. The court found that the gesture was not obscene. They didn’t deal with the disorderly conduct aspect.
The following is a true story, believe it or not.
I was riding with two buddies of mine in the backseat of their car when I was 17. We had just graduated high school, and were basically bored teenagers. We were driving up to visit a friend of ours at work, when I saw about 10 cops on bicycles. I flipped them off, just for fun.
10 or so minutes later, I find that they had followed us. The impression that I got was one of them was an instructor or senior guy or something and he wanted to show the rest of them how to deal with punk kids like us.
They had hung a broken hockey stick wrapped in a towel over the passenger side window to be used as a “head rest”. Head cop gave him a bunch of crap about that, claiming it was a weapon. They asked me to get out of the backseat and take a sobriety test, which I passed since I hadn’t even discovered the joys of alcohol yet.
They harassed us for another 15 minutes or so, lecturing us about respect for authority or some such tripe. I refer to it as the time we got harassed by the cast of Pacific Blue.
