Can you get in an trouble from verbally "assaulting" a police officer.?

Question

After many of my friends had told me that it was ok and after seeing the video of Officer Rivieri (The video of the police officer harrasing the skate boarder in Baltimore http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgWrV8TcUc after he kept calling him dude and acting dumb after skateboarding in a place he wasn't supposed to) that got me thinking if the kid was allowed to call him man and dude. So well basically the question is can you verbally assault a police officer or a figure of authority without getting in any problems. Although I personally wouldnt risk it even if it was legal because if you s***w up walking down or driving down the street in any way that police officer will destroy you.

Answer 1

I have never legitimately arrested anyone for "disrespecting" my authority.  Authority can not be coerced, forced, or universally implemented to make people respect you simply because someone is a police officer.  Our society is not structured that way, nor should it be.  Some of the answers on here border on fascism or simply being naive overly nationalistic. Google fascism for definition.

Being called "Dude" or "Man" is definitely a stretch to get to the "Fighting Words Doctrine" and it is very rare for a person to want to fight the police, most cases of resisting arrest are to "get away", not engage the police in a fight.  It was funny, after we put camera's in the cars, the cases of resisting arrest dropped significantly. (Not because the arrestees knew the camera's were there, but because the police did)

People want to trust the police simply because of the position of the police, and if they do not then the police need to get back into the communities and start to talk to people again.

On the other side, our culture and society is severly lacking in intelligent language to express our emotions, fears, feelings, etc.  We are a "rugged individualistic" society and this causes much distrust between the public and the police.  It can be overcome, but education needs to increase in all spheres of the conversation.

Answer 2

Calling an officer "dude" does not equate to verbal assault.

However, many cities, counties and states have laws which make it unlawful to verbally abuse anyone.  This would include a police officer.

So to answer your question, verbal assaults are illegal.

Answer 3

There is no law against ignorance, or stupidity, however common sense should tell most people that there are things that they should not do if they are not prepared to pay the price for doing them.

Answer 4

thats not assultin him

but yes u can be arrested for verbal assult if its acompanied with other things if not u can be given a ticket

Answer 5

Technically no, because under the law a police officer is not allow to be, "offended."  I do not know whether this is because of the many situations they have to go in on or whether it was intended to protect citizens from being arrested when they complain about something like getting a ticket.  Please remember, most cops are really great, unfortunately, the bad ones really stick out.

Answer 6

Dude is not a verbal assault, and it is not reasonable for an officer to be offended by this, unless it was intended to provoke.

If that is the case, and the words are intended to provoke or disturb, you can be arrested. The US Supreme Court decided this in Chaplinski v. New Hampshire, commonly called the "Fighting Words Doctrine".  The Court determined words intended to cause a disturbance are not covered by the First Amendment.