Summary: A Georgia woman with a legal studies degree used Facebook to express anger and threaten to kill at least 15 white police officers while claiming freedom of speech protection.
A woman with an advanced legal studies degree was arrested after making threat on a Facebook post to kill at least 15 white police officers. Thirty-three year old Ebony Monique Dickens was charged in Georgia with dissemination of information to facilitate terroristic threats. Her threat involved a plan to kill the officers the next day with a call to action.
In court on Wednesday, the city solicitor declared that Dickens should have known better since she had legal knowledge. Dickens tried to claim the First Amendment in her Facebook post, stating that with freedom of speech she can say “kill all cops”. The judge thought otherwise and set her bond at $10,000. The judge has required her to freeze all social media accounts.
After a search of her home, police seized a loaded gun and three computers. Police were concerned that someone with anger toward police that had access to a loaded gun would easily decide to execute their plan.
The case is now igniting a debate over freedom of speech on social media and how those words can be used to start violence. Her use of the action word “now” may have stepped her over the line on what is covered by the First Amendment and what is an imminent lawless action.
A similar case is being tried by the U.S. Supreme Court after a man in Pennsylvania threatened to kill his wife on Facebook. He claims that he was only angry and never intended to follow through on the threat. Lower courts convicted him declaring that since his wife felt threatened, it was still a threat on her life. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on this case in June.
Dickens’ Facebook post was made at a time that relations between white police officers and black community members are tense from the most recent incident involving the death of Freddie Gray. Gray died while in police custody from a spinal injury that took police 45 minutes to seek help for. Prosecutors argue that she understood how tense things are and knew her post could incite others to act.
Photo: abc11.com