Man Sues for Right to Give Cops the finger
MANHATTAN — He's fighting for his right to
flip the bird.
A 26-year-old man who was arrested last
summer for giving the middle finger to police outside a Greenwich Village bar
filed a lawsuit against the city Wednesday, arguing his First Amendment were
violated, according to court documents.
Robert Bell, a financial services recruiter
who lives in Edison, N.J., was leaving the Slaughtered Lamb Pub on West 4th
Street about 10 p.m. Aug. 6, 2011, when three officers walked past him, legal
documents showed. With the officers' backs to him, Bell raised his middle
finger for "one to two seconds," the documents said.
But little did he know that a fourth officer
who lagged behind his colleagues spotted the offending gesture and swooped in
to arrest Bell, his lawyers said.
"Do you think that's funny?" the
officer said as he handcuffed Bell, according to the lawsuit.
The officers searched Bell's pockets and
asked him why he had made the gesture.
"Because I don't like cops," he
said, according to the lawsuit.
Bell was held at the Sixth Precinct
stationhouse, released after about two hours and charged with disorderly
conduct for making an "obscene gesture" and causing "public
alarm and annoyance," the suit said.
Represented by the New York Civil Liberties
Union, he pleaded not guilty to the charge in October 2011 and the case was
dismissed, after the officer who filed the police report did not appear in
court to testify against Bell, the suit said.
He decided to file the suit — which charges
police with violating the Constitution, assault, false arrest and imprisonment,
and inflicting emotional distress — because he thought he had been wronged, his
attorney Robert Quackenbush said.
"He was upset that police would
retaliate against him for speech he thought was protected," Quackenbush
said.
Bell is seeking an undisclosed amount in
compensation for the "pain, suffering, mental anguish and
humiliation" he has experienced, the suit said.