Chief asks for change to officer obstruction ordinance
By Amy Bounds
The Daily Camera
LAFAYETTE, Colo. — Taunting or hurling profanities at police officers could soon land you in jail on obstruction charges — if the city’s police chief has his way.
Chief Paul Schultz recently asked the City Council to strengthen Lafayette’s ordinance on obstructing a police officer, a move that has drawn concern from some council members and the Boulder County chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Officers have been subjected to very abusive language,” Schultz said. “This gives them a tool. Otherwise, they would just have to stand there and take that verbal abuse.”
Though the City Council recently approved the ordinance change on first reading, two council members voted no because of concerns about regulating speech.
“I don’t think we need to be in the business of regulating speech in Lafayette,” Council man Alex Schatz said. “Make no mistake about it, that’s what this ordinance does.”
The chairman of Boulder County’s ACLU chapter agreed.
“It’s a good intention — to let police do their job,” Judd Golden said. “But the ACLU is very concerned about broadly written laws that invite arbitrary enforcement. Speech, without direct threats or conduct, should not be subject to criminal sanction.”
A final vote on the ordinance change is set for Tuesday’s meeting.
The current ordinance limits an obstruction arrest to using or threatening to use violence or physical force. The new language would allow an arrest for taunting or provoking a police officer “in a manner which may reasonably promote a violent response.”
Chief Schultz said officers wouldn’t arrest someone simply for swearing at them — a common occurrence on the job. Instead, he said, an arrest would follow verbal warnings and be reserved for “extreme” cases.
“It’s not just uttering those words, it’s saying those words at a level that could provoke a violent response,” he said. “It’s repeated, prolonged.”
He also assured the council that force would never be an appropriate response to verbal taunts.
Council member Carolyn Cutler also opposes the measure.
“I’m always very uncomfortable when we’re trying to legislate around language,” Cutler said.
She said she’s confident that, with Schultz at the helm, police officers will be “very clear on how serious the language has to be” to lead to an arrest. But, she said, it’s possible the ordinance could be interpreted more loosely in the future.
“There’s just too much room to make assumptions,” she said.
But Councilman Frank Phillips said the change seems reasonable, given that police officers sometimes are hammered with personal threats against their families, insults and other generally nasty comments.
“You ask, at what point would you expect a reasonable person to respond, even if their job is to stay cool and logical,” he said. “It doesn’t give them license to be abusive back or to use force, just that somebody can be charged for it and brought to court for it.”
In researching how other cities handle verbal abuse of police officers, Schultz said he found several in Colorado with similar ordinances, including Federal Heights, Colorado Springs, Brighton and Sheridan.
In neighboring Louisville, the municipal code includes a “fighting words” ordinance that addresses taunts. The ordinance stipulates that it only applies to police officers if the person ignores an officer’s request to stop.
Louisville police Cmdr. Bill Kingston said his city’s laws are “primarily designed to address people who offer some kind of physical obstacle” to prevent police officers from doing their jobs.
“The mere use of bad language wouldn’t probably rise to the level of an arrest,” he said.
Copyright 2008 The Daily Camera