Let me tell you what keeps me up at night. It’s not my toddler. It’s not the grocery bill. It’s the fact that a man in Tarrant County, Texas, got pulled over at 2:15 in the morning and hauled off to jail because he said a cuss word at a government meeting eight days earlier.
Efrin “EJ” Carrion hosts a local podcast and shows up to county commissioners meetings like a good citizen should. On August 4, during his sixty seconds of public comment, he used a profane word. Twice. He called the Republicans’ extremism what it was, in choice terms, and County Judge Tim O’Hare had sheriff’s deputies remove him. Carrion was already walking out. On his way through the door, he called O’Hare a “small man” and a “crybaby.”
For that, they issued an arrest warrant. Fort Worth police pulled him over at 2:15 a.m. on August 12 and booked him into county jail on a charge of disrupting a meeting or procession. A meeting he had already left. Voluntarily. Eight days before.
Tim (CC0) via Wikimedia CommonsI have four kids. I have heard every word in the book by 7 a.m. on a Tuesday. If I called the police every time someone said a bad word in my house, I’d need a precinct in my kitchen. But Tim O’Hare, this man who runs the commissioners court like it’s his personal living room, decided that a grown adult saying “baloney” in stronger language during his allotted minute of public comment is a criminal offense worthy of a 3 a.m. arrest.
And it gets better. Carrion was the first of FIVE people kicked out of that meeting. Five. Former Texas Rep. Lon Burnam got arrested for picking up a microphone to support another man who’d been thrown out. They arrested a former state legislator for touching a microphone. O’Hare also cleared the entire public out of the courtroom that day because people kept disrupting a discussion about cutting Election Day polling sites. You read that right. They’re cutting your polling places, and when you get upset about it, they empty the room.
This isn’t O’Hare’s first rodeo either. In January, Charles Hermes got arrested for clapping. Clapping! Deputies carried him out by his wrists and ankles. His case got dismissed in July, but only after he agreed to take an online impulse control class. Impulse control. For clapping. Carolyn Rodriguez got convicted by a jury for cussing at a meeting and sentenced to probation. A pastor got banned from the building for speaking eight seconds over his time limit. Eight seconds. I’ve spent longer than that looking for my car keys.
The decorum policy that made all this possible passed on a 3-2 party-line vote in January, Republicans in the majority. It gives sheriff’s deputies the power to issue trespass warnings to anyone who violates the policy, which bans “impertinent, profane, obscene or slanderous remarks.” Impertinent. That’s the word they chose. Your speech can be too impertinent for Tim O’Hare’s liking and suddenly you’re a criminal.
Mark Fisher (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia CommonsO’Hare says he has “no interest whatsoever in throwing people out of a room.” He said that at the same meeting where he threw five people out of a room. He also said, “Free speech does not mean anyone can cause whatever chaos, say whatever foul-mouth thing.” And you know what? He’s right that free speech has limits. But the First Amendment doesn’t exist to protect polite speech. Polite speech doesn’t need protecting. It exists to protect the speech that makes the people in charge uncomfortable. That’s the whole point.
These people work for us. We pay their salaries. We elect them. And when one of us stands up and says something they don’t like, in language they don’t prefer, during the sixty seconds we’re graciously allotted to speak, they call it a crime. They send deputies to your car in the middle of the night.
I’ve got questions for the manager, and the manager is Tim O’Hare. Since when is a cuss word worth a jail cell? Since when is clapping a misdemeanor? Since when does picking up a microphone get a former state representative arrested? And since when do the people who cut your polling places get to clear the room when you complain about it?
They think we’re too dumb to notice what they’re doing. We’re not.