See video of the arrest of William Baer:
NEW YORK – A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by a parent who contended he was wrongfully arrested at a school board meeting where he was protesting a class assignment given to his ninth-grade daughter to read a book containing graphic descriptions of “rough sex” between teens.
As WND reported, William Baer was arrested and handcuffed May 5, 2014, at the meeting in Gilford, New Hampshire, where he and other parents were confronting school board members about the assignment to the ninth-grade English honors class, arguing they had not been given prior notice.
Baer was admonished repeatedly by a board member that he had violated a “two-minute rule” the school board had imposed on parents attending the meeting regarding the book “Nineteen Minutes.” Baer spoke beyond the time limit and sat down but then exchanged words with a parent who approved of the book.
In a summary judgment Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Joseph A. DiClerico, Jr., dismissed Baer’s suit seeking damages for wrongful arrest against Gilford, New Hampshire, police officer, Lt. James Leach, ruling Leach had probable cause to arrest Baer for disorderly conduct.
“The government school wrongly gave inappropriately graphic material to my 14-year-old daughter without providing required notice,” Baer said in an email to WND.
“My First Amendment rights were violated as a result of an arrest that violated my Fourth Amendment rights,” he said. “I was wrongly prosecuted for seven-and-one-half months by a ‘prosecutor’ working for the same government agency that arrested me.”
He noted that the judge’s ruling required 24 pages to explain “that the acting police chief who arrested me should not be liable for his part because he ‘arguably’ had probable cause for the arrest.”
“So, if we challenge our government, we risk giving up our time, money and liberty,” Baer said. “But if our government actually wrongs us, increasingly no one is held responsible.”
Last year, Baer faced a three-count criminal charge of disorderly conduct brought by the state attorney general’s office.
But the charged were dismissed Dec. 13, 2014, by New Hampshire Circuit Court Judge James M. Carroll, who ruled on Dec. 13, 2014, that while Baer’s repeated interruptions were impolite, they were not criminal.
“The Court finds that this case is, notwithstanding the cynicism of the Defendant, an excellent ‘civics’ lesson, a perfect case for modeling free speech guarantees,” the judge wrote.
“The sequence of arrest actions cause pause by the Court as to the chilling, if not silencing of a citizen by the state, for actions that do not warrant a criminal arrest or conviction,” Carroll said.
See a longer version of the video:
‘Distributing pornography’
But despite the vindication Baer saw in Carroll’s decision, he continued to resent the actions taken by the local police, and he said at the time that since the arrest, “my life and the lives of my family have been in disarray.”
“Make no mistake, these three criminal charges against me were not ‘dropped’ by Gilford Police Chief Bean-Burpee and his prosecutor Sergeant Eric Bredbury; they were dismissed by a New Hampshire Circuit Court Judge after a full hearing,” Baer said in 2014.
“In spite of having months to review the law and the facts, the prosecutor refused to drop the charges or even propose a plea, but rather continued to seek a conviction to justify the state’s violation of my First Amendment right of free speech, and my unlawful arrest,” he said.
Baer argued, regarding the reading assignment, that “if someone were handing out this material right in front of the classroom in which students were reading the text, he would most likely be arrested, prosecuted, and convicted for distribution of pornographic material to a minor.”
“What about a school system which cannot insure that proper notice be given to parents of a child mandated to read such material due to the school’s ‘oversight?’” he continued. “What would you think if you found out that last year, when the book was also required reading, the school administration and teacher made the same ‘mistake’ and also failed to provide notice?”
The Gilford High School principal and board chairman had initially defended the 2007 book, by Jodi Picoult, as a “thematically important” exploration into the background and motivations of a fictional school shooting, despite a graphic description of teenage rough sex that suggests the type of violence commonly associated with “date rape.”
WND also reported in 2014 that as a result of the controversy over the book, the Gilford High School board had decided to revise its policies to include notification that requires parents to accept controversial material rather than to opt out.
“If I stood outside the school and started handing out copies of page 313 of that book, I am confident I could be arrested for the distribution of pornographic material to minors,” Baer explained to WND immediately after his arrest.
“I don’t understand why it’s OK for the high school to require our ninth grade children have to read such material, but I get arrested because I want to object to it. Something here is very wrong.”
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/11/28/dad-arrested-for-protesting-graphic-sex-book-loses-case/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2015/11/28/dad-arrested-for-protesting-graphic-sex-book-loses-case/
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