By Alex Wood
Journal Inquirer, Manchester, Conn.
STAMFORD, Conn. — A city police lieutenant violated a local man’s free-speech rights by arresting him in 2018 for holding up signs reading “Cops Ahead” a few blocks from a law enforcement operation targeting people talking on cellphones while driving, a federal judge ruled.
The ruling last week by Judge Omar A. Williams, who sits in U.S. District Court in Hartford, is a win for Michael Friend, a food delivery driver and occasional protester of government actions, in his lawsuit against Lt. Richard Gasparino of the Stamford Police Department.
The judge ruled that Gasparino violated Friend’s free-speech rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when he seized at least one “Cops Ahead” sign and arrested Friend on a charge of interfering with police, which was later dismissed in court.
Lawyers Barbara L. Coughlan and Elliot B. Spector, who represent Gasparino in the case, could not immediately be reached on Monday.
The ruling does not determine how much money Friend is entitled to receive to compensate him for the violation of his rights.
Unless the case is settled, the amount of compensation would be determined in a separate hearing, according to Dan Barrett, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Connecticut, which represents Friend in the case.
Municipal governments frequently pay court judgments against police officers and other public employees.
The judge denied motions for “summary judgment” by both sides over whether Gasparino maliciously caused the prosecution of Friend. That could lead to a jury trial on that issue unless there is a settlement.
Two other counts of Friend’s complaint, both relating to the $25,000 bail that kept him in custody for several hours after his arrest on Hope Street in Stamford in April 2018, were dismissed at an earlier stage of the case.
A major issue in the case was whether Gasparino was entitled to “qualified immunity” from liability for seizing Friend’s “Cops Ahead” sign and arresting him. Under federal law, police officers are entitled to qualified immunity if the law is unclear as to whether their acts violate citizens’ constitutional rights.
Quoting a 2008 Connecticut Supreme Court decision, Williams wrote that “speech which ‘merely questions a police officer’s authority or protests his or her action’ is ‘excluded’” from the state law prohibiting interference with police.
“Particularly where it was through the silent display of a sign from plaintiff’s post on a public sidewalk, neither interfering with officers’ ability to pull over drivers who were violating the law nor obstructing said officers’ view in determining whether drivers were using cellular devices, any orders from defendant to plaintiff to cease his speech were unlawful,” the judge wrote.
In a summary of the facts of the case, the judge wrote that Friend was near the intersection of Hope and Greenway streets in Stamford around 4 p.m. on April 12, 2018, when he saw local police officers ticketing drivers on charges of using cellphones while driving.
Friend saw Gasparino, then a sergeant, hiding behind a pole on the side of Hope Street and alerting other officers whenever he saw a driver using a cellphone, the judge wrote.
Friend considered those tactics “underhanded” and created a “Cops Ahead” sign using a marker and paper, which he displayed at Hope and Cushing streets, two blocks south of where he had seen Gasparino, according to the judge.
A short time later, Gasparino confronted Friend, seized the sign, ordered him to not come back with a sign and told him he would be arrested if he failed to follow the orders, the judge wrote.
Friend eventually stationed himself outside a grocery store three blocks south of where he had first seen Gasparino with other signs, also reading “Cops Ahead.” Gasparino arrested him about a half hour later, according to the judge.
Friend was initially held on the $25,000 bail, according to Barrett. But after bail interviews, he was released about 2 a.m. the next day on a written promise to appear in court, the judge wrote.
Barrett said the temporary detention caused Friend to lose a night’s work as a food delivery driver.
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