Legal Issues

Bozeman, MT is becoming a lightning rod of sorts for legal issues concerning city employees and social networks.  Back in June the City of Bozeman, Montana and social network sites were in the news for a curious job application request:

Please list and and all past, and present, personal or business website or web pages, memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MySpace, etc.

The list was to include each website as well as the applicant’s user name and password.  The uproar caused by publicity surrounding the request has settled for the most part, but social networks and Bozeman were back in the news last month, this time for a different reason.

The City, which defended itself back in June when the City attorney was quoted as saying “…we have positions ranging from fire and police, which require people of high integrity [...] so we do those types of investigations to make sure the people that we hire have the highest moral character and are a good fit for the City” seemed to have a lapse in judgment when they hired at least one police officer.

As a part of a civil rights-related lawsuit filed against the City of Bozeman and some of the police officers it employs, Matthew White and his attorneys cited posts an officer at the center of the case made to his Facebook profile page.  The officer, Cody Anderson, who is being accused of violating the prosecutor’s civil rights had the following posted on his publicly available profile:

I think there should be a law saying police can take people to jail for being stupid. Ask a cop a question like, ‘Don’t you have anything better to do?’ and you get a free ride in a cop car. If I had something better to do, I would be off doing that, and not messing with you. Speaking of messing with people … I like messing with people. Just being in a patrol car looking at people while parked at a red light is fun. Make eye contact, squint your eyes like you know what they just did and watch them squirm and avoid all further eye contact. It makes my day fun.

“I’m always amazed at what people will tell a police officer. I think people assume we are like priests and it is all in confidence. It’s not. We go back to the office and talk about everything we saw and heard. Then we laugh at people. Usually it is all on audio as well so we listen to stupid things over and over. If we are lucky, it happened in front of a patrol car with its camera on. Then we get to watch it over and over,” the lawsuit said.

Following the filing of the lawsuit the Deputy Chief of Police and issued a statement of concern.  The officer also apologized, citing his “dry sense of humor” and that the postings had been “taken out of context.”  Weeks later the officer resigned of his own volition.

The whole episode created a lot of chatter on the Internet, with commenters taking sides either applauding the officer’s resignation or defending his right to free speech, privacy, and even disdain for the public.

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