Cops threaten teen with "disorderly conduct" for posting truthfully that she has COVID-19.

[DetlefK]

Teen has COVID-19, self-quarantines, posts about it on Instagramm. Cops show up at her house and threaten her with jail for "disorderly conduct" because her post is supposedly spreading panic.

A civil-rights organization said "Nu-uh" and demanded an apology from the cops, but before that could happen, the family filed a freedom-of-speech lawsuit.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is totally appropriate when there's a fire.

[Sanity Claws]

2. Marquette County, Wisconsin

I thought people might want to know what police department was so right wing nutty.

[2naSalit]

3. +1

[Mike 03]

11. Thanks for the info.

[oasis]

4. "Self quarantine" causes panic? What a bunch of dipshits in authority. nt

[Aristus]

15. Yes. Panic among those who are terrified they won't be able to get to the Golden Corral

for the all-you-can-eat special...

[Igel]

5. If that was the entirety of her post,

then it's crazy.

But I've been around enough teens to know that often (as a teacher and parent) I'm given just the part of the story that's reasonable.

And when another person is relaying that story, I always ask, "Is there any more to it?" Often the response is, "No, if there is they'd have told me." And I laugh. If it's my boss telling me, I just snort and he knows I'm trying not to laugh. Sometimes I ask questions, and there's a chunk of time they can't explain. Or a quote that doesn't fit. Or a witness that can't be there. "I want to believe" is how we say, "Please, deceive me, you can lie pretty blatantly and I won't even notice--trust me on this."

[LAS14]

8. Whenever one of my kids complained about the other, I would ask, what would say?

Which is not to say that I think it was likely that the teen's post was worthy of police attention. I would like to see it.

[sl8]

6. Marquette County teen sues sheriff who ordered her to delete Instagram post

From https://wkow.com/2020/04/16/marquette-county-teen-sues-sheriff-who-ordered-her-to-delete-instagram-post/

Marquette County teen sues sheriff who ordered her to delete Instagram post

April 16, 2020
12:01 pm
Dan Plutchak

CORONAVIRUS, TOP STORIES

MADISON (WKOW) — A Marquette County teen has filed a federal lawsuit against the Marquette County Sheriff, who she says ordered her to remove an Instagram post about recovering from COVID-19.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty filed the lawsuit in federal
court Thursday on behalf of Amyiah Cohoon and her parents, Richand and Angela, against Marquette County Sheriff Joseph Konrath and a patrol sergeant for violating the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The lawsuit results from a March incident where Marquette County law enforcement threatened Cohoon and her parents with arrest unless an Instagram post was removed.

According to the lawsuit, Cohoon, a high school student, had a scare in March with COVID-19 and posted about her experience on Instagram. A few days later, a deputy sheriff showed up at her home and demanded that she remove her post or be cited for disorderly conduct, arrested and jailed.

[...]

[WhiskeyGrinder]

7. FTP.

[roamer65]

9. She's gonna take them to the cleaners.

$$$$$$

[sarisataka]

10. And yet I have seen posts here

That would leave it to the police to determine which rights are "necessary".

People never expect that such power will be abused, until it happens.

[Midnightwalk]

12. Here's some more context

This article
[link:https://reason.com/2020/04/17/a-teenager-posted-about-her-covid-19-infection-on-instagram-a-deputy-threatened-to-arrest-her-if-she-didnt-delete-it|]

Explains that she came back from Disney World develops symptoms winds up in the hospital and then

...

After she returned home from this visit, she posted again on Instagram and included a picture of herself at the hospital wearing an oxygen mask.

The very next day, Patrol Sergeant Cameron Klump from Marquette County Sheriff's Department showed up on the family's doorstep. He was there under orders from Sheriff Joseph Konrath to demand that Amyiah and her father, Richard Cohoon, remove Amyiah's Instagram posts. If they refused, Klump said the family faced charges for disorderly conduct and Klump told them he would "start taking people to jail," according to the suit.

Konrath's justification was that there had been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the county. He found out about the Instagram post from Amyiah's high school. The Cohoon family had contacted the school to let them know about Amyiah's infection, but nobody ever contacted them back to get more information. It appears that instead the school contacted the police. Under the threat of arrest, Cohoon complied and deleted the allegedly illegal Instagram post.

That evening the family would discover that a school administrator sent out an alert to families accusing Cohoon of making it up and assuring families that any information of infection was just a rumor. "Let me assure you there is NO truth to this," the message read. "This was a foolish means to get attention and the source of the rumor has been addressed. This rumor had caught the attention of our Public Health Department and she was involved in putting a stop to this nonsense."

Basically the article claims that the police are using a negative test to claim she is crying fire in a crowded theater.

There are other details in the article. I grabbed the 4 paragraphs that seemed most pertinent

[Disaffected]

14. Sergeant Klump?

[ZenDem]

16. That 'school administrator' needs to be named in that lawsuit.

What a shithead thing to do. I hope to hell they lost their job over this. AND...if the health dept truly was "involved in putting a stop..." then 'she' needs to lose her job, as well.

That evening the family would discover that a school administrator sent out an alert to families accusing Cohoon of making it up and assuring families that any information of infection was just a rumor. "Let me assure you there is NO truth to this," the message read. "This was a foolish means to get attention and the source of the rumor has been addressed. This rumor had caught the attention of our Public Health Department and she was involved in putting a stop to this nonsense."

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. Klump and Konrath can go trump themselves. In new jobs, hopefully. . . . nt

[Crunchy Frog]

13. It sounds like they should be suing the school for libel as well.

[titanicdave]

18. ....This is totally....

.....ridiculous from every angle imaginable........talk about overstepping your bounds,...... WOW.....these "officers" really put their foot in their mouths on this one......