A man from Urbana, Illinois posted a video of himself burning an American flag this weekend, which of course prompted a torrent of death threats from uber-patriot authoritarians. So the police, instead of arresting the people who made those threats, arrested him.





A 22-year-old Urbana man was arrested by police Monday morning after he posted pictures on Facebook of himself burning the American flag, Urbana Sgt. Andrew Charles said. Charles said the Urbana Police Department started getting multiple calls — some local, some from out of state — shortly after 7 a.m. concerning Bryton Mellott’s posts.

And here’s what they should told each and every one of those callers: What he did is perfectly legal, quite your fucking whining.

After looking at the posts, Charles said, police saw a rapidly growing number of threats toward the young man and decided to look into it more closely. Many of the posts threatened violence against Mellott and his place of employment, Wal-Mart, which fielded a large volume of calls regarding the post, according to Urbana police… Charles said police spoke with Mellott and with his employer. He said they told Mellott that they “understood his freedom of speech” but explained they were concerned for his safety and believed his posts were putting others at risk. Charles said after the conversation, Mellott continued similar posts to Facebook, so police arrested him under an Illinois state statute concerning flag desecration. Charles said people can say inflammatory things that put themselves at risk, but when it puts others at risk who have no say, that’s when it becomes an issue. The police report lists Mellott as an offender of both flag desecration and disorderly conduct as well as a victim of disorderly conduct.

No. No, no, no, no, fuck no. The law against flag desecration was declared unconstitutional and thus null and void 27 years ago. Surely word has reached Urbana by now. And the disorderly conduct charge is equally bullshit. Your job as police officers is to protect his free speech rights from those who are threatening violence, not to reward those people for their heckler’s veto. Those charges won’t last 30 seconds in court and the police must know that. If you want to put him in protective custody, with his consent, that’s fine. But you don’t charge him for non-existent crimes in order to do that. I hope he sues the shit out of that police department.