bumper sticker rights upheld

Cop pays sticker price
He'll be punished for arrest threat over anti-Bush label
By Brian D. Crecente, Rocky Mountain News
January 26, 2005

Denver police Sgt. Michael Karasek will be disciplined for threatening to arrest a woman for displaying on her truck a profane bumper sticker about President Bush, Police Chief Gerry Whitman said Tuesday.

An internal affairs investigation took just a day to complete, and the allegation against the officer was upheld, Whitman said.
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About 11 a.m. Monday, Shasta Bates, 26, was confronted by a man while standing in a UPS store. The man told her he was upset by her bumper sticker, which read "F--- Bush."

The man then went outside and flagged down Karasek, who was working off-duty in uniform at the shopping center, in the 800 block of South Monaco Parkway.

After reading the sticker and talking to the man, Karasek went into the store to confront Bates.

Bates, three UPS employees and a Rocky Mountain News reporter who happened to be there all say that the officer threatened to arrest the woman if she didn't remove the bumper sticker from her truck.
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